"A British study found that visiting social networking sites like
Facebook during working hours costs U.K. firms over $260 million a
day. The equivalent number for the United States is surely a multiple
of that. Next year, the AmLaw 200 law firms are expected to hire
10,000 new associates. Let’s estimate, conservatively, that half of
them spend one billable hour a week on Facebook. If we assume (again
conservatively) an average hourly billing rate of $200, that comes to
about $50 million a year in lost billable hours—and partner profits.
Fifty million bucks will buy you a lot of Hermès ties."
http://tinyurl.com/yvcf24
Another reason lawyers adore Facebook is that it allows them to
reclaim their individuality. The typical lawyer at a Gotham megafirm
goes from being an interesting individual—with opinions,
idiosyncrasies, likes and dislikes—into a cog, albeit a well-paid
one, in a giant machine. So what to do, when you’re feeling like an
utterly fungible device for the production of billable hours? Join
Facebook!
At your law firm, you may just be timekeeper No. 2141. But on
Facebook, you’re an Individual, with Activities and Interests and
Favorite Quotes. You can spout off about the Petraeus report, post
photos of your rock climbing trip, or review 3:10 to Yuma, for all
the world to enjoy. Occasionally someone will comment on something
you’ve posted, conveying the illusion that someone actually gives a
damn.
Perhaps the best explanation for Facebook’s popularity, though, is
the simplest: it’s a great procrastination tool. Anything that allows
lawyers to entertain themselves while sitting in front of computer
screens and looking diligent will be a runaway hit.
On Oct 9, 2007, at 12:42 AM, Traderdube wrote:
Tommie, why are you always dancing around what you want to say?
You seem to only care about winning some kind of game that you, and
only you, are playing.
You repeatedly ask, over and over, what Mario meant by his lottery
money link.
Per chance are YOU insinuating that Mario is insinuating that
Asbury Park's Mayoral Ball stole the money?
What exactly is YOUR point?
What was your point with Springsteen last week?
It goes on and on, these petty back and forth flame wars, usually
with Mario, and you never ever conclude.
There, in the end, never seems to be a point, other than you won
and he lost.
It's effing juvenile and it totally drags down any intelligence on
this board.
And that is a damn shame, because you are one of the best voices on
this board.
You are also one of the few people who I agree with some of the time.
Why do you play these stupid games.
Say what you have to say and move the eff on.
For your, Tommie, and anyone else's reading pleasure, here is a
review from NY Magazine,
has nothing to do with nonsense you posted about Springsteen last
week, but offers a different POV than we get around AP
when it comes to The Boss....
Bruce Almighty
If rock is dead, nobody told the Boss.
By Hugo Lindgren
<bruce071008_560.jpg>
Springsteen in the seventies.
(Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Amid the effusion of praise that greeted Born to Run upon its
release in 1975, Nik Cohn attempted, in this very magazine, to
puncture the myth of Bruce Springsteen. Cohn wasn’t acting
completely alone. The New York Times had just published a 2,000-
word diatribe against the man not yet known to the world as the
Boss, accusing him of fakery, sentimentality, and assorted other
crimes against rock. But Cohn was more damning. While admitting
that he enjoyed the album for its pomp and “mock-tragic” vision,
Cohn declared Springsteen “essentially irrelevant. The rock-and-
roll dream that he so avidly celebrates is dead. Understandably,
the people who have raised him to godhood find that hard to accept,
for it means the death of their own youth. So they manage one last
fling.”
It’s fair to say that history has proved Cohn wrong. Born to Run
has stood up as the archetypal rock album of the seventies, just as
Born in the U.S.A. may well be the archetypal rock album of the
eighties. But Cohn wasn’t crazy or deluded to view Springsteen as
an artist trading in spent tropes of youthful rebellion. What he
misjudged was the ability of anything else to fully displace those
ideas. Disco, punk, post-punk, hip-hop—they all failed to drive
Bruce into total obsolescence. He is still here, in his leather
jacket and Levi’s, manhandling his beat-up Fender and packing every
arena he plays. Do all these people know rock is dead? They don’t
give a shit.
But now that Springsteen is pushing 60, you have to wonder, how
much longer can he play the guitar-wielding rock hero? His release
last year of a Pete Seeger tribute album, though hardly his first
foray into folk, suggested an artist in transition, perhaps to a
quieter, more contemplative phase. But the raucous, vaudevillian
shows he played on the Seeger tour were anything but contemplative.
Now he’s back with Magic, his fifteenth album, for which he’s
regrouped with his arena-rocking pals, the E Street Band. On the
first song, “Radio Nowhere,” the guitars kick right in, and he
starts hollering about his need for “pounding drums” and “a world
with some soul.” It’s nothing terribly exciting—the main riff has
the faux edge that you used to hear from alternative-rock bands
making their major-label debuts—but Springsteen sounds genuinely
engaged and pissed off.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite keep it up. Though his voice is
strong and sincere throughout the album, most of the material has a
certain karaoke-like vibe. All but “Radio Nowhere” and the gentle,
melancholic title track have what sound to my ears like obvious
antecedents in his back catalogue:
You’ll Be Comin’ Down = Lucky Town
Livin’ in the Future = Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Gypsy Biker = The River
I’ll Work for Your Love = Thunder Road
Last to Die = Roulette
The rote familiarity of the material is compounded by the fact that
the E Street Band tackles every song—and that’s the word, tackle,
as in football—with, at best, dutiful competence. Their skills are
suited to huge places. The rhythm section pounds away as if every
room has the intimacy of Madison Square Garden. And all apologies
to Clarence Clemons, but I’ve heard better saxophone playing on
subway platforms.
A license to tour, that’s what this album really is. Once upon a
time, bands toured to support albums; now they release albums to
support tours. And at this point, Springsteen’s appeal is only
partly about music. His boomer fans revere him also as a role model—
of how to grow old with integrity, how to get rich without going
soft, how to not lose all your hair, how to not get fat, how to not
turn into someone who would embarrass your younger self. It’s not
eternal youth he symbolizes so much as a version of middle age that
you wouldn’t be afraid to look at in the mirror.
