Erich Stauffer

Category: Pop Culture

  • How France Came to be so French: A Brief History

    “In general, when you value drinking wine and napping over a productive day at work you get farmers who hibernate over the winter and 35 hour work weeks, but specifically, the following explains how France went from leading the crusades in Europe and the Middle East to surrendering to Germany in World War II.

    Around a thousand years ago the Turks view of their Muslim religion changed from one of peace to one more militant and so they decided to take over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which was being shared peacefully between Muslims, Jews, and Christians. French nobles (wealthy members of class, much like the 17 kings of Muncie) wanted to rescue Jerusalem from the Turks so they formed the Templars, rode out, and rooted the Turks (and all the other peaceful Muslims too since they were unable to tell them apart). Afterward, the Templars spent a couple of years digging under the mount (like me, that was their favorite thing to do after writing/routing Turks). Once they found King Solomon’s treasure, they headed back to France and started the banking industry. The King of France made them knights and the Pope recognized them as a state. The Knight Templars began loaning governments money and were considered the most powerful group on the planet. They invented checking accounts and insurance, but when King Phillip of France got behind on his bills, he needed to get rid of the Templars. The only way to do this was for the Pope to disband them. The current Pope wouldn’t do it, so Phillip had that Pope killed and installed his buddy, who did. The Templars were then captured, tortured, and killed, thereby leaving France with the legacy of not having to work to pay for anything, just kill people. That’s what the French Revolution was all about.”

  • The 8-Bit Generation

    The 8-Bit Generation are those born in or around 1980 who knew a time before Nintendo, Nickelodeon, and personal computers.  Their favorite video games are The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, and Final Fantasy.  Their technology’s performance could still be influenced by blowing harder on the controller or by demagnetizing the tape deck before use.  If you said, “I don’t know,” you were likely to get slime dumped on your head.  In 1986 Double Dare debuted and the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up.  We knew technology could fail us and that we were all still human after all, but we all still had land lines and it was expensive to call long distance.  900 numbers ruled late night television when Nick at Night was still playing My Three Sons.  Nowadays it plays past episodes of Full House, the same show that played when the 8-Bit Generation was in elementary school.

    Some elementary schools had Apple II’s, but by the time they got to middle school, public schools had begun buying personal computers (PCs) running DOS and the first versions of Microsoft Office.  By high school they would have PCs running Windows 95 and the Internet.  They would be the last generation to grow up without having the Internet their entire high school career and the last generation to not have cell phones in the class room.  The closest any of the 8-bit generation had to a cell phone in high school was a beeper because most cell phone’s batteries were so large you could only use them in your car.  Most Internet connections at home were dial-up and AOL ruled the land with it’s floppy disks.  The first CD-R drives cost $400, more than some computers cost today.

    The 8-Bit Generation went to college in the middle of the Dot Com Crash and 9/11.  They graduated with less hope of finding a job than their immediate predecessors, Generation X.  They still dressed like they did in high school.  They think a Polo over a t-shirt and some stone-washed jeans is cool and if you swap the pants for some khakis and add a sweater they’re dressed up.  They believe white shoes are for dorks and prefer leather shoes like Dockers or Doc Marten’s.  They think of Angelina Jolie more of a Hacker than of Salt. They believe the future is possible and that it is here.  They don’t want to work, but they will.  Not everything was handed to them, but they did have it easier than their parents, but their children may not.  Those children, the sons and daughters of the 8-Bit Generation are now in kindergarten and elementary school.  They are using iPhones and iPads to communicate and play games.  They’ve never known anything other than always-on broadband Internet, streaming movies, video games on cell phones, and text messaging (they don’t even know or care what AOL is).  They are the 64-Bit Generation.

    Other Signs that the 8-Bit Generation is Now Running the Show

    This year (2010) we’ve seen Toyota recall vehicles for sticky accelerators and engines that randomly stop.  We’ve seen cereal from Kellog’s and medicine from Johnson and Johnson recalled for weird smells and tastes. And we’ve seen a steady stream of just downright bad-for-you stuff from China including cadmium-covered glasses at McDonalds.  All signs point to the Nintendo generation being in charge of quality control.  With their “80% is good enough” mentality, most of the stuff we drive, eat, and drink out of is good alright, but it’s that last 20% that is questionable.  Is this a sign of things to come?  What happens when the 8-bit generation takes over the power grid, the water system, and air traffic controls? I guess having power for 80% of the day is better than Baghdad, and that’s good enough for me.

  • Newspaper Delivery

    Top 5 Reasons People State as Reason for Stopping the Paper:

    5. I can’t afford it.
    4. I don’t read the paper in the summer.
    3. I don’t have time to read it.
    2. Paper quality.
    1. I never ordered the paper.

    Top 5 Estimated Reasons Why Someone Would Order the Paper:

    5. Coupons.
    4. TV listings.
    3. Local sports coverage.
    2. Delivery service.
    1. View their name in print.

    Top 5 Estimated Actual Reasons Why Someone Stops the Paper:

    5. They realize everything in the paper is also on the Internet.
    4. The coupons are all for things they don’t really want to buy.
    3. It increases the amount of garbage they have to take out.
    2. The writing is Bush League.
    1. They have yet to see their name or anyone elses name they know in print.

  • Why you should get LOST

    As someone who is laughably prone to hyperbole, it may may seem inconsequential that I laud it as the greatest television show of all time.  You may be asking yourself: “What is so great about it?” or “How can a modern show compare to TV classics from other eras?” or “What kind of a weirdo, fanatical, booger eating, sci-fi dork would care so much about a TV show?”

    These are all fair questions.  I am not sure if I will be able to suitably answer any of them for you (but I don’t eat my boogers, by the way).  It is my hope that this article piques your interest enough to watch the first episode for free online on hulu.com.  If you are not engrossed in the tale of Flight 815 after 8 episodes, then I ask your forgiveness for presuming your interest in the fields philosophy and sociology.  If you find your mind and heart constantly returning to the question of “What is the meaning of life?”, then prepare yourself for a vivid, elaborate, amplified discussion of that very question that IS the show:  LOST.

    What the uninitiated know or (don’t know) about the show varies.  I will presume that you know (or consequentially, inform you of) that

    If something on the show leads you to believe what you are watching is “unrealistic”, take comfort in the fact that you are experiencing a vivid, detailed, highly personal metaphor.  The line between fiction and science fiction is fine, but don’t let crossing it ruin the truth is being illustrated for you within the framework of the show.

  • LOST Recap – Pilot

    The most expensive pilot in television history sets the stage for one of the greatest serialized story lines in any medium.  This article is written with the knowledge of the first five seasons of LOST under my belt.  The mosaic has not been revealed completely, but enough has transpired to produce a sense of nostalgia in me while watching this episode.  Partly because of the production value, and partly because of the timeless locale, the show doesn’t feel five years old.  While some things, like hyper-color t-shirts, don’t age well, it’s a good sign that LOST will.

    One challenge of an ensemble show is to find the balance between individual character development with keeping the audience interested in the fate of the whole group.  With flashback being an integral part of the LOST storytelling process, the pilot episode starts in the middle, with Jack lying in the jungle, seemingly unaware of how he got there.  Soon enough, he emerges from the jungle and sees the wreckage of the plane he was just riding on.  We soon see a flashback with Jack on the plane, having a strong drink just before the turbulence hits.  With his future alcohol struggles, it almost feels like an Easter egg to see Jack drinking just before being brought to the island.

    Charlie is right in the throws of heroin addiction, and it is quickly apparent.  He’s a likable character, but it would be hard to tell if it is his drugs that make him so.  The actor, Dominic Monaghan, was just coming off of a journey through middle earth with the rest of the Hobbits in Return of the King, so there were a fair amount of LOTR fans who tuned in out of a quasi-loyalty to the Trilogy.  Charlie sets up the end title frame perfectly when he asks the group:  “Where are we?”

    LOST

    It’s great to see how quickly Kate and Jack connect with each other based on her finding him in need of a make-shift surgeon.  You wonder if this shared moment is what set the trajectory of their relationship.  What if another attractive female from the plane happened to stumble upon Jack at that time?

  • LOST

    Last night the show that started on September 22, 2004, nearly 8 months after the birth of my first child, ended it’s run with a finale that is sure to be heralded as one of the top last-episodes of all time. My oldest daughter is now 6, but it’s unclear exactly when she outlived the characters on the show as it was made “clear” in the last 10 minutes of the 2 and a half hour show that the cast in the sideways flashes were actually all dead. There was some slight clarification that the flash sideways were actually flash forwards to the afterlife, the most concrete being Jin and Sun’s remembrance of their death and Hugo and Ben’s references to being good number 1s and 2s respectively. Regarding the flash sideways/forward, what was the point of having such an intricate, separate life with the new and failed relationships, including children? And regarding Christian Shepard’s image, I though he was determined to be the smoke monster? The smoke monster can’t leave the island (Christian appeared to Jack at the hospital after he was rescued by Penny’s boat) and the smoke monster would not have sent the dog to wake Jack up as seen in the web additions on abc.com. Considering all of these facts, I am going to propose three scenarios, all of which could be true:

    1. They all died in the very beginning in the initial plane crash and their collective conscious created the island and their new realities.
    2. They all died in the nuclear blast.
    3. They all died in the island-reality and the other reality (the flash sideways) occurred after the island-reality, not at the same time.

    But how do you fix the problem with the island being underwater during the flash sideways? The only thing that would help this is that the island eventually does get destroyed in the future (either with Hugo or after Hugo). It falls under water. Everyone on earth dies and so everyone is in this alternative reality, where they are all dead, and then they remember each other, and then they meetup and the “Christian Shepard” opens the door to the light and fade to white.

  • The Video Store Experiment

    This is a guest post by Zac Parsons. Enjoy. – Erich

    On July 4th, 2009, right in the swing of our Great Recession, I officially took a part-time position as a Customer Service Representative with my local video store. As a consultant for services that are not tangible and not immediately reflected on the bottom line, the waiting list for my attention and concern was at zero. I found myself able to complete my tasks, make new contacts, write a few articles, and still have disposable time throughout each day. But these duties were not impacting my bottom line in the way that I wanted them to, either. I decided that it was time to go back to a mode of making income that helped me in my youth: hourly pay to provide a low-skill service.

    To my surprise, my first task was not to wait on customers, familiarize myself with the DVD shelves, or even learn the computer system. Rather, it was to mow the grass outside. While setting up the lawnmower, a piece slipped and pinched my thumbnail hard enough to leave a mark. It was the kind that I immediately knew would either cause my thumbnail to fall off, or would simply remain unsightly until new tissue grew to replace the damaged area over the next several weeks.

    As I started to mow the grass, I thought: This is kind of cool! I do this at my own house every week, and now I get to do it while “on the clock”. After a couple of hours, I was finished. As I drove home, I thought: “I can do this. This is just something that will get me by while I’m building up my consulting business. Maybe I can meet some interesting people while I’m working and turn that into an opportunity for business.” It turned out that I was only half right.

  • The eReader Revolution

    How eReaders (also written e-Readers), which are digital readers for eBooks (also written e-Books) have taken over the tech news and gadget landscape? From Amazon’s Kindle™ which was first released on November 19, 2007 to Barnes and Noble’s nook™ which was first released November 30, 2009 to Apple’s iPad which was released April 3, 2010, there clearly is a revolution going on in how books are read, purchased, stored, and shared.

    The first chart shows the dramatic rise in news articles related to ereaders starting in 2009. This chart also highlights the differences in spelling of the different terms for ebook readers. While there is no official way of spelling it (both ereader and e-reader are acceptable), Google Trends clearly shows that “ereader” is used more often or is more popular. In general I think that if hyphens can be avoided, they will be, just as in “e-mail” is more often written as “email.”

    The second chart shows the steady rise of Amazon’s Kindle, followed by the nearly identical rise of Barnes and Noble’s Nook an Sony’s Reader. Other ebook readers like the Que and Alex don’t yet register in comparison to the traffic of these other major players, but if you compare Apple’s iPad against this chart, it makes the Kindle look pathetic in comparison.

    Now these are mostly news trends and not necessarily a reflection of popularity or quality, but it does highlight a tipping point in the use of ebook readers that happened at the end of 2009, about a year after the market crash in 2008. Despite a recession and a bad world-wide economic situation, consumers have still went out and purchased not just ebooks and ereaders, but e-reader accessories, which can sometimes equal or cost more than the ereader itself. Nook covers, for example, average around $25 each.

    How about you? Do you own an ereader or plan on purchasing one in 2010? Answer in the comments below.

  • Phone Number Rhythm

    Most everyone knows how to say a phone number: you say it in sections, area code, prefix, then the number (sometimes called the “line number”). Kevin James if famous for the phone number rhythm, “Bum bum bum, bum bum, bum bum.”

    Anyway, I thought of him when I saw this sign in Elwood, Indiana: Home for Sale, but see if you can figure out what the actual phone number is.

    Phone Number Rythm