The result was wildly iconoclastic: released at the height of the cold war, not long after the Cuban missile crisis, before the escalation in Vietnam, “Dr. Strangelove” dared to suggest – with yucks! – that our top generals might be bonkers and that our well-designed system for preserving the peace was in fact a doomsday machine.
What few people knew, at the time and since, was just how accurate this film was. Its premise, plotline, some of the dialogue, even its wildest characters eerily resembled the policies, debates and military leaders of the day. The audience had almost no way of detecting these similiarities:Nearly everything about the bomb was shrouded in secrecy back then. There was no Freedom of Information Act and little investigative reporting on the subject. It was easy to laugh off “Dr. Strangelove” as a comic book.
Daily Archives: October 11, 2004
A Nader View from Luck, WI
Jonathan Finer checks in with Anathoth, a nine voting member pacifist commune in Luck, WI. This group supported Ralph Nader four years ago, but has evidently changed their position this time. [Map]
San Francisco Outdoor Smoking Ban?
Tara Siler on San Francisco’s plans to ban outdoor smoking (audio).
Revolution at the Water Cooler: Corinne Maier
Maier herself has withstood her share of boring meetings. But she did something about it. She wrote a 112-page manifesto titled “Hello, Laziness: Of the Art and Necessity of Doing the Least Possible in Business.”
And France reeled.
Maier’s satiric book, which denounces corporate culture as rigid, empty-headed, avaricious and ruthless, has zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists here, selling more than 120,000 copies at last count. In urging office workers to smile and look busy while sabotaging the system from within, she has ignited a national debate about the French work ethic ? or lack thereof.
“What you do ultimately means nothing and you could be replaced tomorrow by the first passing cretin,” Maier writes. “So work as little as possible, and spend some time (but not too much) on ‘marketing yourself’ and ‘building yourself a network’ so you will have support and be untouchable (and untouched) in case of a restructuring.”
Maier is a part time employee with EDF: Electricite de France.
Goodbye Lenin
Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin is one of the better films I’ve seen recently. Netflix