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They called it the zombie walk.
After midnight, when the coffee and Red Bull had worn off, Sari Gennis and her co-workers would take a brisk stroll to make it through their graveyard shift. For four months straight, often seven days a week, a team of visual effects artists worked 12-hour shifts to complete the 3-D conversion of movie blockbuster “Titanic.”
Gennis said the long hours aggravated a severe arthritis condition. She’d already had both knees replaced, and needed a third surgery, but couldn’t afford to take time off for the operation.
“If I continue these kind of hours, it could kill me,” the visual effects veteran said.
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Visual effects artists aim to create better work environments
The artists complain they’re often employed in electronic sweatshops, working inhuman schedules, without health insurance or pensions. Their frustrations are fueling an effort to unionize. via @lasiggraph and The LA Times <—-
An Experiment in Market Forces
Here is something I want all those who have a food budget to try. Pick an item at the supermarket or any other shop that isn’t popular that you actually wouldn’t mind eating long term. The unpopular ones have very few of them available. Keep buying it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis… and see what happens.
I started to realize how effective the purchasing power of one can have on market forces when I had to cook for myself in college apartments. The supermarket only had 4 loaves of this particular bread that I thought wasn’t too cheap(the really cheap ones has a lot of air bubbles) and not too expensive but healthy. I bought it every other week… I noticed they didn’t bother to restock that one. It dwindled down to the last loaf… I bought it. When I came back… they restocked and expanded the shelf space for it to 6 loaves. A simple choice I made, changed the purchasing decisions of that supermarket.
I do this all the time. My parents would buy Asian food products at Asian markets because they are cheaper and have a wider selection. But the places I lived didn’t have them. So I would buy what I wanted(rice, soy sauce, tofu, shrimp chips and pocky) at the more expensive Non-Asian markets. Gradually the Asian foods section of the supermarket widened and they added more items. Oh look there be Asians in the area!!! :P It was just me willing to spend the extra money to send them a message.
The Boston Tea Party
On a cold clear night in Dec. 1773 the Boston Tea Party dumped 90,000 lb of fragrant leaves into the harbor.
“The tea that filled the Boston Harbor on that historic night had been picked at dawn in the hinterlands of the Fujian province of China, withered, tossed, oxidized, fired, rolled, packed in wooden chests lined with lead, carried by coolies shod in grass-sandals, tasted and haggled over by plump merchants, journeyed four months in the damp storage of an East Indiaman round the Cape of Good Hope to London, broken, warehoused, and then reload by stevedores for the final, fateful voyage across the Atlantic.”
via the 1st page in the book The True History of Tea
Well at least the Chinese workers got paid… ;P
(Source: amazon.com)
