Don’t know what to think of this, as someone born a bit earlier.
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They did the same thing as another author you posted about, where they spend a lot of time showing Gen X has no central generational narrative… and then spend a lot of time doing cultural references we’re all supposed to share. If never heard of some of the ones at the end.
And shit, hate to break it to people, but not everyone jumped onto the Nirvana/grunge bandwagon. Especially if we’d already been listening to punk/post-punk – Nirvana seemed too industry produced, too mainstream.
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Agreed. I’d say that while culture can be a shared experience, political and social events are likely more important here - for older gen xers, watergate, but for all of us, the aids crisis, Reagan/Thatcher, homeless crisis, the rise of new cold war tensions as detente fell apart, renewed fears over nuclear war, the end of the cold war, the first gulf war, etc. No matter how you felt about these events, we all experienced some or all of them, and they shaped the political and economic landscape that we lived within.
Right? But some of that is generational within generations. If you were older and already into punk/post punk, Nirvana, etc, seemed too mainstream, but if you were younger, it likely opened up new musical vistas for you into underground music. It also allowed more underground music to spread to people who didn’t have access to college radio or zines readily by not living in or around a major urban center.
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Try being a Boomer who never liked the Beatles!
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I’m currently writing my own think piece on gen x think pieces, and that’s a point I make, that many boomers point to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan as important to them, but many other boomers would point to different events as constitutive for a boomer identity…
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For me, it was the Muppets and comedians like Alan King, Jackie Vernon, etc.
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I would definitely agree with Ed Sullivan, though. He brought all sorts of acts on his show, all genres, respected everyone equally…I don’t think he’s been recognized enough for what he did.
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No doubt. I was talking more about how the Beatle’s appearance on Ed Sullivan was a boomer cultural watershed. As you note, not everyone was a Beatle’s fan.
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On the subject of Boomers…
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Interesting. I’ve seen other articles with headlines like this. Seems to me “the mistakes of the past” include those done by far more people than just those born between 1946 and 1964. And to neglect to differentiate between those who created and then voted for these policies and those who have opposed them is rather stupid. The blame rests more with a dimension orthogonal to age – i.e., conservatives. IMO.
BTW the writer is with the Institute for Family Studies, which seems to be yet another right wing “think” tank.
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That just makes it MORE baffling, you know? You’d think the article would say that Boomers were the last generation to care about the country, or something like that.
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Indeed, it didn’t seem to have purely conservative stance, which I guess is a good start!
I suspected you put this here as kind of a “WTF?” moment.
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And the article suggests other reasons besides “the boomers did it”-- e.g. informal segregation replacing formal segregation.
But the interlocking increases in cost of living, cost of getting a job, and incarceration are important regardless.
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The generation that spawned those filthy hippies? [Clutches pearls and swoons]
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Bullshit scapegoats are par for rich bigots. Remember Henry Ford and the Protocols, and his funding of the Nazis.
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Sure, if you measured injuries/deaths per hour instead of per mile, then the relative difference in safety of travel by plane versus by car would shrink, but that’s because planes travel so much faster.
But I’m not sure how risk of injury factors into the decision making process in your flightless example. The implication (question?) seems to be that people would choose different destinations, rather than different modes of transportation, based on travel time, regardless of safety.
If they had the same amount of time to spend traveling, why wouldn’t they just go where they want to go?
I feel like I’m totally not getting your point, but I can’t quite figure out what I’m missing. 
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Imagine the wide-open spaces of the Indian ocean.
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I interpret travel safety in terms of whether I can get there and back, and get there and back without getting injured or killed or chased by dogs.
There and back is a fixed distance.
It’s not a fixed time. If I’m badly injured and can only walk half as fast, it’s not going to be half as far.
If you’re doing long-duration space missions, I guess that’s a fixed time, where the greater distance of lower orbits is irrelevant. But otherwise…
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OK, then pick one of those other available statistics and explain how it can help me select the safest mode of transportation when I have more than one option that will get me to my destination.
As near as I can tell, you seem to be saying that if I want to go to Cleveland, for example, I could take a ninety minute flight and actually get to Cleveland, or I could get in my car and drive for ninety minutes, which won’t get me anywhere near Cleveland, but I’d technically be somewhere, so therefore driving is safer than flying because there’s no way I could die in a plane crash. Is that about it? Am I even close?
And as long as we’re concerned about cherry-picking, maybe you should have included all of my words when you quoted me and considered them in the context of both the article I posted and the topic of the thread I was participating in.
Your quote:
All of my words:
The notion that “statistically speaking, flying is the safest way to travel” is so common as to be almost cliche. Everybody “knows” it, even if they don’t know where it came from, or the actual numbers behind the statement, or even if it’s strictly true.
The article I linked to and quoted from was about the dangers of questionable maintenance practices and all the things that can and have gone wrong on flights as a result of those practices. The sharp contrast between the information I’d just presented and my regurgitation of the conventional wisdom about the safety of flying was intended to convey sarcasm deployed for comedic effect (darkly comedic, perhaps, but still: sometimes you have to choose between laughing and crying).
My expectation for the audience of this site is that even a casual reader would pick up on that and understand my meaning, which, stated plainly for the record, is that maybe flying is no longer quite as safe as we’ve previously understood it to be.
If that’s not what you took away from my post, then I sincerely apologize for the misunderstanding.
If you think that flying’s not that safe, or that people should just stay close to home and not travel, or something else entirely, then please just say so. Because, with respect, right now it feels like you’re trying to pick a fight with something I didn’t actually say for reasons I legitimately can’t fathom.
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