Atomic economics

Minor good news for the Evergreen State’s economy: the Seattle Times reports that the state will get a sizeable chunk of the nuclear clean-up funds earmarked in the “economic stimulus package” approved by Congress Wednesday.

The site needing clean-up is the Hanford nuclear reservation in SE Washington, which was established in the early 1940s to produce plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project.

Senator Patty Murray, D, is happy because it “will create literally thousands of jobs at the site”. & local CofC types in Hanford are dancing at the thought of $1.8B flowing into the local economy.

Whoopee.

The reason for the huge chunk of change for Hanford is that it’s one of the worst sites in the country, needing the most clean-up. How prescient of those nuclear contaminators to have built in an economic fail-safe mechanism for the area.

Plus—their kids glow in the dark, lowering local electric bills.

Baby econ 101

My, oh, my—Nadya Suleman is back in the headlines again. The LA Times reports that Kaiser Permanente, the hospital where her octuplets were born last month, is applying for reimbursement of costs from Medi-Cal, the California version of Medicaid. That means that the good citizens of the Golden State are going to foot the bill for the births & neo-natal care that could well move into six figures.

Suleman has announced that she plans to support her total brood of 14 without welfare, although she’s already receiving nearly $500 a month in food stamps, as well as SSI for the three children so far with disabilities. & she’ll be eligible for more aid from various sources (including the ever-popular Medi-Cal) as a single mother of an entire farm team, which she’ll probably also term “not welfare”.

She also posits she’ll support her brood on student loans until she finishes grad school (time frame indeterminate).

There’s some confusion over the whole grad school thing, too. Suleman’s publicist announced that Suleman plans on starting a “business or enterprise that will allow her to get what she needs without needing to rely on state or federal funding.”

No word on book or movie deals. That sort of thing would cut into the Medi-Cal, though.

Interestingly, there’s a split developing in the united family front. Despite the launch by her publicists of a “Nadya Suleman Family” site (go find it on your own; I’m not driving traffic there), the primary purpose of which is the solicitation of donations towards raising the family (all major credit cards accepted), the earlier unconditional support of Suleman’s parents is starting to…turn conditional.

Angela Suleman, with whom Nadya & her six pre-existing children live in their three-bedroom house (who’d earlier painted a rosy picture of familial joy at the eight additions to the clan), is now grousing that her daughter has “no means to support” 14 children & that she has never contributed to food or mortgage payments. She also says her daughter failed to mention the $167,000 she’s received over the past ten years in disability payments.

This is definitely a story with legs.

Celluloid hearts

In case you’ve been hanging out in a cave without any media access and only just now woke up to check the blogosphere, let me point out that Saturday is Saint Valentine’s Day, the “you-vill-be-romantic-und-you-vill-enchoy-it” vortex of chocolate, jewelry and other forms of conspicuous consumption.

For something a little off the beaten rose-path, you could settle in with a bottle of bubbly and an elegant, witty romantic comedy.

To get a film with those two particular modifiers, you’re going to have to go back several decades, either chronologically or stylistically. Films like Made of Honor and What Women Want may have some persons who are quite a treat to the eye, but it’s hard to really give a toss about them and their predicaments.

Go back to My Man Godfrey (1936; although the 1957 version with David Niven is acceptable), with William Powell and Carole Lombard. The premise may be far-fetched, but you just can’t get enough of the dialogue. (The underlying premise of the absurdly wealthy living cheek-by-jowl with the "forgotten men" laid low by the (last) Big Depression lends some bite to the fluff.)

Ditto The Thin Man (1934); Powell again and Myrna Loy. Plus—Nick and Nora drink like they just got out of Prohibition. Oh, wait...

Still on a Powell-Loy roll, Libeled Lady (1936) also includes Spencer Tracy and a very funny Jean Harlow. Powell trying to bluff his way through fly-fishing is a treat; and the chemistry between him and Loy is electric.

Then there’s His Girl Friday (1940), in which Rosalind Russell shoots out some of the best and fastest dialogue in film history as she tries to fend off Cary Grant and get a scoop on an escaped death-row prisoner.

Ninotchka (1940) sees Greta Garbo, a dour Russian functionary sent to Paris to bring some discipline to the sale of tsarist jewels on behalf of the Soviet government, come under the spell of the City of Light (and that sly Melvyn Douglas). Garbo laughs.

Perhaps slightly off the rom-com beat is Topper (1937). I’m not talking the part about Cary Grant and Constance Bennett being a sexy and  witty couple. It’s how they help the middle aged Mr. and Mrs. Topper (Roland Young and a delicious Billie Burke) recapture romance in their marriage. Or—more likely—capture it for the first time.

And, here’s the thing: anyone can make a romance about 20-somethings who are drop-dead gorgeous and wear $850 designer shirts. (You can make a romance, but it’s not necessarily engaging.)

But building a film around a woman d’un âge certain (not just a middle aged guy; because how many movies have we seen where Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford get it on with chicks 30 years their junior, in between cortisone shots or DUI arrests?), who has more history and more riding on the outcome of the romance… Now, there’s a story.

That’s the attraction of any Katharine Hepburn movie—Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, and my personal favorite: Desk Set. The scene where Hepburn gets looped at the office Christmas party and riffs on Spencer Tracy’s logic questions and then faces down the mainframe computer he’s installed in her research department is worth the price of admission on its own.

Everyone knows An Affair to Remember (1958)—largely because of the homage in Sleepless in Seattle (cute, but no cigar). Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant are the embodiment of class and style in the story of two people who’ve set themselves up with wealthy partners because they’ve been around the block a few times and opted for security over love. They meet on an ocean liner (courtesy of their partners’ money) and decide to take a chance—wagering everything they have against the possibility of love.

Now that’s romance. Really: the crapshoot of love.

Indiscreet (1958) pairs Grant with Ingrid Bergman, a combination it’s hard to top. The premise—Grant claims to be a married man unable to get a divorce as a defense against any woman’s aspirations to matrimony. When he falls for Bergman, a leading lady in all senses of the term, there’s a series of farcical events. Frankly, the plot’s a bit hard to swallow, but you don’t really care because the packaging is super.

Within the past 20 years, I rate Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) very high on the truly romantic scale. First of all: Alan Rickman. You don’t really need more, but the story is about the deceased cellist (Rickman) returning from beyond to ease his lover (Juliet Stevenson) through her overpowering grief. The scene where he appears, playing his cello while she’s playing the piano, and she sobs—that’s one of the most affecting lovers’ reunions ever filmed.

Enchanted April (1992) has a fantastical (as in “imbued with fantasy”) air to it. Four Englishwomen (strangers to one another—already an anomaly in English society) pool resources to rent a villa in Italy for the month of April. The setting is the 1920s, not my favorite era, but it turns out to fit together absolutely perfectly. The magic of Italy takes hold, healing the wounds of each of the women. The ending is a bit pat—but not out of order in a romance.

Not a comedy, The Last of the Mohicans (1992) is still one of the best love stories going. Lyrically shot by Michael Mann (of all directors), it’s visually stunning and emotionally compelling. When Daniel Day-Lewis abjures Madeleine Stowe (Hawkeye/Cora Munro), about to be taken by the Huron, to “No matter whatever happens, stay alive. I will find you no matter what”—well, it’s utterly heart-melting. There can’t be a woman alive who wouldn’t want her man to give that sort of adoration.

Playing against the trend of no witty and engaging rom-coms in recent years is 2008’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It’s charming and blessed with superior characters and dialogue. (Okay, Frances McDormand can do no wrong; simply by a narrowing or widening of an eye she can communicate utter despair or puppy-wriggling pleasure.) Again, it’s that last-chance-at-love hook that I find much more appealing than the usual ho-hum Drew Barrymore-Matthew McConaughey fluff.

I think my all-time favorite romance, however, is I Know Where I’m Going (1945). Yes, it’s a bit contrived, and you know what the “twist” is going to be. But Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey have such chemistry in their clash of wits, it just knocks you out. Hiller is the strong-willed city girl on her way to marry her wealthy, older industrialist fiancé (see the money-security options in An Affair to Remember), who has rented an island off the Scottish coast. The weather intervenes and puts her in the path of Torquil McNeil, who (it turns out) actually owns that island, but is land-rich and cash-poor.

Well, you know what’s going to happen, but getting there is just charming and well worth the time.

Beware the power of IKWIG, however. It can fool you into thinking there are Scotsmen who are worth the gelignite it would take to blow them back to hell.

Oh, wait—that’s a different sort of comedy.

Apologise. Pull out his eyes

On the face of it, the suits-in-chief at the two biggest failed banks in the UK choked down an extra serving of humble pie in Parliament yesterday. Top execs at the spectacularly collapsed RBS and HBOS (both with “Bank of Scotland” in their names) went before the House of Commons and groveled with all the crocodile tears they could manage as they strangled on what Lord Stevenson, former chairman of HBOS, referred to as “the S-word”.

The BBC has video of the apologies, which are well worth a listen.

When you delve into the story, however, it’s more of the usual “mistakes were made…but not by me” routine you’re hearing a lot of from the corporate boardrooms.

And they can’t get their stories straight about whether or the bonus culture had any influence on the boneheaded decisions made by the execs. (Listen—if they get their multiple millions in good times and bad, it’s not a “bonus”; it’s a “salary”.)

Andy Hornby, wunderkind CEO of the very same HBOS (whose 2007 compensation was nearly £2M) resigned last October. However, he’s been scarfing up fees of £60,000 per month “consulting” to the government overseers who are supposed to be cleaning up the mess he left at HBOS.

Um—so you let the fox rampage through the henhouse, and then when you’re trying to rebuild it and find any loose eggs that might be lying about, you bring that fox back? And pay it monthly fees of more than most of the hens make annually?

Blimey!

Contrast this with the performance of Nozawa Shohei, the president of Yamaichi Securities when it went bust in 1997. When Nozawa announced the collapse, not only did he break down in unfeigned sobs, his primary concern was to mitigate to the extent possible the effects on the company’s employees.

“It's excruciatingly painful to think about the fate of our 7,500 workers and their families. The managers alone are to blame and no other staff did anything wrong. So I beseech for cooperation so that Yamaichi workers won't be thrown into the street.”

You don’t hear any of that sort of thing coming out of the tightly pursed mouths of corporate management in the US or Britain.

But then there’s no sense of accountability in our cultures the way there is in Asia. You screw up in a corporate way in China—you can be executed. Screw up here, you rush to get the bonuses paid before the next watch comes on.

I keep coming back to the concept of public stoning. It really would serve a purpose. Four Scottish bankers sweating before Parliament is one thing; but then they’re off in the Roller to their club for a couple of single malts and a good dinner.

They say they’re “profoundly” and “unreservedly sorry”. But for what? Stevenson is sorry “at the turn of events”, like he somehow stumbled into a bun fight and wasn’t a primary causal force. “I fully accept my responsibility in matters,” he adds.

What does that mean? What matters, precisely?

They’re exactly like a former colleague who never ever in his life made a mistake. Every decision was an excellent move on his part—brilliant, even—and it was only “subsequent events” that turned things sour.

They’re also like every pol caught in a scandal who ever went in front of the cameras to apologize “for any pain I might have caused my family and supporters.”

They’re not sorry for anything they’ve done, or for any pain they’ve caused anyone else. They’re not even sorry they were caught at whatever it was.

They’re only sorry that their actions had negative consequences for themselves.

And as for a corporate exec who refers to an apology as “the S-word”—you’re not in the lower fifth form any more. Grow the hell up!

Friendly skies

A while ago someone sent me this story by Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly. He recounts his experience flying backseat in an F-14 from VF-213 out of Oceana NAS, Virginia.

Since I actually got queasy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier), I’ll never avail myself of an invitation to go up with one of those jet-jockeys.

Especially since Reilly describes a process I recognize all too well.

But let me tell you about my pal Jay, God rest him.

Jay was the supply officer of VF-143, the Pukin’ Dogs, a squadron of F-14 Tomcats on the Ike and also based at Oceana.

For those of you who haven’t known F-14 flyers, to say they’re a different breed is like saying Michelangelo dabbled in paints. To tell the truth, on land they’re arrogant, self-absorbed jerks, pretty much. Although in their element—taking off and landing on postage-stamp-sized nuclear carrier decks on roiling seas—ya gotta admit that they’ve got a place in God’s (or the Navy’s) weltanschauung.

For Tomcat jocks, everyone else (including other Navy aviators) is strictly JV. That includes the ground-pounders of the squadron. And just to prove that, they generally offer earthers a ride in the back seat, where the RIO (Radio Intercept Officer) operates. The object of these flights is exactly as described by Reilly: go up/down/twisty/rolly/flippy/floppy until your passenger loses his lunch.

So when one of the flyboys offered to take Jay on such a joyride, Our Man made sure he was prepared. He had lunch at some faux Mex place and got an order or two of nice, chunky guacamole to take out. He hid the condiment in a sick bag exactly like the one he was issued “officially”, suffered through the condescending pre-flight “explanations” delivered by the jock, and got into the back seat.

The pilot went through all the gyrations required of those of his breed, expecting to hear Jay beg for mercy. This went on for some time and finally Jay made the expected non-verbal sounds.

When they landed, the ground crew helped him out and everyone gathered round him expectantly. Jay clutched his barf bag in his hand and moaned about how sick he’d been.

Then he opened the bag, scooped out a fingerful of nice, chunky guacamole, stuck it in his mouth and chirped, “Hey—it’s still WARM!” Turns out that Tomcat pilots are pretty easily grossed out.

That man was the very definition of grace under fire.

Economy by the numbers

In case you’re feeling optimistic about the economy, let me throw cold water on your hopes. That 7.6% unemployment rate for last month means that nearly 600,000 Americans lost their jobs, on top of the 577,000 who were tossed out of work in December, for 7.2%.

The bad numbers go on from there. No sector seems immune from the cuts. & the consensus of economists’ opinions is that it’s not getting better until it gets worse.

The Huffington Post gives us some graphical representations of the job losses, as well as what the kerfuffle in Congress over the stimulus package is all about.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

We all scream for...

Right. Back to the ridiculous.

Those corporate rebels at Ben & Jerry’s have created an ice cream flavor to mark the new President’s accession: “Yes, Pecan!”

They then invited the public to propose a George W. Bush memorial flavor. Suggestions here.

I’m having a hard time choosing between Bloody Sunday, Neocon Politan & Credit Crunch.

Which flavor do you favor?