April 16, 2008
From a Center for Economic and Policy Research report:
“In the absence of government standards, almost one in four Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays. According to government survey data, the average worker in the private sector in the United States receives only about nine days of paid vacation and about six paid holidays per year.”
That paragraph alone is chock-full of reasons to be angry at how America treats its working folks. To get the full effect, check out this chart of how industrialized nations stack up in terms of vacation time. We all know that France gives its workers a lot more time off than we do, but how about Brazil? South Africa? Hell, even Vietnam mandates ten days’ vacation pay for full-time workers.
Now, the big question: how many days off does America require companies to provide?
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6 Comments | 
American Politics | Tagged: america, CEPR, france, vacation, workers rights | 
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Posted by Gordon Levine
April 15, 2008
This entry is written as a response to Rebecca Traister’s “Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!”1 Before you read my response, I highly suggest you go and read Traister’s entire Salon.com article: it is well-written and reasonably argued. I take issue with only a small portion of it, and wish to clarify other bits
That out of the way, Traister makes an argument that the extremely enthusiastic (some would say bombastic) support of Senator Obama among young male Democrats marginalizes women who follow Senator Clinton. In order to avoid seeming to vote for Hillary “just because she’s a woman,” young female Dems are rhetorically coerced into (at least publicly) singing the praises of Barack Obama.
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6 Comments | American Politics, Critical Theory | Tagged: barack obama, Clinton, Discourse, Feminism, hillary clinton, Obama, Rebecca Traister, Salon, Sexism, Traister | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
April 9, 2008
Unless you often browse online for kids’ games, you’re unlikely to know about Bananagram, a Scrabble knock-off my mother bought the family for Christmas. She buys a new game every year, and usually it’s a card-game — something easy to learn, easy to play, and low-stress. This year, we didn’t get a card-game. We got Bananagram.
I’ll say this for Bananagram: it’s worth posting about. Not because it’s good, though. Bananagram earned a post because it’s a perfect example of what can go wrong when developers don’t think games through.
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12 Comments | Game Theory | Tagged: bananagram, bananarisk, party game, scrabble, tile game | Permalink
Posted by Gordon Levine
April 9, 2008
As my last entry makes clear, I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. Over at his vlog, a recent episode focuses on pigeonholing and identity—in G.V.’s case, how strange people find it that he is a Wine Guy as well as a Tech Guy. Gary says that we, as a society, feel that people “need to be one dimensional, [. . .] one trick ponies.” I take issue with this idea. We proceed as though most people have one specialty, because that’s what most interactions call for.
The better people know each other, the more robust their understanding of each other becomes—but it is never complete. So while people who only know Gary V. as an internet wine celebrity will be surprised by his active role in the web world, his friends (and even attentive fans) will expect it. This isn’t a fault on the part of those who have only a casual knowledge of Gary. It’s how identity works.
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2 Comments | Critical Theory, Identity | Tagged: Gary Vaynerchuk, Judith Butler, Identity, Performativity, Performative, Gender Trouble, Web 2.0, Panprojection | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
Genghis Philip
Gordon Levine