Word: badger
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...Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad romances his gypsy cart until he is transformed by the sight of that splendid innovation, the motorcar. The gypsy cart is forgotten--is junk. We are all Toad. We need the sobering voice of Mr. Badger to talk us down from our manias...
Overstimulation, hypergreed and a kind of idiocy--those three stooges--have a way of tumbling into the room along with technological progress, which gives them respectability and theological cover. Mr. Badger, Toad's killjoy twin, makes these points: 1) each transformative moment will be superseded by another one, tomorrow or the next day--all marvels are disposable; 2) innovations are not always wonderful; 3) the world is round and time is circular; human nature is constant, but 4) may be damaged--or what is worse, humiliated--by novelties, which (like '70s neckties or television in any decade) may have about...
...that Mr. Badger is a Luddite. He merely points out that technology has a mixed record. CB radio was a Toad mania long ago. Technology is sometimes, in the end, a little stupid--as anything must be that was brilliant yesterday but was surpassed overnight--a monster that lives on a hungry, dynamic need for its own obsolescence. The universe of Gutenberg should no more be an abandoned graveyard than, say, the American city, which, a generation after World War II, seemed to be in decline and headed toward extinction. Why did we need the cities when...
...heads the factory. Catalina, he says, tries to stay ahead of Chiqui Cui's relentless price demands by coming up with more sophisticated designs for which it could charge slightly more. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart allows only a month between its orders and delivery time, so Sng has to badger suppliers to deliver promptly. It's tough, but Catalina knows that in today's China, it's not too smart to push back hard against the retail giant's demands. "This is the real world," Sng says. "If we don't do this business, someone else will...
DIED. VERNE MEISNER, 66, Wisconsin's polka king, known for his melodic Slovenian, or Cleveland-style, sound; of melanoma; in Milwaukee. In the Badger State, where polka is the official dance, Meisner started performing at age 11, gaining fans at taverns and festivals with a boost from a local disc jockey, Fritz the Plumber. Meisner recorded dozens of albums and wrote 60 songs, including the hit Memories of Vienna...