Oh man. Professional photographers are *hurting* right now. Stock photo companies, which used to be the failsafe financial backstop for a lot of photographers, are buying and paying less and less because they're able to get so much content either for free (flickr) or for almost free (amateur photographers with nearly professional cameras). Sinking funds into a photography business is not a good career move.
In the mid2000s, I knew many women (but only women) becoming real estate agents. A common pattern was that she was an engineer, married to another engineer, and they were doing great financially, and so she quit to do something she enjoyed more. A second pattern was the stay-at-home-mom who wanted a flexible way to earn money.
I recall being somewhat bemused by the storylines about this in The Simpsons and American Dad. In the UK, estate agency is a) an overwhelmingly male dominated profession, and b) generally considered to be disreputable. There's a regular public trust survey in the UK and estate agents are the only professionals that come out worse than journalists.
Yeah, if there's really a wave of people thinking they can make money as freelance photographers, that's not going to work out well for them.
My aunt went into real estate for those same reasons (stay-at-home-mom wanting money and needing flexible hours), except this was in the 80s. I think she did it for years.
Anecdotally, there definitely seems to be a wave. Doing friends' of friends' weddings and baby pictures, that sort of thing.
From my wife, I hear of several women starting baby photography businesses. If they have the ability to make a baby smile and a toddler sit still for five seconds, they'll probably do O.K.
AFAIK, it's a very feminized profession in the US, and not particularly thought of as shady.
I guess if I were to make a substantial point (and who wants that?) it's that there's a gigantic hunger for parttime work with flexible hours, and that if employers would take advantage of that, they'd have legions of smart, hardworking people available.
This is true. But this is a hard period for anyone looking for work from a perspective other than total surrender to the desires of the employer. We have a woman in my office who graduated from law school two years ago in May, and has been working here unpaid since that fall. And she's very competent, from a very decent if not absolutely first rank law school, and there's nothing. (I have some new hope for her -- she's senior enough now, with enough experience, that legal recruiters will talk to her, which they wouldn't for someone fresh out of school. Hopefully that will change things.)
I'm horrified and guilty every time I think about her, and all the people out there in even worse positions.
7.1 to real estate, not photography.
Or at least, they stand a chance of doing O.K.
8: I think of real estate as shady. Less shady than cars sales (which is a very unfeminized profession), but still shady.
It seems the void is being filled by freelance photography
Yes. I know two women on my street who do this.
Managing part-timers is awful-- meetings are difficult to schedule, questions can't be answered when they come up, but need to be logged instead. For skilled work, IMO this is more serious than the benefits/office space overheads.
It's possible to be a really marginal real estate agent, in the sense of selling very few properties in a year. I don't understand how the employers' threshold for the existence of such marginal agents is defined; the agents certainly couldn't compete with cheap access by buyers and sellers to MLS listings.
I knew a bunch of rave promoters who got their real estate agent licenses in the aughts. No idea what they've moved on to.
12.2: I don't think many successful agents are working part time. I think they are working flexible hours. People often want to see houses after work and on weekends. Dad is home with the kids. Other stuff could be handled when the kids are at school for 3/4th of the year and when you can get baby sitting in the summer.
I agree with JM. Professional photographers are hurting now. In my area, there are a ton of women who have bought a camera and are doing wedding and family photography.
It is simple!
Just copy the poses that you have seen the professionals use!
Although some of the injury to professional photographers is due to the great cameras that non-professionals now own, the stay-at-home moms are doing it almost for free since they often do not have a business license, are operating out of their homes, and sign up all the neighborhood families.
Plus, good professional photography is expensive!
See also: selling Southern Living wares and other gimics to "make lots of money while staying at home with the kids!"
16: You still need to hire photographers to get "evidence" or are those days past?
14: no, that overlapped with the real estate.
Isn't "have an eBay and/or etsy store" the canonical path to "make lots of money sitting at home!" for women now?
The family pictures we've had taken by professional photographers generally aren't as good as the ones my wife takes.* And it's hella expensive. I'm not sure we'll pay for professional photographs again.
* On average the professional photos are probably better, but not by much, and by taking many more photographs she's usually to get a full set of uniformly better ones.
19: I suppose if you have keys to empty houses, you've solved a major logistical hurdle.
18. Shady phone company employees will sell the call history of any mobile number. I don't understand why there have not been political scandals stemming from this.
The very good professional photographer we know is doing website design, because he can't make money on photography anymore. This isn't evidence of much of anything, because he's also an erratic nutcase. Excellent photographer, as far as I can tell -- I've talked about him here before as the only person who's ever taken a picture of me I didn't hate.
23: You can't get that stuff admitted in court, can you?
Decent book on branding pointed out that success on etsy leaves you doing piecework that you can't automate or farm out, just the sort of thing women wanted to get to factory work to get away from.
AFAIK, it's a very feminized profession in the US, and not particularly thought of as shady.
I suspect these two facts might be related. There's something of a chicken and egg situation operating over here. Are estate agents generally wideboys because its an inherently dodgy business (it's sales, playing both sides off each other, pitting prospective buyers/tenants against each other), or has it become a dodgy business because it's generally done by wideboys?
In New York City, at least, real estate agents are fucking barracudas, when they're not just slimemold. Maybe in the suburbs where living expenses are lower, they can afford decency.
I would think baby photography wouldn't require any special skills since social norms require that, no matter what it looks like, you shriek "S/HE'S SO BEAUTIFUL!" when shown a baby picture.
I'm not sure how you shriek the "/".
What's a "wideboy"? Is that like a spiv?
Yeah, I shouldn't really have said that they weren't shady. All the inherent dodginess is there. Just that it doesn't read to me as a profession where you'd expect to find people who were otherwise crooked -- it's not shady in the sense of criminally connected.
But barracuda does sum up what I'd think of an even moderately successful RE agent.
FWIW, as far as I know, almost no-one makes money as a freelance photographer these days without serious chops, and a lot of luck. It just isn't a hobby business. Basically what jackmormon says on 1.
There is money in wedding and commercial portrait stuff -- families, babies, corporates, etc -- but even that, you really need to be good and the investment in gear is _substantial_. If you are shooting weddings and don't have multiple backups of all of your kit, then you are taking the piss.
re: 21
Well, yeah. In a previous thread I've mentioned that the best of the photos I took at a friend's wedding were better than the pro photographs; but I didn't have to worry about getting all the key 'shots', or making everyone happy, or corralling guests, or doing all of the shit that pros have to do. I could just wander about snapping what I fancied and if everything didn't turn out, no big deal. Pro photographers have to get it right, every time.
That said, there are a lot of shit professionals about, too.
27 is the first time I've seen "wideboy" used in conversation. My only prior encounter with the word was via Nik Kershaw.
I suspect that the answer to the question is the former - real estate is inherently about making moves and working angles.
A wideboy is basically a spiv, yeah. You might also hear 'wide-o' as a Scottish abbreviation of the same.
32. Yeah, nobody expects most estate agents to be actually criminal, it's more that they're bracketted with used car dealers - a good spiel more important than a good product. Not a job you'd brag about if you were hoping for a second date.
re: 30
You might think, but I'm consistently impressed by how good pro 'family' photographers can be. It's one of those things where people think they can do it only because they don't really have much exposure to good family photography. IMHO, of course.
re: 36
Yes. Some chavs might be wide, but not necessarily.
25. No, you can't, but for divorce cases, the value of admissible proof of infidelity is much lower than it used to be because of irreconcilable diffs and no-fault states. For politicians, the press is the relevant venue.
slimemold very interesting organisms, the best studied is Dictyostelium, a marginal multicellular organism (marginal in the sense of being a loose confederation of single-celled organisms in its reproductive stage; only some of these actually produce spores). There's an accessible book, The Social Amoebae.
What's a "wideboy"? Is that like a spiv?
Pretty much. I'd argue they're not exactly synonymous. Spiv has more criminal connotations for me. More of a fence than a wheeler dealer. But there's a lot of overlap. Basically the archetypal wideboy is Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses. Alternatively, this lovely chap who has been gracing the Underground recently.
I appear to have f'd up the link. Try this.
Wait, what about cads and bounders? Are they related to spivs by blood or marriage (i.e., to plungers)?
I have a bullshit amateur sociological theory I toy with sometimes about the difference between 'wide' and 'non-wide' cultures. But yeah, as G.Y. says, it's not entirely synonymous.
Someone always looking for the main chance could be 'wide' without being a spiv.
re: 42
Different again. British English is like Yiddish -- it has a very developed folk-taxonomy of arseholes.
I have a bullshit amateur sociological theory I toy with sometimes about the difference between 'wide' and 'non-wide' cultures.
Please elaborate.
44: Divided by a common language, indeed.
I think spivs were originally wartime black marketeers. Chavs are simply lumpenproletariat, mostly harmless. Cads and bounders are upper class, or passing themselves off as such.
Cads and bounders would tend to be upper class. While spivs and wideboys would be working class or lower middle, generally. Plus caddism/bounderism is more about personal ethics than professional MO.
48: If I recall the footnotes in the Flashman novels correctly, "cads" were originally omnibus conductors in Victorian, notorious for profanity.
Shady phone company employees will sell the call history of any mobile number. I don't understand why there have not been political scandals stemming from this.
There have been in the UK, thanks to the delightful professional ethics of our tabloid papers. See also - medical histories, criminal records, status of investigations (unlike the US, information on this is supposedly very tightly controlled to prevent prejudicing a trial - in practice the police leak things furiously either for financial gain or to make themselves look better).
I believe my great-grandmother was one of the first real estate agents in Massachusetts.
48. Very likely. By the end of the c19, they were men who didn't honour their social or financial obligations like gentlemen. Bounders is a bit more all encompassing. I think it includes cads, but all sorts of other undesirables.
re: 45
Well, in certain groups/places a certain level of 'wide' behaviour is the norm. Everyone expects that rules are there to be broken, and only wankers pay full price. Queuing is for idiots, etc etc. Whereas in other places the culture is broadly non-wide. London, in my bullshit model, is one of the 'wider' of UK cities. It's why northerners and Scots always want to hit people here. It's because their environment of origin is largely 'non-wide' and they experience instances of 'wide-ism' as a personal affront. Certain trades are 'wide', also.
The danger of sliding into some sort of 'exile.ru diagram of Europe'/Dacreist ethnic essentialism is very present, here, of course.
55. c17. She was selling vacant lots around Boston harbour without the owners' permission.
53: So a bounder is like a blighter.
"Cad" did mean omnibus conductors, but the OED believes the "bounder" meaning comes from Eton, Oxford, etc.,. where it was used for locals who hung around to provide the students with "anything necessary to assist their sports" (from "cadet," some parallel with "caddy"), and then more generally as a derogatory term similar to our "townie."
54: "FUCK DACRE! PUBLISH!"
So a bounder is like a blighter.
I don't recall Snoopy, as the WWI flying ace, ever ruminating on "the poor bounders in the trenches."
61. Well, in that context the poor blighters were a euphemism for poor buggers, who were being fmucked around by the blruddy generals.
I have a bullshit amateur sociological theory I toy with sometimes about the difference between 'wide' and 'non-wide' cultures
In which context I'd note that in Liverpool, such a character would be called a "head-worker" and admired for his prowess.
Oh dear. I know two more women pondering professional photography. This isn't going to work out for all of them. My parents were restrictive with us in ways that surprise most Westerners, but I have to say that their model (get yourself a nice engineering job and do fulfilling things on the side) has achieved the security they were hoping we'd have.
re: 63
Heh. In Scotland someone like that might be described as a 'fly man'. With one sense of 'fly' being roughly cognate with 'wide', as you'd expect.
re: photography, David Bailey always says that he loves the fact that digital cameras have made the technical aspect of photography easier; as it just emphasizes that the reason he's a good photographer and 99.99% of people aren't has nothing to do with either i) owning the right camera, or ii) knowing how to work it.
Lots of people think they can do it because they own gear that shortens the technical side of the learning curve. I'd bet 99% of the people who think that can turn pro haven't even given a moment's thought to things like lighting design, which are the meat and potatoes of working photographers work.
I love a properly lit plate of hash browns.
I have to say that their model (get yourself a nice engineering job and do fulfilling things on the side) has achieved the security they were hoping we'd have.
Particularly if you can get them to agree to four-day weeks.
The real problem is that most of the well paying, secure, non-soul destroying, non-tournament jobs aren't known for having flexible hours.
If that isn't true and there are jobs out there that consistently fit that description let me know so I can feel badly about not having gone into one of them.
The real problem is that most of the well paying, secure, non-soul destroying, non-tournament jobs aren't known for having flexible hours.
I was going to suggest squire but you had to specify "non-tournament", didn't you?
Gov. Schwarzenegger forced me to have four-day weeks, no matter how I protested that I didn't want to be thrown into that briar patch.
I was trying to exclude "tenured academic" (at a well funded institution) which does seem like a good job if you can get it.
70: I'm still jealous.
Though, really, the hours and flexibility at my current job are quite nice. But "contract computer programmer" doesn't generally have the same job security as "engineer".
I know! People around the office bitched about it at first and I couldn't make any sense of the words they said.
(The admin folks had my sympathy, because I got the feeling they were living on their full paychecks and felt a 15% drop in pay. The engineering staff, though, were speaking gibberish as far as my ears could make out. I was sympathetic to professors too, because that situation has third party hostages who would feel the brunt of the cutback if the professors didn't absorb it.)
"Living on your full paycheck" is pretty common, regardless of the income level.
My mother recently suggested in an email that it's not too late to become an engineer, so there's that to consider.
Yes, especially as people round here turned their paychecks directly into housing.
At my ag engineering school, there were always more jobs posted on the job board than there were students in the program. It was only a two-year masters, in a gorgeous coastal California college town. Just saying. (This was not the program that left me crying over my plate during recruiting weekends.)
re: 74
In fact, I'd guess that quite a high percentage of people are living on over 100% of their paycheck.
"Living on your full paycheck" is pretty common, regardless of the income level.
Gah, I'm in an uncomfortable spot with a roommate who's living, basically, beyond her means. On my dime. In paying the March bills yesterday, I realized she still hasn't covered January's rent/utilities (which I paid in full back in, well, January).
I need to sit down and level with her, but, god, what an awkward conversation. "Um, hai. I'm your friend, not your bank. Please behave like an adult."
79. Fuck that shit. That exact situation led to the worst falling out I ever had with anybody. Nip it in the bud, it's best for you both.
80: Not the *worst* falling out I ever had, but definitely a massive one. I do not miss having roommates at all.
79: I had a lousy moment back in college like that, when I was sharing an apartment with three other students. Through no merit of my own (my parents were giving me money for rent), I always had the money for the rent in a timely fashion, and paid my share to the roommate whose name was actually on the lease at the beginning of each month. She and the other roommates were scrambling, and so ended up paying the rent later and later, until it was actually going out over a month late. Eventually, I would have, e.g., paid my February rent back in February, while everyone else was paying theirs in late March or April.
The roommate with her name on the lease lost track of the fact that I was a month out of sync with everyone else, and in March, asked me to pay my February rent, and to try to pay the March rent earlier this time so we could catch up. And I had to dig out old checks to show that I'd already given her the February rent a month ago. It was terribly embarrassing.
Yes, that's an odd dynamic. I've been in situations where people who would never think to ask me for a several hundred dollar loan are willing to let rent paid to me fall behind. It is the same!
81: Kids are the worst roommates of all. Not only do they not pay their share, they even have the nerve to expect you to buy them stuff.
My roommate's situation has the added frisson of her having undergone a rather expensive medical emergency back in the Fall, all without any health coverage whatsoever, which makes me (a) sympathetic but jesusfuck come on and (b) hate America.
Ooooh. That does make it hard to be hardnosed about it. Possibly a warm and supportive conversation about "So, when are you going to be able to catch up? What's the plan here?" rather than really pulling her up short.
79: I once had somebody living on my dime. Once I stopped feeling sorry for them and thought things out clearly, the problem was easy to fix. Now she's in the circus and I spent the dime on a loose cigarette.
You should have picked up the cigarette first, and saved it, and then spent the dime on the pavement.
Do you have a better word for illegal sales of individual cigarettes?
You spent the dime on the illegal sale of individual cigarettes?
Used to be you could spend a dime for a loose cigarette, but with taxes and inflation, those days are long gone.
re: 89
Growing up some unscrupulous shops sold what, iirc, was called a 'tip single', which was a single cigarette and a match. Maybe ajay can remember what they were called in his neck of the woods.
What's the plan here?
Yeah, this is exactly what I decided on yesterday, when I realized she was still taking on water. Something like, "Look, even if it's six months from now, let's agree on a monthly amount that will get you afloat again."
Used to be you could spend a dime for a loose cigarette
Even buying by the carton, individual cigarettes cost way more than a dime.
94: And that's here in the Land of Cheap Tobacco, no less.
I think I might kinda enjoy an entertaining freeloader living in my guest room.
I might just be available to take on that role, Rob!
94: That's why I said "used to be." A pack was less than $2 when I started.
when I realized she was still taking on water.
Did the doctor forget to seal the incision?
Yeah, I was just doing the math. At ~$5/pack now, that's a quarter per, so maybe 50 cents loose? Wow, now I feel much guiltier about bumming them.
Heh, a pack is about $10 here.
Handrolled works out to about a dime a smoke in the US.
A tin of Copenhagen lasted me about three or four days and cost less than a pack of cigarettes that wouldn't last me an entire day. Doesn't help your gums much, though.
102: Would be about $10 in New York as well, since their cigarette tax is almost 10x what it is here in Tobaccoland.
Haven't read most of the comments, and have no insight into the broader state of the photographer economy. But I do happen to be seeing this just at the moment that I'm trying to hire a part-time photographer (say two to three days a week average, with some flexibility as to schedule) for a fairly long-term (in the area of two years, maybe more) project. It's fairly specialized work (art photography in a museum), so there's a premium for that. But I can tell you that there's definitely a market opening in central MA for someone will and able to do that kind of work for less than $75/hour (and all equipment provided by the institution.) Certainly, if anyone knows someone qualified, interested, and who doesn't expect to earn more on an hourly basis than the museum director, shoot me an email.
For $75/hour plus equipment, I'll steal cars.
re:106
Heh. I work with photographers who do exactly that. They are making a fuckload less than $75 an hour. Shit, I could do it, in a second. Bah at Atlantic Ocean.
Huh, I know someone in Brooklyn who does that. I'll send an email.
The person I'm hiring as a wedding photographer may be in the discussed category. She has a day job, has only been photographing for money for about a year, and does weddings and pets. But we got along well and liked her work better than the other, marginally-more-professional types we talked to.
(Have I mentioned that I really hate this business of having to suddenly be able to evaluate and select vendors in a dozen categories I've never used before and may never use again? And where most of the "reviews" of their services are from similarly inexperienced parties? It feels like a perfect recipe for getting scammed, and there's not much I can really do about it but hope I don't get too unlucky.)
evaluate and select vendors in a dozen categories
There's only one DJ question you need: do you own a playable copy of "Chicken Dance"?
Even if he or she says "Yes, but I won't play it" forget it. It's a lie.
107: Hi nosflow!
Thanks for your email, Jackmormon, I'll look into the people you mention. Brooklyn's a bit of a distance, but I need somebody.
The $75/hour quote is a discounted one, by the way. The short-term rate for someone around here doing what I want them to do would normally be around $150/hour. But since this project involves a long-term revenue stream, I've been getting offered discounts. Of course, I can't pay the discounted rate, but I appreciate the gesture.
(I'd love to hang out at Unfogged more, but since getting promoted last year I don't have much time for the internets.)
112: you can ask around to other people who've been in the same situation. Our photographer, caterer, tent and officiant were either people we knew or had worked with people we knew (who liked them). I may be offering this advice a touch tardily.
re: 112
At the risk of pointing out the obvious: I suppose you can only go on testimonials and the quality of their previous work. It's probably worth checking practical things, though, like what provision they have for backup equipment, and so on, and the terms/prices for things like prints, digital copies, and so on. I'm sure you know all that, though.
We insisted on getting the raw files from our photographers (they ordinarily only provided JPEGs). They were initially reluctant -- arguing that the files wouldn't fit on a DVD -- but when we offered to buy a hard drive for the files they realized we were serious, I guess, and quickly backed down.
re: 118
I gather, from reading material aimed at prospective wedding photographers, that generally they don't do that, as most of their income comes from print sales, and other derivatives from the raw files. Quite a few charge prices that don't really make much profit after you cover the hire of assistants, backup gear, post-processing time, insurance, and so on, and then recoup the money later from the extras.
Violating the sanctity etc. etc., I asked Heebie if the OP was a response to this. DSLRs have made certain fantasies of living* seem plausible in a way that they're really not.
* Isn't "photographer" one of those overrepresented-in-media jobs? Like, the handsome guy RomComella meets is an architecht: that means he's artsy, UMC, and has a good design aesthetic but probably isn't gay! Similar, photographer: sensitive, but kind of butch.
119: well, we told them they could wait as long as they wanted to sell prints before giving us the files, but yeah, I think that's right.
117 gets it right, but my experience was that engaging an established professional meant paying a premium just for the backup equipment, which is basically insurance, and prints/copies, which ideally can be negotiated separately. We checked out a couple of photographers who could promise the pro package but whose work was crap, and ended up having a friend offer to do it for free. Other friends have just asked invitees to bring cameras and gotten terrific results; you have no guarantees that way, but given the cost it may be worth the risk.
Around the Blume-Sifu household, "photographer" listed as a profession by [ certain bloggers ] is code for "yeah, I don't really have to work for a living."
Our wedding photographer had a policy of not giving out the negatives until five years after the wedding. Then she retired four years and six months after our wedding.
We had a friend do the pictures for free. One problem we ran into was that we didn't put enough effort planning into exactly what pictures of who posing with who we wanted, and ended up offending an underphotographed family member. I figure professional wedding photographers probably watch out for that sort of thing a little better.
Oh! The other important thing we told our photographers was "we don't want you doing a ton of retouching and color effects all over everything. We have photoshop if we need that." They still did tons of retouching, but they endeavored to make it less noticeable.
As a result of the bad feeling over the underphotographing, we've left the negatives (film!) in a locked briefcase for the last 13 years, and have never made prints. I figure on some anniversary, we'll dig them out. Or leave them there forever. One or the other.
We underphotgraphed an offending family member. To keep the anklet-mounted tracking device from being in the photos.
127: We had no photos during the ceremony, but the sound was recorded, because the music was a big deal. Ten years later, I have yet to hear the recording, which may not even exist.
"photographer" listed as a profession by [ certain bloggers ] is code for "yeah, I don't really have to work for a living."
Freelance models have a term for those photographers: "guy with camera" or even GWC. Guys with cameras offer to give you a copy of the pictures on a cd for your time.
I wonder if Buck knows the combination to the briefcase anymore, or if we'd have to cut it open?
My wedding is recorded on a VHS tape. I assume that by the time I get around to wanting to watch it some day, there won't be any easy way to do that.
My parents got married in '78, at a time when the In Thing To Do was to take two photographs and mash 'em together. As a result, they have this '70s-tastic wedding photo 8x10" that's a big shot of the whole church with them up at the altar and then a fuzzy-edged shot of them up close taking their vows or whatever.
We had no photographer. As it happened a friend turned up with his (film) slr and took some photos, so we have a dozen or so wedding pictures, and that's it. They are good, though. So that's nice.
re: 133
There was an article in this month's BJP showcasing lots of French wedding photos from the 70s and 80s using the same techniques. Not online, unfortunately [so don't know why I'm mentioning this].
A friend of mine--male--recently started doing this; I think it's been going fairly well for him. He'd been pretty serious about his photography for a long time before that, though.
They still did tons of retouching, but they endeavored to make it less noticeable.
I had a giant gash on one of my shins (we had just moved into our apartment the week before, and I'd had a run-in with the corner of the bedframe), and I wore a knee-length dress with no stockings for the wedding, so the gash is right there in all our guests' photos, very obvious. And nowhere to be found in the professional ones.
My greater concern with the retouching was that they not oversaturate the photos, as was the style a few years ago, and seemed to have bled into 'journalistic' wedding photography everywhere.
re: 137
That's so much the default these days that it's surprisingly rare to see wedding or social photography that isn't like that, leaving aside those who use film as a USP.
54: John Emerson wrote somewhere that he thought the success the nordic welfare state was that he thought most cultured were both attracted by rogueish people, whereas nordics unambiguosly despised them. He was thinking partly about politicians, cf Blair, Berlusconi, most French politicians.
I can't find the quote I want, but the last para here is fun. Is Scotland a counterexample?
John Emerson 11.10.07 at 10:18 pm
Tim, I think your best strategy would be doubt that the cheating rate is really only 4%. I don't think that the idea that 4% isn't a low rate is going to fly.
In the past I have hypothesized that some of the success of the Scandinavian welfare states is dependent on a pretty high degree of moralism, stodginess, and rule-following among the Scandinavian peoples. They wouldn't work for societies whose citizens admired twinkly-eyed rogues .
I also hypothesized that a long tradition of honest, indigenous government has something to do with it. Most European states and districts have spent long periods ruled by foreigners and wastrels. So Scandinavians could actually survive without developing cheating skills that were necessary elsewhere.
I think one maybe underdiscussed change in the last decades is how many top politicians have had the personality of rogues and chancers. Blair, Schröder, Chirac, Berlusconi, Sarko. Partly GWB, maybe a rogue but not a chancer. It's maybe a 90s to aughts trend that's on the wane?
I wrote that whole comment without thinking of Alex' "modern thinkers" concept.
Most European states and districts have spent long periods ruled by foreigners and wastrels.
Are Norwegians significantly more roguish than Swedes or Danes? This is a testable hypothesis.
I've heard Norweigan jokes about Swedes that, while not exactly about dishonesty, present Swede as stodgy and dull and Norweigans as clever smartasses.
Well, there you go. The Scandinavian country that was occupied by the other ones for much of modern history like to think of themselves as clever smartasses. Data point for David.
My ex-best friend's husband became a real estate agent when they moved out this way. Spent a ton of money on flashy advertising, including on-screen ads at the local movie theater. I'm almost certain he never turned a profit. I suspect he never broke even. Now he's apparently a massage therapist.
And then he earned $5.
Separately, another friend has been dabbling with photography and is very good. So we hired her to shoot a family event. But which I mean, I gave her a bottle of wine and dinner. The pictures are phenomenal. And she wouldn't let me pay her even $5.
You're supposed to let her find the $5 on her own.
Hmm, I think Norwegians didn't think of themselves as ruled by foreigners for most of the Danish period, maybe. The Finns didn't in the Swedish period.
For example, Geman rulers trying to force Poles to be lutherans wouldn't have worked.
147: per the chart she did the right thing.
I thought the Swedes controlled everything through the cunning use of gelatinous fish.
Better the cunning use of gelatinous fish than the fishy use of gelatinous ...
How does 141 not mention Clinton?
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How you know you're terminally absent-minded: When you're at the airport using your laptop and they announce that one has been left at security and you put your hand in your computer bag and it is not there and you half rise from your seat in panic ...
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re: 140
In many many ways, culturally, Scotland is a Scandinavian country. Not literally, of course, but there's a lot of shared values, I think. Mix in a bit of English, French, and Irish cultures and boab's yer maw's br'er.
re: 141
Zizek had an article in the LRB on this theme, with Berlusconi and Ahmadinejad as his examples.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n14/slavoj-zizek/berlusconi-in-tehran
I think one maybe underdiscussed change in the last decades is how many top politicians have had the personality of rogues and chancers.
A peace dividend: one's chief executive candidate doesn't need to hit the casting couch for the role of "war leader." Contrast the '80s Joel Silver-esque movie producer question "Can he carry a gun?"
I have the impression that a lot of people who set up as photographers in London these days have done something like vampire squid -> stay-at-home dad -> well-off and bored. It's one of the minor externalities of the City, along with inflation and general moral corruption - a steady flow of people with too much money who can't bring themselves to either keep making more or stop working.
On the language thing, a chav is basically a low-grade nuisance - might be a minor thug when they get drunk, noisy. A spiv was a professional crook, specifically a wartime black market operator but the word followed them when they branched out into yer classic nightlife racketeering in the 1950s. A wide boy isn't necessarily criminal, but is both untrustworthy and potentially useful to know, and implies a sort of rogue charm. See also: scally.
It's a very good point that English and Yiddish share an enormous range of vocabulary for describing arseholes.
I think one of the common threads about the modern thinkers is that they all either made money personally from real estate, presided over an epic property boom, or at least were bribed by people who did. Hence the obsession with projects like the Olympics. Berlusconi got his start with Milano Due. GWB and also Bill Clinton did a canny bit of real estate. Tony Blair didn't have a business career before going into politics, but did have an epic bubble. Sarkozy's dad was a property developer and his campaign was all about introducing mortgage interest tax relief. Germany didn't have a major property bubble, but then again Schröder was the least objectionable of the lot.
I have the impression that a lot of people who set up as photographers in London these days have done something like vampire squid -> stay-at-home dad -> well-off and bored. It's one of the minor externalities of the City, along with inflation and general moral corruption - a steady flow of people with too much money who can't bring themselves to either keep making more or stop working.
On the language thing, a chav is basically a low-grade nuisance - might be a minor thug when they get drunk, noisy. A spiv was a professional crook, specifically a wartime black market operator but the word followed them when they branched out into yer classic nightlife racketeering in the 1950s. A wide boy isn't necessarily criminal, but is both untrustworthy and potentially useful to know, and implies a sort of rogue charm. See also: scally.
It's a very good point that English and Yiddish share an enormous range of vocabulary for describing arseholes.
I think one of the common threads about the modern thinkers is that they all either made money personally from real estate, presided over an epic property boom, or at least were bribed by people who did. Hence the obsession with projects like the Olympics. Berlusconi got his start with Milano Due. GWB and also Bill Clinton did a canny bit of real estate. Tony Blair didn't have a business career before going into politics, but did have an epic bubble. Sarkozy's dad was a property developer and his campaign was all about introducing mortgage interest tax relief. Germany didn't have a major property bubble, but then again Schröder was the least objectionable of the lot.
Does a vampire squid feed only on the blood of other (presumably non-vampire) squids, or do they also prey on other cephalopods? How about fish? Turtles?
Tony Blair didn't have a business career before going into politics
Yeah, although he's doing rather nicely out of it now.
"Copepods, prawns and cnidarians have all been reported as prey of Vampire Squid. Little else is known regarding their feeding habits, but considering their environment, they are likely to be opportunists. Vampire Squid have been found among the stomach contents of large deepwater fish, deep diving whales, and pinnipeds such as sea lions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid
151: That is a great chart and I want to have it tattooed on my back so that when near-strangers ask me to design logos for their start-up residential sustainability consultancies in exchange for, um, nothing, I can turn around, pull up my shirt, and scream NO! Or a laminated card would work, I guess.
I have no idea why this came back now, but since I may as well comment here if everybody else is.
But it wasn't a dream! This was a real, truly live place! And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful. And you were there, and you...
