July 14, 2016

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Entertainment July 14, 2016

The Last Sci-Fi Blog: Appreciating 'Ghostbusters'' Respect for Nerds

1984’s Ghostbusters is a comedy, first and foremost. However, the real brilliance of the film and its lasting appeal can be attributed to how each gag services the characters and their world. Even when Bill Murray is cracking wise and Dan Aykroyd is being a big goofball, the threat at the center of the film – a threat of “biblical proportions” – isn’t in on the joke. When an ancient demonic destroyer takes on the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the threat being imposed upon New York City isn’t lessened – it just looks absolutely hilarious. Like Back to the Future and later genre-infused comedies like Shaun of the Dead, Ghostbusters isn’t afraid to embrace the fact that it’s a ghost story. It’s just spooky enough, its ghosts just frightening enough.

But after revisiting Ghostbusters to prepare for the opening of Paul Feig’s new reboot, I realized that Ivan Reitman’s original film isn’t just a comedy punctuated with elements of horror: it is practically a science fiction film. At the very least, it’s a film that has tremendous respect for the eggheads who save the world.

It’s common knowledge the original version of the film dreamed up by Aykroyd was more openly sci-fi, following a team of a ghost hunters who travel across time and space and jump between various dimensions in pursuit of their supernatural foes. While the film was drastically rewritten so it could be made for a more manageable cost, the final film remains distinctly geeky, especially in an era where the leads of major Hollywood films were more likely to shove a nerd into his locker than save the day. After all, the most important element of Ghostbusters, the core idea that often seems to get lost as people discuss the film, is that the three main characters are scientists.

The initial three Ghostbusters (they’re eventually joined by the working class Winston) work for a university. Their fear of the unknown is always overwhelmed by their curiosity. They do not fight with brawn, but with technology they have developed in their own lab. There is nothing suave about them – Aykroyd’s Ray is an enthusiastic loser and Harold Ramis’ Egon a literal-minded master of the accidental deadpan – and that is why they stand out from so many other genre heroes. Decades before people were proud “science nerds,” the Ghostbusters were making technology and physics and making them look like, well, fun. Sure, the movie never offers an actual explanation for how a proton pack works, but the film’s depiction of science as hard, fulfilling, and even blue collar work is weirdly romantic. It’s the kind of thing that helps remind you that the men and women who actually do the heavy lifting in making the impossible possible work far outside of your high school science textbook. They’re getting their hands dirty. Hell, they’re busting ghosts for a living.

Ghostbusters‘ depiction of its heroes as working scientists who rely entirely on their knowledge of theoretical physics and their home-brewed tech ends up creating one of my all-time favorite genre collisions: when science is the only thing that stands in the way of an indefinable supernatural threat. On one end of the spectrum, you have the work of H.P. Lovecraft, whose tales often center on scientists, researchers, and professors who must cling to logic, reason and scholarly judgment if they want to retain their sanity and overcome (or at least survive) a force that exists outside of human knowledge. On the other end, you have Ghostbusters, a second cousin twice removed that sees something impossible (Gozer the destroyer! A green slime ghost!) and announced: “Hey, let’s science our way out of this problem.”

At the time I’m writing this, I have not yet seen Paul Feig’s new Ghostbusters. I hope I will like it. However, I’m heartened by certain aspects of the trailer, namely the focus on how each member of the new team has a different specialization, a mastery of a certain corner of the scientific realm (or in Leslie Jones’ case, her knowledge of New York City history). Punching and shooting is the solution in most major studio movies, so it’s refreshing to see cinematic heroes who defeat the bad guy because they knew the right equations to build a miniature nuclear reactor and strap it to their back.

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Business July 14, 2016

Feeling Squeezed? Many Others Wedged Into The Same Tight Economic Spot

Ever feel as though you’re not getting ahead financially?

Join the club. The very big club.

A new study shows that across the world’s 25 advanced economies, two-thirds of households are earning the same as, or less than, they did a decade ago.

McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., studied incomes for 2014. It found that between 540 million and 580 million people are living on lower or stagnant incomes compared with similarly situated people in 2005 — just before the Great Recession hit.

Between 1993 and 2005, less than 2 percent of households — with fewer than 10 million people — found themselves worse off than in previous years. “That has now changed,” according to the study with the discouraging title of “Poorer than their Parents? Flat or Falling Incomes in Advanced Economies.”

When comparing the income brackets, McKinsey finds that these days, even in the world’s wealthiest countries, families in the bottom 60 percent have lower incomes, while those in the 60th to 80th percentile are just treading water.

“The recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis was one of the deepest and longest lasting downturns of the post-World War II era, and the recovery that followed it has been unusually sluggish in many advanced economies, especially in Western Europe,” the study said.

And here’s the big problem for many workers in this recovery: “Robots and computers have automated tasks that once required workers,” McKinsey said. “Demand for low- and medium-skill workers has been lower than for high-skill workers,” it concluded.

So even when orders rebound for companies, the jobs don’t come back. That puts downward pressure on wages. In this country, young workers in the lower third of educational attainment saw wages fall on average by 15 percent between 2002 and 2012.

“There are 20 times as many single mothers in the lowest income decile as in the highest,” the study said, and the income drops for them have been faster than other households.

At the same time, many families in advanced economies have fewer spouses and children than in the past, so today’s shrunken households have fewer wage earners, the study shows.

But here’s a finding that also stands out: Affluent Americans are flourishing.

McKinsey says in this country, upper income households saw rising wages as more and more jobs opened up for people with higher skill sets. They actually made larger gains on a percentage basis than the wealthiest people whose incomes had shot up like rockets in the years before the recession.

Economists are not shocked to see such data about affluent, well-educated workers doing well, according to Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel Fixed Income in Chicago. “This study seems very much in line with what we have seen” in one survey after another, she said.

Incomes are rising if you happen to work in information technology, accounting, engineering and other high-demand fields, she said. But for low-skilled workers, automation is replacing labor and causing a wage downdraft, she added.

“When you see incomes falling year after year after year, you can’t look at it as a blip,” she said. Even as the impact of the Great Recession fades, the wage trends identified by McKinsey are likely to continue, she said.

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Health July 14, 2016

Emotional Healing After A Flood Can Take Just As Long As Rebuilding

A small memorial marks the former homestead of the Nicely family, who died in the June flooding of White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.

A small memorial marks the former homestead of the Nicely family, who died in the June flooding of White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting hide caption

toggle caption Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Most of the front door of Rachel Taylor’s little yellow house in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., is pasted with paw prints where her dog struggled to get inside during the flood last month. He was too big to carry through the rising waters.

Across the street, nestled between two battered houses, an empty lot is marked by a cross with an array of flowers and photos — a small memorial for a family washed away by the torrent.

Taylor’s dog survived and is now with some of her family members in Kentucky. But those neighbors across the street, the Nicelys, were swept away when their house collapsed; they have since been confirmed dead.

“When I start feeling overwhelmed with this,” Taylor says from her front porch, “I just look across the street at that memorial and I think, there’s nothing that we have lost that can’t be replaced or mended.”

She and her husband spent seven years renovating this 1930s Craftsman house, room by room. They were just about done with renovations when their house flooded a few weeks ago. Today the living room is gutted.

“You know, the first couple of days it was very intense,” Taylor says. “It was kind of ‘crisis mode.’ Maybe that’s the way I would describe it, because you didn’t really have time to think about it and process it.”

But once the full extent of the damage set in, Taylor says, she developed severe nausea and carsickness to the point of not being able to drive.

A number of people, she says, have chalked up her symptoms to nerves. “You know, the stress level. You don’t realize your body is just having a response to this.”

Taylor worries that the houses in her neighborhood will remain abandoned and that she, her husband and her 14-year-old daughter won’t feel safe at home anymore. She plans to rebuild, but says her family will likely sell the house and move.

Rachel Taylor surveys the flood damage from her front porch in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Muddy paw prints on the front door still mark her dog's panic as the waters rose. He survived, but others didn't.

Rachel Taylor surveys the flood damage from her front porch in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Muddy paw prints on the front door still mark her dog’s panic as the waters rose. He survived, but others didn’t. Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting hide caption

toggle caption Kara Lofton/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

“The words we use when we talk about it are ‘I don’t know if I have it in me;’ ‘I’m not sure if I can do it again,’ ” she says. “Things like that. And then we just say, ‘Well, we’ll take it one day at a time.’ “

Psychologists say this kind of response is normal following natural disasters.

“It’s a physical aspect of the stress response — it will affect the body’s ability to concentrate, to rest and to be able to function,” says Marcie Vaughan, leader of the state-funded West Virginia Community Crisis Response Team. “Cognition is slowed and impaired,” she adds.

Vaughan’s team offers support, counseling and referrals for further mental health care at local behavioral health centers.

“From the behavioral health perspective, we find we are more in need after the tenth [or] twelfth day,” Vaughan says, “just because immediate needs of food, clothing and shelter take precedence.”

In the first few days following the flood, Vaughan’s team members split their time between helping people replace lost psychiatric medications and looking for signs of mental distress in people at shelters or feeding stations.

“We see fatigue, problems with cognition,” she says. “You have individuals who walk into a supply center and they have no idea what they need.”

A 2012 study published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology found that while most people bounce back a few months after a disaster, if their ongoing stressors aren’t addressed — such as a lack of permanent shelter, financial challenges and repeated exposure to the trauma — affected residents will continue to struggle.

In addition to Vaughan’s team, church disaster-assistance teams and Hope Animal-Assisted Crisis Response — a support organization that uses trained therapy pets for comfort — stepped in to help.

“As the fatigue sets in and the frustration, we see an increased need for behavioral health intervention,” says Vaughan.

Unfortunately, that’s just when the work becomes hardest, Vaughan says, and it’s often after national organizations and media have lost interest. Very real, tough problems persist, though only local groups and neighbors remain to extend helping hands.

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News.

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