Measuring nuclear yield depends on multiple parameters - the location and number of instruments, the geology of the area, the location of the seismic station in relation to the test site.
To a generation beaten down by skyrocketing unemployment, plunging retirement savings, and mounting home foreclosures, 'Mad Men' offers the schadenfreude-filled message that their predecessors were equally unhappy - and that the bleakness meter in American life has always been set on high.
This house I grew up in was built in the 1800s, and the back yard was like a cemetery. Naturally, I grew up in an environment where ghosts and supernatural things were very unnerving to me, because my brothers and I dealt with it on a daily basis.
There's only one barometer for the commercial success of a film and that's the box office. The obsession with box office doesn't annoy me. It's the main part of the business, if you get irritated with the main part then you're in trouble.
It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.
If we could support school curricula about social class, we might discuss the full complexity of 'wealth' within the parameters of our children's educational lives. Out of these lesson plans, we might talk more about what society values - and whether it rewards the right things.
Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
All along, I did what I was comfortable doing, which was to play the music I enjoyed and try to stretch the parameters a bit. Country and bluegrass and folk were my foundation.
