I got the Jan. 2004 issue of Model Railroader and they've changed the format again. Sigh... This one is the worst yet. They seem determined to become the magazine equivalent of USA Today. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
There may still be a fair amount of steak, especially for beginners. But it's hard to make it past the glare of the sizzle to find out.
Guess it's time to check out the other mags. And I've been a subscriber since 1975 (and collected previous issues back to 1960).
I was hopping that this was supposed to be a retro look, for this issue only.
My magazine fell apart..
I guess I will have to insist on the hardcover verson
Jim Stewart
(I am not expected to be rational, even reasonable..... I am a tenured professor during exam week)
=>Larry Blanchard wrote: =>> I got the Jan. 2004 issue of Model Railroader and they've changed the =>> format again. Sigh... This one is the worst yet. =>
=>I was hopping that this was supposed to be a retro look, for this issue =>only. =>
=>
Just hopping, or hopping mad?
Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)
On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 17:51:38 UTC, Larry Blanchard wrote: 2000
I ignored the sizzle and looked at the steak. Best issue in years.
In a way, I was somewhat disappointed with the anniversary issue. I'd expected more material that looked back on seven decades of publishing, perhaps even reprinting or excerpting items of note.
(By contrast, Playboy's 50th anniversary issue has such material.)
And their new cover slogan? Given how the industry seems to favor the "ready to run" nonsense, maybe it should be "Dream it. Plan it. Buy it."
Dieter Zakas
Dieter Zakas wrote: And their new cover slogan? Given how the industry seems to favor the "ready to run" nonsense, maybe it should be "Dream it. Plan it. Buy it."
------------------------------------------------- I thought the same thing! Too bad the modelers of the future won't even know that they can build their own models.
Things like that happen though, I never got the hang of rolling my own cigarettes!
Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:
Good Morning!
Very Possible They Will -- IF the economic contraction gets worse!
Waiting for a bus is as thrilling as fishing, with the similar tantalisation that something, sometime, somehow, will turn up. George Courtauld
James B. Holland
? Holland Electric Railway Operation....... "O"--Scale St.-Petersburg Trams Company (SPTC) Trolleycars and "O"--Scale Parts including Q-Car mailto: snipped-for-privacy@pacbell.net
? Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
I don't know Jim. They tell us we're at the start of an economic recovery with more new jobs. They wouldn't lie now would they? We just ran an ad for office help at $8 an hour thinking we would get some kid not long out of high school that would work cheap for at least a few months. What we got were dozens of calls from both men and women who have college educations and others with 10 to 30 years of work history who are at the point where they'll take anything they can get. You can see the anxiety in their faces. What was on my mind last week was how to cut out some cash for a brass locomotive. This week I feel privileged that I have enough to buy a pack of #11 blades. I've seen some very bad times in my life and right now is not anywhere near the best its ever been. I understand how they must feel and how hard it is to fight the hopelessness that can overtake you. I also understand that things can and do get better. But to see so many in such tough situations simply saddens me. Bruce
Bruce Favinger ( snipped-for-privacy@swbell.net) wrote: : > Very Possible They Will -- IF the economic contraction gets : > worse! : : I don't know Jim. They tell us we're at the start of an economic recovery : with more new jobs. They wouldn't lie now would they? :
Perhaps they're just not telling all of the truth, by omitting that formerly high-paying jobs are being moved overseas and replaced by "Mc Jobs":
"...``Tech is kind of a mixed picture these days,'' says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement company. ''The offshoring of jobs has become a real cause for concern. It's because of the global labor market. And ironically, the technology has made that an inevitability. It's become the Napsterization of tech work.''
Challenger's comments on the high-tech job market come on the heels of two dismal labor reports.
October showed the largest number of job cuts in a single month in the past year. Job losses last month rang in at 171,874 -- a 125 percent jump in layoffs over September's 76,506 job cuts. It was the highest monthly figure since October of 2002.
The October surge ended a streak of five consecutive sub-100,000 job-cut months. The lowest figure during the five-month period was June when 59,715 job cuts were announced.
Challenger sited the fluctuating technology job market and offshore outsourcing as two factors that led to the high number of job losses last month. And Challenger doesn't see much improvement on the near horizon.
In a new poll of human resources executives conducted by Challenger, 78 percent did not expect to see any significant upturn in hiring until the second quarter of 2004. None of the respondents predicted an upturn in the first quarter. Eleven percent said hiring would pick up in the third or fourth quarter. Another 11 percent of those polled said there would be no hiring rebound at all in 2004.
And the second labor market report wasn't much cheerier.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas released a report showing that job creation in October was heaviest in low-paying areas. Retail, temporary help service firms, and food and drinking establishments were some of the top job creators. Weekly earnings in each average $366, $318, and $225, respectively. All are 30 percent to 57 percent below the national average of $521 per week for all industries.
And more workers are being forced into part-time jobs, while others are being forced to take two jobs to make ends meet. The report notes that 7.5 million Americans worked two or more jobs in October, up from 7.3 million a year ago. The number for which the primary and secondary jobs were both part time increased six percent from 1.7 million to 1.8 million.
: : We just ran an ad for office help at $8 an hour thinking we would get some : kid not long out of high school that would work cheap for at least a few : months. What we got were dozens of calls from both men and women who have : college educations and others with 10 to 30 years of work history who are : at the point where they'll take anything they can get. :
"Rather than send IT work to India, a Boston startup sought locals at the same money. The result: plenty of applicants -- and a lot of questions..."
"...Wilkins is one of a growing number of professionals who've been forced to take low-paying, often part-time, jobs to make ends meet while dealing with the stress of hunting for work in a labor market that no longer demands their skills and experience.
[snip]Counting them in addition to the nation's 8.5 million unemployed, plus discouraged job-seekers who stopped looking for work, produced a 10.8 percent labor "underutilization" rate in February, according to the bureau. That's up from 10.1 percent a year earlier..."
The labor "underutilization" rate is the U-6 rate, which is 9.7% for November, 2003:
"U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)"
: : You can see the anxiety in their faces. :
"They know what it's like to not be able to look their children in the eye when they cannot provide for them as they once did. For some, it's the sting of no longer being the main breadwinner. Of going from being self-reliant to relying on unemployment benefits. And experiencing the dread and desperation of not knowing where the money will come from.
They are among the 2.3 million Americans, including 55,100 in Connecticut, who have been unable to find new employment since January of 2001. Or, like Meriden residents John Bauman, Leon Hall and Rosalind Skinner, the "underemployed": those working part time or temporary full-time jobs, earning far less than they previously made..."
: : What was on my mind last week was how to cut out some cash for a brass : locomotive. This week I feel privileged that I have enough to buy a pack : of #11 blades. I've seen some very bad times in my life and right now is : not anywhere near the best its ever been. I understand how they must feel : and how hard it is to fight the hopelessness that can overtake you. :
"...One month ago, Kevin Flanagan took his life in the parking lot of Bank of America's Concord Technology Center, on the afternoon after he was told he had lost his job..."
: : I also understand that things can and do get better. : Yes, they're getting much better -- for Communist China, India, Russia, Romania, and all of the other countries where jobs are being migrated to.
: : But to see so many in such tough situations simply saddens me. :
We should consider ourselves lucky to have had a viable middle class so long, and remember these as tomorrow's "good old days".
: Bruce :
Job migration is changing the world:
"Symptom or cure?
The outsourcing of jobs to lower-cost locations is not new, but it has a chilling new adjective: professional. Advances in communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to migrate to the developing world as never before - a phenomenon that has provoked an outcry from sectors that had thought themselves invulnerable.
Money Report convened a round table of experts at the Algonquin Hotel in New York last month to explore how job migration is changing the global landscape, and what those changes might mean for investors.
Participants in the panel, which was moderated by Erika Kinetz, were: Eric Johnson, Tuck School at Darmouth, Business Professor Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute, Economist Diana Farrell, McKinsey Global Institute, Director Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley, Chief Economist Edmound Hariss, Guinness Atkinson, Fund Manager
Erika Kinetz: How big an issue is job migration?
Stephen Roach: [by conference call from Singapore] Offshore outsourcing is a huge deal. Twenty-three months into recovery, private-sector jobs are running nearly 7 million workers below the norm of the typical hiring cycle. These are shortfalls we have never seen before..."
--Jerry Leslie Note: snipped-for-privacy@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email
"Grandpa, what was a 'model railroad' ?"
=>Bruce Favinger ( snipped-for-privacy@swbell.net) wrote: =>: > Very Possible They Will -- IF the economic contraction gets =>: > worse! =>: =>: I don't know Jim. They tell us we're at the start of an economic recovery =>: with more new jobs. They wouldn't lie now would they? =>: =>
=>Perhaps they're just not telling all of the truth, by omitting that formerly =>high-paying jobs are being moved overseas and replaced by "Mc Jobs":
...snip...
It doesn't take an economics degree to understand that outsourcing jobs is a suicidal policy -- slow suicide maybe, but suicide nevertheless. No economy can surveive if it dumps jobs for the sake of profit, for by dumping jobs it als dumps the market. One comapny's employee is another company's customer -- and vice versa. The consumer is the _only_ economic engine - not capital, not management, not industry, not technology. Without the consumer, none of these supposed engines of the economy can function. If the middle and working classes are impoverished, the business class doesn't have much of a future either.
What we have in the US is a situation similar to what prevailed in France pre-1784: an impoverished lower class, a growing under class, an over-taxed middle class, and an under-taxed upper class which has abrogated its duty of management and public service to hirelings of one kind or another, and lives off its dividends. You know what happened in France. Can't happen here? Anything can happen here.
Wolf Kirchmeir ................................. If you didn't want to go to Chicago, why did you get on this train? (Garrison Keillor)
Right on Wolf.
-- Cheers Roger T.
Amen! Now is there anything we can do about it short of that revolution you mentioned? Somehow I doubt it.
And the current steel tariffs brouhaha points out how dependent we are on foreign sources for even our basic commodities. That not only puts us at a disadvantage in a war situation, it makes war to keep access to those commodities almost a certainty.
I've supported, and opposed, both Democrats and Republicans since Truman and Eisenhower. I've never been really frightened about the future of our country until now.
New slogan: "Buy it! Charge it! Collect it!"
Andy
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You guys must have gotten a different issue than I did.
Mine had:
6 page article on scratchbuilding a streamliner passenger car. 6 page article on scratchbuilding two bridges 7 page article on scratchbuilding interlocking mechanisms Roque Bluff layout part devoted to handlaying track.Add the great layout spreads and it was one of the best issues in years.
Mike Tennent "IronPenguin"
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