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Tuesday, 18 October 2005
1300 - Another letter to the Star-Tribune
Doug Grow, in a column in today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, describes a campaign by the mechanics union to harass individual Northwest directors. Here's a reply I just sent as a letter to the editor:
Doug Grow's column on how AMFA is planning to hound the individual members of Northwest's board of directors is way off base. AMFA led its members into a losing strike. Now that it's obvious to everyone except die-hard union zealots that they've lost, and thrown away a couple of thousand jobs and months of severance pay for their members in the process, they're trying to shift the blame.
The problem with Northwest is not the directors. The problem with Northwest is the unions, just as it is across all of unionized America. Union workers have priced themselves out of the global market. Now, they're learning the hard way that they can't have wages grow without bound, just because they want them to.
When the unions wake up and face reality, we'll once again be competitive as a country. Until then, they're hurting far more than they're helping. Confrontational tactics like their pamphleteering campaign won't change a thing.
current mood: ![[mood icon]](https://www.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/annoyed.gif) annoyed
current music: Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
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Comments:
I can agree with most of that, but the idea of realistic union goals being able to make the U.S. competitive again sounds a bit far out. Not that it wouldn't help, but I think it might be difficult to show convincingly that unions are keeping the U.S. from being competitive.
On a different topic, I'd been thinking about writing to you to ask you another question about costume stuff. I don't know about costuming or cons, any of that, but I'm thinking about materials. What do you see people using for helmets and things? I'm interesting in papier mache and foam, or whatever else people are using. The success of my Halloween project, a gigantic papier mache monster/alien head, might have left me feeling overconfident, but this looks like it could be useful.
If you know someone who needs an item like that, just one or two people with no deadline in mind, I'd like a project. Most of the stuff I've seen uses foam, either rigid or otherwise. The pieces of the TRON costume are generally either recycled sports gear or else construction foam, with formed PVC sheet for the lower arm guards' outer part.
I don't think papier mache will hold up that well over more than one or two wearings. It's certainly easy to work with, though.
You might look at some of the fursuiting guides around the net, since this is a problem they deal with regularly. Going with Jay's suggestion to look at fursuiting guides, the memories of the fursuit LJ community may be a good place to start. Foam is common, as is "plastic canvas" (a plastic mesh much like may be used for needlepoint, but held together with zip-ties and hot glue) for form with softer foam over it. It's pretty much whatever anyone can up with that is comfortable and safe. If you only read one thing from that link, read the warnings.
thanks a lot. Right away, I found smoothon.com, which looks pretty good. |
