Skewed News (my attempt to reassure the former readers of the Seattle PI that blogs are able to step into the void and provide trustworthy coverage)

It's an American tradition at least as predictable as airport congestion around Thanksgiving: horror films released on the Friday the 13th weekend featuring someone like Freddie or Jason coming back yet again. On a probably unrelated note, Dick Cheney appeared on "State of the Union" Sunday.

400 AIG employees will split about $165 million in bonus money. The word bonus is from the Latin for bonehead, as in, "in a series of boneheaded moves, AIG nearly took down the economy, then single-handed created a deficit the size that once required a Reagan-era tax cut, and then rewarded their deciders."

50 years ago, the Barbie doll debuted. 50 years ago, the Dali Lama fled Tibet. Had he been following trends, might have realized that even the young had become so precocious that they were unlikely to back anything that sounded so unsophisticated as "dollie." In order to get more support for the Tibetans, the Dali Lama is planning to be reincarnated as a 5' 10" blonde with double-D's. He expects that this will help to create more outrage should the Chinese government again invade. At that point, taking his lead from the popularity of Barbie, "she" will go by the name Lama Dal.

Airlines lost 40 million bags in 2007. Records just released indicate that this was not accidental. As part of the 2007 bailout plan, airlines were required to lose this much baggage as part of a subtle but quite effective stimulus plan: people forced to buy new wardrobes, luggage, and toiletries actually delayed the recession by over a year.

Obama has announced his intention to stimulate small businesses. This will be easier as we go further into the recession. Between layoffs and shrinking revenues, projections indicate that half of the Fortune 500 will soon become "small businesses."

Transformers - Box Office Smash & Sign of a New Reality

Toys matter. The little girls who first played with Barbie dolls became the first generation to finance the cosmetic surgery industry. The little boys who first read Buck Rogers's comic books became the first generation to finance Star Wars missile defense programs.

So what can we learn from the success of Transformers at the Box office?

Michael Bay’s giant freakin robots movie debuted with a massive $27.4 million on Tuesday, making it the biggest ever take ever brought in by any movie on a Tuesday. You might think the competition isn’t very fierce there, since Tuesday’s aren’t exactly prime movie going time, but the previous champ was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with a very distant $15 million.

There are a variety of lessons to be drawn from this. One, the generation that first played with Transformers are now old enough to drive to theaters. Two, nostalgia is a huge draw (how long before someone puts out a Captain Crunch movie, ala Pirates of the Caribbean?). But there is also a prediction in here.

Transformer toys were very clever. A car becomes a monster - a plane becomes a monster - a vending machine becomes a monster. Okay, they weren't so very clever because everything unfolded into a monster. But the concept was clever - something that could be one thing until it was folded into another thing.

Kids who grow up playing with Transformers are less likely to take the form as fixed. This generation is unlikely to see the school as a place for learning only and not a place for fun or work. They are less likely to accept a work place as a static place where only work can be done and no play or learning is expected. This is a generation unlikely to conform to institutional norms, expecting these institutions to transform instead.

Toys become the building blocks of social invention, the stepping stones of social evolution.

[I first heard Russell Ackoff make the point that with our analytical world model, we've set up very distinct places for work, play, and learning. Schools are places for learning but not fun or work, for instance.]