Friday Flux: The Benefits of Recession

photo via visual candy

"Okay. But back to the recession. Amazingly, it turns out that less money equals more sex. I am not totally sure why this is, because the research comes from what is now one of my most favorite resources, Durex condoms, a site that does provide a lot of qualitative analysis for their statistics. Still, Durex reports that drugstore sales of their condoms were up 6% during the time Lehman went under. And sales in the New York City sex toy emporium Babeland increased 25% in that same time period. So the deeper the recession, the more sex people are having."
-penelopetrunk.com

"But rough times sometimes get people to focus on what matters. And, under Mr. Dutoit the Philadelphia musicians played this Dvorak staple as if nothing mattered more. This was not the most incisive or tautly structured performance. But Mr. Dutoit’s restrained tempos allowed him to draw out the Wagnerian resonances of the music. The strings played with a richness that has long been a Philadelphia trademark. Yet there was uncanny clarity, despite the warmth and body of the string sound."
-new york times, regarding the Philadelphia Orchestra

images via New York Architecture

"According to University of Manchester historian Dr Charlie Wildman, recession can prompt unusual levels of creativity. Having studied Liverpool and Manchester archives from the 1920s and 1930s, Wildman has concluded that the Great Depression spurred a period of unparalleled creativity leading to, among other innovations, the development of the modern high street. Ironically, the same high street to which the current recession is laying waste. Wildman found that during the Great Depression, councils invested heavily in public transport, civic and commercial architecture, civic exhibitions and official celebrations, with municipal rulers, civic leaders and businessmen acting as spurs for what she calls "amazing levels of confidence, innovation and civic pride." She believes that this civic investment acted as "a form of opium for the masses", with its innovations representing a pragmatic response to the threat of extremist politics, as people struggled to cope with the reality of poverty and unemployment."
-The Work Clinic blog