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Millennials and Comic Books: Chill Out, Haters

by Aaron Duff Posted on December 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Saul DeGrew surveys the various complaints people have about the Millennial generation. Here’s one:

Another part of the Millennial complaint brigade is complaining about how they are still into videogames, comic books, and other activities from their childhood….I admit that I find this aspect of the Millennials staying Kids debate to be a bit troublesome but that is probably my own snobbery and cultural elitism coming in more than anything else. I don’t quite understand how explosion and bang wow movies are still big among a good chunk of the over-30 set.

Forget videogames: that’s a huge industry that spans all generations these days. Their popularity says nothing about arrested adulthood. But I was curious: just how many Millennials are still reading comic books? Not just “interested” in comics or willing to see the latest X-Men movie. DeGrew may not like “bang wow” movies, but they’ve been a pretty standard part of Hollywood’s product mix forever, and the current fad for superhero bang wow movies doesn’t say much of anything about Millennial culture in particular.

So: how many actual readers of comic books are there among Millennials? I don’t know, but here’s a guess:

  1. Diamond Comic Distributors sold about 84 million comics in 2013. Diamond is damn near a monopoly, but it’s not a total monopoly, and that number is only for the top 300 titles anyway. So let’s round up to 100 million.
  2. That’s about 8 million per month. Some comic fans buy two or three titles a month, others buy 20 or 30. A horseback guess suggests that the average fan buys 5-10 per month.
  3. That’s maybe 1.5 million regular fans, give or take. If we figure that two-thirds are Millennials, that’s a million readers.
  4. The total size of the Millennial generation is 70 million. But let’s be generous and assume that no one cares if teenagers and college kids are still reading comics. Counting only those over 22, the adult Millennial population is about 48 million.
  5. So that means about 2 percent of adult Millennials are regular comic book readers. (If you just browse through your roomie’s stash sporadically without actually buying comics, you don’t count.)

I dunno. I’d say that 2 percent really isn’t much. Sure, superheroes pervade popular culture in a way they haven’t before, though they’ve always been popular. Adults watched Superman on TV in the 50s, Batman on TV in 60s, and Superman again on the big screen in the 80s. But the rise of superhero movies in the 90s and aughts has as much to do with the evolution of special effects as with superheroes themselves. Older productions couldn’t help but look cheesy. Modern movies actually make superheroes look believable. Science fiction movies have benefited in the same way.

In any case, superheroes may be a cultural phenomenon of the moment—just ask anyone who tries to brave the San Diego Comic-Con these days—but even if you accept the argument that reading comics is ipso facto a marker of delayed adulthood1, the actual number of Millennials who do this is pretty small. So chill out on the comics, Millennial haters.

1I don’t. I’m just saying that even if you do, there aren’t really a huge number of Millennial-aged comic fans anyway.

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Millennials and Comic Books: Chill Out, Haters

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Europe’s plastic bag rule is a breath of fresh air

by EllieHypes Posted on November 24, 2014

Europe’s plastic bag rule is a breath of fresh air

By on 24 Nov 2014commentsShare

Plastic bags are the worst. They’re made of oil, they’re filling up the oceans, they’re showing up in sea turtles, they’re killing birds and plankton, too, and they’re even threatening human health, as plastic works its way up the food chain to the top predator: us.

That’s why the European Union worked so hard on a new compromise aimed at cutting Europe’s throwaway plastic bag use by 80 percent over the next decade. E.U. governments unanimously approved the measure last Friday, reports Newsweek.

Yes, that’s right. Political actors from states like Denmark, where folks use four lightweight plastic bags per year, on average, found a happy medium with the likes of Portugal, whose residents go through them at 100 times that rate, and all sides agreed to the deal because the ecological damage is too great to ignore. Having lived scarcely two decades, I can’t remember anything quite like this multinational legislation.

The original proposal’s outright ban on so-called oxodegradable bags was downgraded to appease the U.K., a country that remains displeased with the binding elements of the agreement. The Guardian explains the ratified deal:

Under the new proposal, EU states can opt for mandatory pricing of bags by 2019, or binding targets to reduce the number of plastic bags used annually per person from 191 now to 90 by 2019 and 40 in 2025. Measures such as bag taxes could also be considered as equivalent.

Even as communities around the world do their damnedest to oust this ubiquitous symbol of modern consumerism, Big Plastic will try anything to keep us addicted to the convenient, single-use totes: Slap on misleading labels, dub them reusable to get around bans, and, of course, put nearly every product, even fruits and veggies at many stores, into its own plastic bag called packaging. Despite the countermovement, we use more than a million plastic bags every minute worldwide, each one for an average of 15 minutes.

What to do about this oceanic mess? Involving a higher authority like the E.U. sounds like an alright complement to the proliferating small-scale measures to sack the sack.

Celebrate the progress, but beware of complacency. In terms of environmental impact, the type of bag we use is far less important than what we put inside it (or don’t).

As for the new rule, my question is (as always): Does it apply to produce bags or only at the checkout line?

Source:
EU Government Approves Law to Curb Plastic Bag Use

, Newsweek.

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How One Man Poured Chemicals Into New Jersey’s Drinking Water and Changed Women’s Fashion Forever

by StephanBurrough Posted on October 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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These days, drinking more water seems to be the solution for everything from weight loss to youthful skin. In fact, we’ve taken our obsession with water so far that the medical community is actually warning people that drinking too much water can be poisonous. What most of us take for granted, however, is that water (in reasonable quantities) is safe to drink—a notion that was absolutely not true a hundred years ago.

The innovations that gave us clean drinking water don’t seem as sexy as self-driving cars or a rover on Mars. But author Steven Johnson argues that these types of technological advances have changed our world in profound ways—impacting everything from life expectancy to women’s fashion (more on that below).

Seemingly mundane scientific breakthroughs can create what Johnson calls a “hummingbird effect,” a reference to the great evolutionary leap that species made when it began to mimic the flight patterns of insects in order to extract nectar more efficiently from flowers. Johnson coined the phrase while writing his latest book—How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World—in Marin County, Calif., where hummingbirds were frequent visitors in his garden. What started out as a distraction provided him with an apt metaphor for the often unpredictable and far-reaching effects that a simple innovation can have on society. “You think you’re inventing something that just involves flowers and insects, but it ends up changing the anatomy of birds,” says Johnson on this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. “We see that again and again and again in the history of technology.”

So how does Johnson link clean drinking water with female fashion? The story begins with a nineteenth century problem. As American cities grew larger, contamination of drinking water by sewage was becoming a serious health hazard. For John Leal, a doctor based in New Jersey, the problem was personal: his father had died a slow and agonizing death after drinking contaminated water during the Civil War. He wasn’t alone. “Nineteen men in the 144th Regiment died in combat,” writes Johnson, “while 178 died of disease during the war.”

Steven Johnson Nutopia

In addition to his work as a physician, Leal was a health officer and inspector for the city of Paterson, N.J. His duties included understanding and curtailing communicable diseases and disinfecting the homes of people who died from them. He was also in charge of the city’s public water supply and the safe disposal of sewage. This combination of interests and responsibilities ensured that he spent a lot of time thinking about how to improve water safety. Whereas other doctors rejected the notion of using chemicals to kill noxious bacteria in water, Leal began to consider chlorine—in the form of calcium hypochlorite—which was commonly used to disinfect houses and neighborhoods affected by typhoid and cholera outbreaks.

Chloride of lime, as it was called back then, smelled terrible and was known to be toxic, so the idea of putting it in drinking water seemed ludicrous. But Leal realized that in small doses, it was essentially harmless to humans and yet still effective at destroying deadly bacteria. “Leal understood this in part because he had access to very good microscopes,” explains Johnson. “In the old days, if you had a hypothesis about how to clean the water, you would kind of do it, and then you’d wait for a month and see if anybody died.”

But putting what is essentially poison into the city’s water supply was still an unpopular suggestion, to say the least.

And so, a few years later, when Leal was put in charge of Jersey City’s water supply, he added chlorine to the city’s reservoirs “in almost complete secrecy, without any permission from government authorities (and no notice to the general public),” writes Johnson. And not surprisingly, once people realized what he had done, Leal was called a madman and even a terrorist. He had to appear in court to defend his actions, where he testified that he believed his chlorinated water was, in fact, the safest in the world.

The case was settled in his favor and, unlike many of his contemporaries, Leal gave away the recipe for chlorination for free to whomever wanted it. “Unencumbered by patent restrictions and licensing fees,” writes Johnson, “municipalities quickly adopted chlorination as a standard practice, across the United States and eventually the world.”

Mass chlorination had some predictable effects, reducing the mortality rate in the average American city by 43 percent. According to Johnson, parents of infants benefited even more significantly, as the death rate for babies dropped by 74 percent. And while reducing mortality is perhaps the most important consequence of Leal’s innovation, there is also a lighter side to the story.

As the First World War came to an end and chlorination spread across the country, some 10,000 public baths and pools were opened in the United States, giving women a new forum to show off their figures. As pools became safe and swimming became the norm, swimsuit fashions exploded. Or compressed, more accurately. “At the turn of the century,” Johnson writes, “the average woman’s bathing suit required 10 yards of fabric; by the end of the 1930s, one yard was sufficient.”

“Hanging out at a pool and seeing people in swimsuits” became a major driver of fashion, says Johnson. And while Hollywood glamor, fashion magazines, and other cultural changes had an effect, “without the mass adoption of swimming as a leisure activity,” he writes, “those fashions would have been deprived of one of their key showcases.”

How We Got to Now’s publication also coincides with a six-part PBS and BBC television series airing Wednesdays at 10 pm ET, from October 15 to November 12. You can watch a preview below:

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. We are also available on Stitcher. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook. Inquiring Minds was also singled out as one of the “Best of 2013” on iTunes—you can learn more here.

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How One Man Poured Chemicals Into New Jersey’s Drinking Water and Changed Women’s Fashion Forever

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Bluesman Gary Clark Jr. Is the Guitar Hero for Our Time

by Rosa54Nxuhep Posted on September 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Gary Clark Jr.
Live
Warner Bros.

A guitar hero for the modern era, Gary Clark Jr. plays bluesy rock with a blistering urgency that makes the hoariest conventions feel brand new. For all his flashy expertise, the muscular solos and buzzing riffs never feel gratuitous, while Clark’s terse, tough singing nicely complements his fretwork. This 15-track, 97-minute feast is the perfect showcase for his brilliance, mixing versions of standards like “Three O’Clock Blues” (popularized by B.B. King) and “Catfish Blues” (also covered by Jimi Hendrix) with pungent originals, from sleek boogie (“Travis County”) to tender soul (“Please Come Home”), with lots of fireworks in between. While it’s tempting to view him as the next coming of Hendrix, especially in light of his take on Jimi’s “Third Stone from the Sun,” Clark is closer in spirit to Stevie Ray Vaughan: less an exotic, godlike genius than a gifted guardian of tradition who never fails to thrill.

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Bluesman Gary Clark Jr. Is the Guitar Hero for Our Time

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Can farmers outsmart climate change?

by RRIAbraham Posted on September 26, 2014

Can farmers outsmart climate change?

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26 Sep 2014 7:44 PM

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Attention, farmers of the world! Here’s a question for you: How do you feed a world with 9 billion people? Furthermore, how will you do so while facing hotter seasons, droughts, weirder weather, and water shortages?

That’s a mighty tall order, but let me assure you: There is work underway to plan for this overwhelming future. It’s called climate-smart agriculture, and if you haven’t heard of it already, here’s what you need to know.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA, not to be confused with, CSAs) is the idea that farmers — along with their friends with money and agriculture/climate science knowledge — should develop and use technologies that work with the ever-changing climate, not against it. Why? Well, to put it simply, so that climate change doesn’t completely disrupt our food system forcing us all to go hungry.

A recent article in Modern Farmer explains that up until recently, CSA was more of a philosophy than a solid plan:

Climate-smart agriculture is a sort of overview concept originally put forth in 2010 by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization … [it is] a general idea about adjusting all forms of agriculture (“farms, crops, livestock, aquaculture, and capture fisheries”) to better adapt to a changing climate.

CSA is going to be difficult to implement. It requires academic research, technology development, and the money to make it happen. But when it all comes together, CSA could help farmers deal with climate change affecting crop health and yields, move away from environmentally harmful farming practices, and learn to use less carbon-reliant technology.

Luckily, CSA is starting to gain attention. The Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research, a group of 15 scientific research centers that specialize in assisting farmers in the tropics, recently issued a statement that it would commit a 60 whopping percent of its operating budget (which is over $55 million) to develop climate-smart tools for 500 million farmers around the world. (Let’s take a moment to pause for applause.)

And here’s a shock for you: The U.S. government is starting to get on board, too! Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently launched the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, a group that promotes agriculture that reduces the impact of climate change.

This is a CSA we hope more farmers sign up for.

Source:
The other CSA: What is climate-smart agriculture?

, Modern Farmer.

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Sarah Palin Picks Imaginary Fight With Elizabeth Warren, Loses

by IsmaelWicks Posted on August 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last month at Netroots Nation, Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave a speech outlining what she considers 11 tenets of modern American liberalism. (“We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth…We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.”) You can watch it in full here.

On August 7, Alaska governor-turned reality star Sarah Palin went on her eponymous television channel to offer a conservative rebuttal.

The thing to keep in mind is that she had three weeks to write these responses. This is not live. This is not a real debate. There is no moderator. Katie Couric and the lamestream media have no hand in this. This is a Sarah Palin joint.

As Robyn Pennacchia points out at Death & Taxes, the real highlight is Palin’s word salad in response to Warren’s statement that “we believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.”

‘We believe?’ Wait, I thought fast food joints, hurh. Don’t you guys think that they’re like of the Devil or somethin’ I was. Liberals, you want to send those evil employees who would dare work at a fast food joint then ya just don’t believe in, thought you wanted to, I dunno, send them to Purgatory or somethin’ so they all go VEGAN and, uh, wages and picket lines I dunno they’re not often discussed in Purgatory, are they? I dunno why are you even worried about fast food wages because dha.

You really should watch the whole thing.

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Sarah Palin Picks Imaginary Fight With Elizabeth Warren, Loses

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Watch Live: Can China Survive a Fracking Revolution? The United States Sure Hopes So.

by JacelynSUN Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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China is on the brink of an energy revolution: fracking. And it’s enlisting American energy companies to help implement the technology that blasts shale rock formations deep underground to unlock natural gas. For this event at the Asia Society in New York City, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I are debuting field reporting from a month’s worth of exhilarating, exhausting travels deep into Sichuan province, to see China’s first fracking wells for ourselves.

Watch the livestream of the event above to catch Jaeah and me discussing the big business of fracking in China—and its potential health and environmental costs. The other panelists are Orville Schell, the great chronicler of modern Chinese politics and society; Josh Fox, the director of the anti-fracking documentary Gasland; and Ella Chou, an energy analyst who is trying to work out how China can break its deadly addiction to coal.

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Watch Live: Can China Survive a Fracking Revolution? The United States Sure Hopes So.

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Friday Car Blogging – 2 May 2014

by Korey23Oakntcq Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Some of you may recall that I’ve been threatening to buy a new car for a while. Well, I finally did. It’s a blue-gray Mazda 3 with all the modern amenities, and I like it a lot. Unfortunately, Domino doesn’t. As you can imagine, I had grand plans for her to perch regally on the hood for Friday catblogging this week, but she was having none of it. In fact, she couldn’t get back to solid ground fast enough. So I’m afraid this is the best I could get. Technically, it’s still catblogging, though. After all, the car is merely a technologically advanced cat platform. Right?

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Friday Car Blogging – 2 May 2014

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Chart of the Day: Wind Turbines Don’t Kill Very Many Birds

by BookerCovey Posted on April 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tom Randall is fed up with hysteria over wind turbines being responsible for bird genocide. The numbers just don’t support it:

The estimates above are used in promotional videos by Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s biggest turbine maker. However, they originally came from a study by the U.S. Forest Service and are similar to numbers used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society — earnest defenders of birds and bats.

….It’s nice for wind-farm planners to take migration patterns and endangered habitats into account. But even if wind turbines were to double in size and provide 100 percent of our energy needs (both of which defy the laws of physics as we currently understand them), they still wouldn’t compare to the modern scourges of high-tension power lines or buildings with glass windows. Not even close.

Wind turbines can be noisy and they periodically kill some birds. We should be careful with them. But the damage they do sure strikes me as routinely overblown. It’s bad enough that we have to fight conservatives on this stuff, all of whom seem to believe that America is doomed to decay unless every toaster in the country is powered with virile, manly fossil fuels. But when environmentalists join the cause with trumped-up wildlife fears, it just makes things worse. Enough.

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Chart of the Day: Wind Turbines Don’t Kill Very Many Birds

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Chart of the Day: Republicans Stick Together No Matter What Kind of District They Represent

by HalleyR55yl Posted on March 23, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s an interesting chart from Ryan O’Donnell. It shows voting patterns for members of Congress based on what kind of district they represent. Among Democrats, as you’d expect, their voting records become more progressive as their districts become more strongly Democratic (blue line). What’s more, there’s a sharp break at zero. When a district becomes even slightly majority-Democratic, voting records become sharply more progressive.

But you see nothing of the kind among Republicans. The red line is nearly flat. There’s virtually no difference in their voting records regardless of how strongly Republican their district is. Even when they represent moderately Democratic districts, it doesn’t matter. They still vote monolithically conservative.

Now, it’s possible that this is merely an artifact of Republicans being the out-of-power party. When you’re faced with a president of the opposite party, maybe it’s just easier to maintain a united front of obstruction. Someone could shed some light on this by creating a similar chart for 2001-06, when it was House Democrats who were facing a president of the opposite party.

But I suspect that’s not it. Or at least, not the whole story. Modern Republicans are both more cohesive and more ideological than Democrats (virtually none have a progressive score above 20, while lots of Democrats have scores below 80). Nor do they pay a price for this. Voters in pinkish districts don’t seem to mind electing members of Congress with strongly red voting records. I guess they figure that as long as they vote against higher taxes, it doesn’t much matter if they waste time on lots of symbolic sops to the tea party.

Could Democrats in light bluish districts act the same way? They sure don’t seem to think so. Comments?

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Chart of the Day: Republicans Stick Together No Matter What Kind of District They Represent

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