Globally Rational

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I saw an article today suggesting that, for the first time, the average TV viewer is now over 50 years old. I think it’s interesting to note that top TV characters, on the other hand, seem to be getting younger as time progresses. If you look at the progression from “I Love Lucy” to “The Brady Bunch” to “Cheers” to “Friends”, it seems obvious that the most popular comedy-type shows feature younger and younger characters.

Here are some of the top comedy shows of the 20th century, along with the ages of the main characters during the show’s first season. I chose all of the comedy shows that have at some point been the #1 show in America by ratings, not including shows about families or kids (if I didn’t have enough examples for any particular decade, I threw in some shows that may never have been #1 but are still really good):

1950’s: “I Love Lucy” (main actors were in their 40’s)
1960’s: “The Andy Griffith Show” (Andy was 35-45), “Gunsmoke” (main character was 35-40), “Bewitched” (the husband was 35-40)
1970’s: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (Mary was mid-30’s), “Laverne and Shirley” (They were both mid-30’s), “Three’s Company” (mid-30’s)
1980’s: “Cheers” (Sam was mid-30’s), “Who’s the Boss” (Tony was mid-30’s)
1990’s: “Seinfeld” (Jerry was mid-30’s), “Friends” (they were all mid/late-20’s)
2000’s: “Scrubs” (JD was mid-20’s), “Chuck” (mid-20’s)… sorry, these are the best two I could come up with for the 2000’s because the rest of the good shows all feature a wide range of ages (marketing people are starting to figure out how to target a broad demographic).

You’ll notice a similar trend if you look at medical shows (Marcus Welby M.D. was over 60, Quincy M.E. was 50something, while House M.D. is 40something and his assistants are mid-20’s), legal shows (i.e. “Matlock” vs. the cast of “Boston Legal”), or any other specific genre. And look at the people who have sold the most music albums by decade:

1950’s: Harry Belafonte, Henry Mancini, some movie soundtracks
1960’s: Mostly soundtracks, the Monkees, Jimi Hendrix, Iron Butterfly
1970’s: Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, others of similar age
1980’s: AC/DC, Aerosmith, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, others of similar age
1990’s: Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Tupac, others of similar age
2000’s: Linkin Park, Usher, Eminiem, others of similar age

They are all around 25-30 years old at their peaks. So it seems like we like our TV characters to get younger, but our taste for musicians’ ages aren’t really changing. That means that it’s not just the aging population that is being reminiscent of younger days; the real cause is something else…

That “something else”, in my opinion, is the evolution of the field of marketing. Here are the reasons why I think that the marketing applies to TV characters more than to musicians:

–TV networks have a limited number of programs that they can show in any 24-hour period (music labels, meanwhile, can produce as many albums as they want). So, the TV studios have to make sure to appeal to as many people as possible with each show, while record labels can make different albums for each demographic.
–Garage bands can still “come from nothing” by just making good music with no regard to marketing. TV shows, on the other hand, are produced in a boardroom.
–Each TV show has to appeal to a wide demographic in order to look juicier to advertisers.
–People tend to just turn on the TV and watch whatever is most appealing. When they buy music, it’s much more premeditated.

People are getting better at selling things to us. Honestly, I like the product… I love watching many of today’s TV shows. Still, I won’t deny that most of those shows have lost the soul that broadcast television once had. If Andy Griffith (or even Jerry Seinfeld) tried to turn his comedy into a TV show today, the networks would laugh at him.

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This is the first post by Kola, our newest writer. Please join me in welcoming him to Globally Rational; hopefully, we will be seeing more great content in the future.

Hello class.

When it comes to the issue of international minimums on human rights, I usually take positions that mobs of good people would stone me for. I don’t believe in interfering with the natural economic/political/social progression of things, even if we may consider ourselves more ‘humanely evolved’ than our neighbors. It’s brutal, but sometimes we have to just sit on our hands and let the world mend itself.

However.

While I do not like the idea of policing every state on worldwide policies, I do believe there are barest minimums. Among these few is fair treatment of both genders. Social evolution will show that in our transcendence from hunters and gatherers, where a man’s muscle structure might lead him to believe he holds a more significant role in the tribe, women have suffered through thousands of years of half-rights and only recently ended up with what they have been entitled to all along: the same as everyone else. The final step of this evolution, the complete removal of gender labeling in constitutions and courts is one of the few social goals that can be regarded as completely correct. Truly, as the education of a country advances, so to will suppressed women be recognized by their men for what they are: equal.

The major problem in this I see developing is that in countries with economic and educational disparities, women still have quite the fight ahead of them. And the shield being put up by these states is CULTURE. (Cute, Utterly Loony Tricks Undermining Real Evolution)

Culture is an important and scary element of every state. It is the heart of Jihad vs McWorld, and the true conflict for most of the people being manipulated into suicidal frenzies. The western markets would crush every culture that let them in, just to see a 5% increase in profits, and it is a real danger to the developing world. But it has made the word itself altogether too powerful, too easily misrepresented for the sake of corrupt governments and ignorant populations. It is swung around by the people of under-evolved societies as a catch-all answer for why they execute gays, imprison rape victims, and persecute people who change religions.

“This is not America,” “This is not our culture,” are not rational excuses for flat ignorance.

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I recently read (in The Economist) about a study showing that over the course of the last 30 years, conservatives have consistently claimed to be “very happy” more often than liberals. Many people try to use this data to say that conservatism directly causes happiness… but before arriving at a conclusion like that, we need to examine the causality.

So, like I always do, I decided to parse the data about the demographics of liberals vs. conservatives. I found a study included 9 overall groups; there were three major groups for liberals, conservatives, and moderates and each had three subgroups for different socioeconomic backgrounds. They surveyed the different groups and published the data, which seems to be very telling.

I think there are a few interesting explanations for why conservatives are happier:

1. Graduate degrees
   Among the 9 political groups in the study, the most liberal people were the most likely to be highly educated (postgraduate degree); as everybody seems to agree, “ignorance is bliss”… so a more educated person is less likely to be satisfied with the world.
2. Bachelor’s degrees
   Among people of a lower socioeconomic status, conservatives were more likely to be moderately educated (undergraduate degree) than liberals; this suggests that less advantaged conservatives are more likely to be successful than less advantaged liberals, which would probably make the conservatives happier.
3. Wealth
   Conservatives are more likely to be wealthy (income over $75,000/year) than moderates or liberals. Liberals are more likely to disagree with the statement “paying the bills is not generally a problem” and to agree with the statement “I often can’t make ends meet.” Without the added stress of working overtime and falling behind on bills, I think it’s obvious that a group would be happier on average. Money may not buy happiness, but lack of money does lead to unhappiness.
4. Family
   Conservatives are more likely than moderates/liberals to be married and have children; companionship tends to make a person more content with their life.
5. Optimism
   Among people with a relatively disadvantaged socioeconomic background, conservatives are far more optimistic than liberals. This group of people was told that “people can get ahead with hard work”; conservatives agreed in 76% of cases, while liberals agreed in only 14% of cases. A similar trend was clear with less disadvantaged liberals/conservatives, but it was less drastic.
6. Religion
   Conservatives are the most religious of the three groups and liberals are the least religious, suggesting that conservatives are more likely to believe that God will solve all of their problems.
7. Future
   Conservatives are more likely to be stock traders or small business owners, suggesting that they perceive themselves to be in control of their own future.
8. Pride
   As one would expect, conservatives tend to display the American flag more often than liberals. This leads me to believe that conservatives are more proud and more satisfied with their country.

I think these 8 factors explain why a typical conservative is happier than a typical liberal. Now we can look at the causality: is the political viewpoint causing the happiness or vice versa? In other words, would you be happier if you became more conservative?

Based on the data, I don’t think so. It seems like the causality follows an indirect trend; certain variables lead to both conservatism and happiness, and neither the political viewpoint nor the happiness can predict one another. Optimism and pride seem to cause life satisfaction and conservatism; higher education and pessimism, meanwhile, seem to cause dissatisfaction and liberalism.

Personally, I think it’s better to have more people who are unsatisfied with the status quo… this will lead to change and, eventually, improvement. Of course, we also need plenty of satisfied people to balance them out, so that we’re not constantly changing everything. Overall, it seems that this two-party system (which, as many Americans don’t realize, most countries don’t have) is keeping the US in a delicate balance that has probably contributed greatly to the nation’s success.

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This is a continuation of the “parsing a country song” series, which I started a couple of weeks ago; click here to see the first article. Here is the third stanza and the chorus:

Now this nation that I love has fallen under attack.
A mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back.
Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye,
Man we lit up your world like the Fourth of July

(Chorus)
Hey Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly, And there’s gonna be Hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell!
It’s gonna feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you…
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and Blue!

Oh, Justice will be served and the battle will rage.
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A
‘Cuz we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way.

(Chorus again)

The first three lines are facts, so I’m happy with them. But then he says “we lit up your world like the Fourth of July”, but I don’t think we really did. We’re supposed to assume that he’s talking to Osama bin Laden… and sure, we lit up his country and killed a lot of innocent people, but he’s still on the run. Again, Toby Keith is using key words like “attack”, “mighty”, “sucker punch”, “back”, “see clearly”, “black eye”, “lit up”, and “Fourth of July” in order to spark your emotions.

The chorus is my favorite part. Apparently, Uncle Sam put Osama’s name at the top of his list… and the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist… and the eagle was flying and there’s gonna be hell… and Mother Freedom was ringing her bell… and the world was raining down on him. Let me paraphrase this chorus:

Everybody got really mad at you and now nobody likes you! Naaa naaa na boo boo!

The chorus is full of more key emotion-stimulating words about what we did to Osama… but the entire time, he just talks about how angry we got. He says that “the whole wide world was raining down on you”, but never really specifies what “raining down on you” actually means (aside from putting your name at the top of a list and the Statue of Liberty shaking her fist).

After that, he goes on to say that there will be a fight and that America will win, but again ignores the facts. I think history will speak louder than any of my words will in this case.

There’s nothing wrong with patriotic songs like “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful”. What bothers me is these songs that promote violence without really presenting any real evidence supporting their claims. People listen to this kind of music and start to support the violence in the Middle East because their emotions conquer their ability to reason. That’s what bothers me about political music in general, but recent country music has been especially outrageous.

Next time: Parsing a hip-hop song.

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I’ve been asked questions like “where are you from?” many times. Every time, it’s clear to me that the inquisitor wants to know what country I was born in. I refuse to succumb; it’s not that I have any lack of respect for my background, but I just don’t understand why the person has to assume that I was born abroad. Usually, I respond with a simple “Here” if I’m in St. Louis at the time, “St. Louis” if I’m somewhere near St. Louis, or “Missouri” if I’m far away somewhere. The person is usually disappointed with the answer (since they just wanted to know whether to treat me like a terrorist or a tech support rep), so I’ll typically elaborate with “I was born in Pakistan” just for good measure.

Occasionally, the person probes deeper, as was the case today. I was asking for directions at the one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington DC, and the information representative asked me where I was from. This was one of the cases where I was happy to respond with “Missouri”, since she had only asked in response to my statement “there are no Ethiopian restaurants where I come from”. I really did mean Missouri when I said that, but she made sure to elaborate, “Where are you from originally?”

Personally, I have no qualms about saying that I’m from Pakistan, since I am, in fact, from Pakistan. On the other hand, I remember being in the car when a friend (whose parents happen to be Indian) was pulled over for speeding… when the officer asked him where he was from, he replied “India”. In fact, he has been to India two or three times in his life, and doesn’t even fluently speak any Indian languages. He was born and raised in Missouri, and he’s not the only such person who I have seen asked this question. Why do people assume that if you have brown skin, then you must be foreign? These few people are far more American than I am, and the issue bothers me a little bit… so I’m sure that they have to second-guess their answer too.

More than one out of every ten US residents was born in another country. Many of them are still white, so nobody ever asks them where they’re from. In my opinion, the only thing that justifies a question like “what country are you from?” is a person’s accent… my accent is as neutral and Midwestern as Dan Rather’s, so why do people automatically assume that I’m foreign?

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I often hear country music songs that try to convince people to support certain political issues without actually presenting any real evidence. Their purpose is just to appeal to your emotions. Today I present the first two stanzas from Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” (the whole song would be too long, so I’ll continue this in the future).

American girls and American guys
Well always stand up and salute
Well always recognize
When we see old glory flying
Theres a lot of men dead
So we can sleep in peace at night
When we lay down our head

My daddy served in the army
Where he lost his right eye
But he flew a flag out in our yard
Until the day that he died
He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me
To grow up and live happy
In the land of the free.

So he starts out by explaining a familiar experience, where you feel thankful for the people who gave their lives to make this country a better place. But then he goes on to talk about his own personal experience, where he links his dad’s military service to the flag and the freedom. He chooses not to mention that his dad served in Korea, where our freedom wasn’t really at stake… it was more for the sake of protecting the Koreans, and we only kinda halfway accomplished the job. Also, he uses key emotional words like “served”, “lost”, “flag”, “died”, “brother/mother/sister”, “grow up”, “happy”, and “land of the free”. We automatically get a fuzzy feeling when we think about his dad serving in the army and flying the flag for his kids… it insinuates that the flag in the yard somehow directly allowed his kids to “grow up and live happy in the land of the free”.

I’ll grant the fact that patriotism tends to have a positive influence sometimes, but insinuating such a direct connection just causes people to be artificially inspired based on no actual facts. I actually find myself inspired every time I listen to that song too; when you combine the music with the lyrics, it triggers the release of hormones that makes me want to kill all the Muslims… which is pretty impressive, considering the fact that 100% of my relatives are Muslim.

Click here to see Part 2 of this article.

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EDIT (April 8, 11:45 PM): I just submitted this essay to Yearblook for consideration in their daily competition. Please click here and show your support by voting for it; the leader only has about 9 votes, so every vote counts! Also, registered votes count for more, so if you have time, please register for an account before you vote.

I just posted a new entry in the “Essays” section, entitled The Plight of the Expatriated Sports Fanatic. It is a chronicle of moving to a country where my cricket obsession, which had previously been my only tool for social contact, was unheard of. As I was forced to semi-successfully take up new sports like basketball, I eventually realized that I could bridge the two cultures with the game of chess while paying homage to both nations. Little to my knowledge at the time, the different games acted as symbols of my Pakistani heritage (cricket), my American future (basketball), and my global identity (chess).

I wrote the essay about three years ago, but I touched it up a little bit to make sure that everything is consistent for today’s time.

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A few days ago, I had the opportunity to fly over four major cities: Kuwait, London, Boston, and New York (in that order). Looking at them from the airplane window, I noticed that the layout of the different cities says a great deal about the many comparisons and contrasts that can be made:

-The outskirts of Kuwait City are, of course, mostly desert. Flying over the city, however, you can see the effects of the rapid development in the past decade. Nearly every building is new and all of the engineering is novel. The roads are wide and well-developed. There is a high level of development near the ocean and it slowly faded as I looked towards the desert. It is obvious that the development is quickly working its way west and north, as the plans for Madinat al-Hareer confirm. Kuwait is 300 years old, but it has recently become a cosmopolitan hotspot.

-London’s vicinity is astonishingly green. Everywhere I looked, there was a golf course or a park or a cricket ground or a rugby field or a strange patch of greenery whose purpose even Google Earth failed to identify. I assume that in London, these patches of greenery are no unusual sight… but to a person whose background is in Pakistan (where pointless greenery can never be maintained because of negligence) and the US (where pointless greenery can never be maintained because it is inefficient), it was refreshing. I was not surprised to find that London has one of the lowest population densities of all megapolises. I learned today that the reason for the greenery (and the fact that London, according to the last link, is still less sparsely populated than New York) is that the UK has a Green Belt policy. London has grown very fast in its more recent history, but the city planners have kept up to pace, unlike their counterparts in Boston. The houses are very well-organized and the roads are far more modern than I’d expect out of such an old city.

-Boston is the reason why my expectations were low for London. When I spent the summer of 2005 in Boston, my biggest complaint was that the city was still functioning around the urban planning (or lack thereof) that happened when the Puritans founded the city 400 years ago. The old roads had been paved (but not widened) and new, equally narrow roads had been added. Houses were spaced out well, but this drove up property values unnecessarily without allowing the sort of greenery that characterized London. From the plane, Boston looked like a town built in SimCity by somebody who isn’t particularly good at the game. The skyline is modern, but the rest of the city seems like it was just thrown together haphazardly when settlers built houses wherever they wanted. Soon, everything was a historical landmark and nothing could be destroyed (plus, it’s cheaper to improve things than to rebuild them).

-New York suprised me. JFK and LaGuardia International Airports, both of which I went to, are located on Long Island. I expected the area to be packed with apartment buildings with no room to walk. I assumed that the roads would be just like Boston’s, since New York is just as old and its growth as a city was much more rapid. What I found, however, was houses with front yards, a developed grid of roads, and lots of baseball fields. It turns out that New York City’s vicinity is even more sparsely populated than London’s. I guess the idea of sprawling streets and tall apartment buildings is overplayed by the media and reinforced whenever somebody visits downtown Manhattan. It’s hard to make any direct conclusions from this; it’s just a series of observations that I think are interesting. I will continue to write about various cities as I fly to different parts of the world in the future. If I haven’t flown in a while, I might even use Google Earth to cheat.

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