Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »2010 Elections: O Voter, Where Art Thou?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 29, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, October 29th, 2010While the line between real politics and satire continues to blur with serious media outlets pondering the “platform” of a comedy show event, the 2010 elections give birth to a Michigan politician with the interesting name Rob Steele.
 What an apt name for a politician |
This is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining elections since Homer Stokes ran against Pappy O’Daniel in the Coen brothers’ film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
retard really bad Republican; dismantling Social Security is – as we all know – the most important chapter of Frank Luntz’s GOP Playbook. Whatever weirdness comes out of this guy’s mouth shouldn’t be surprising though, his media firm takes great pride in the work they did for Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware candidate who demands to know “Where in the Constitution is the Separation of Church and State?” Doctor Rob Steele’s candidacy has also raised in my mind the question: who wants a doctor as a politician? Isn’t a doctor’s personal job security based on a constant stream of sick people and being in bed with the insurance industry? Doctor. Rob. Steele. For Congress. Read the rest of this entry »
Confessions Of A Plum Market Paparazzi
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 28, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Thursday, October 28th, 2010OR: How taking innocuous photos at Plum Market can lead to veiled accusations of corporate espionage.
 One of the nice displays at Plum Market. Too bad I’ll never lay eyes on them again. |
I had an interesting experience today which – in an indirect way – highlighted the corporate personhood vs individual personhood rights issue. The irony being the fact that it was a fellow personhood that was attempting to assert the corporation’s “rights”, ultimately at some small expense to the corporation. Let me explain. I do a lot of random small business consulting that runs the gamut from point of sale and display advice to web marketing development. Because of my work, and simply because of my nature, I am constantly – in fact almost compulsively – analyzing products, packaging, advertisements, and retail layouts. Today, for the first time amongst many visits to retail stores, I was more or less accused of being a possible corporate spy. I was in a local Plum Market, admiring the spacious, clean displays in their wine section. I ended up taking a few photos for two reasons. First of all, I wanted to show their wine racks to a friend who’s trying to figure out an interesting way to outfit his growing wine cellar. Although Plum’s display racks presented wines in a reasonably attractive way, they also frankly looked like they would be fairly cheap, and suit my friend’s simplistic modern tastes. The other reason I was taking a few photos was because I simply wanted to make a visual note of what I considered less-than-ideal display design that while visually appealing, was oddly flawed in a few ways. I was in fact doing casual research that would probably influence the ideas I would share with a client. It was after I had taken a few photos that an employee walked up to me and said “Excuse me, I noticed you were taking photos”. The camera was already back in my pocket at this point, but I had nothing to hide, and said “Yes, I was. Is that a problem?”, to which he replied: “Well, that depends on WHY you were taking photographs. Are you a competitor?” I replied – quite honestly – that no, I was not a competitor. In spite of being rather annoyed by his accusatory tone, I maintained a brief, courteous dialogue with him in which he explained that “lots of our competitors come in to copy our model, we’re a very successful operation”. There were a number of things that raised my hackles about this interaction. First of all, the simple fact that he approached me with suspicion rather than as a customer. I can understand (within reason) a retail operation’s concern about corporate espionage, but it was immediately obvious that this man’s reason for concern was rather nebulous, and that he was sort of justifying his low-key accusation on the fly. It’s important to note that I’m a fairly distinctive looking person with white hair, wearing a fairly conspicuous vintage grey outfit, taking a couple of pictures, making absolutely no effort to hide the fact. Wouldn’t a “spy” be wearing sweats and discreetly taking pictures with their iPhone, so they could transmit their covert surveillance photos back to headquarters? I’m not the first to raise this question; there are plenty of question & answer posts out there in which people discuss the same topic. And I don’t question a retail store’s right to state a “no photos” policy, as long as they post it. But all the arguments against taking photos while you shop don’t fly with me. Almost anything one could “steal” (i.e., visual presentation) in this context certainly doesn’t require a camera to copy, and if in fact the ideas being “stolen” are somehow a legitimate legal trademark of the store and they get copied and implemented somewhere else, the business can pursue legal action. This article sums up some of my thinking, but this goes deeper for me. Later in the day I asked a barrista at a local cafe how they’d respond to a person randomly taking photos in their cafe, and they said they’d be concerned. When I asked why, they fumbled at a similar answer about competitors. To me, this smacks more of knee-jerk, post 9/11, culture of fear reactions than rational policy. Because I’d bet this month’s Google AdSense revenue that these same stores will let Google take the same kinds of photos without batting a lash, without Google having to resort to these devious methods recommended by The Consumerist. Because you know, a person working for a corporation can’t trust a person, but they can trust another corporation. Watch for a future piece on this topic; I plan to test it out in a variety of stores and present the results. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this though.
This Election Will Be Bought To You By 74 Rich People
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on October 27, 2010 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010If you’re so smart, why do you vote?
 
If you really DO prefer astroturf to grass roots, |
If you’re an American who’s angry about joblessness, the cost of living, government spending, and your mortgage payment, I want to ask you to do me a favor. Put down that teacup and that Obama sign with the Hitler moustache drawn on it for a second, and think. When you go to the polls this fall, don’t think about elephants and donkeys, think about power, money, greed, and media. Now that a corporation has the same rights as a person, and a handful of wealthy people who aren’t you control corporations, before you give that person that vote, ask yourself: am I just voting against something again? Because if you are, there’s a pretty good chance you’re being sucker-punched. When less than a hundred people in America make over fifty million dollars, and money wins elections, who do you really think you’re voting for? Ignore for a moment the fact that NPR is a frightening haven for aging hippy liberal academics, and take a look at this interactive graphic that they’ve created that shows the cash flow between allegedly “grass roots” political action groups and GOP or Democrat sources. If you read or listen to the whole article, you’ll find it’s not anti-conservative, it’s anti-public deception. In fact, it compliments conservatives for refining the dirty methods of Democrats. Don’t think partisan when you vote this time, think about whether or not you want a guy that George Bush referred to as Turd Blossom shaping how you think. Because there’s a good chance he is. Read the rest of this entry »
Are You Beginning To See A Pattern Here?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 26, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010If you are, it’s probably just a mild case of Pareidolia or the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
 Some people can instantly tell how many stars there are in this image. Some have to count. |
I just watched the movie The Number 23, and in spite of the film’s theme of obsessive recognition of numerological patterns, the only pattern I’m beginning to see is that I prefer Jim Carrey in comedic roles. But it did get me thinking about how we perceive things, and the kind of nuttiness that can take over a person’s brain when they first get exposed to things like astrology and numerology (or maybe Fox News). First of all, I’ve always found it interesting that although people typically can’t enumerate five or more objects quickly unless they’re arranged in a pattern, they can, on the other hand, identify random patterns as something meaningful when there’s nothing there at all. That is of course, unless they suffer from Simultanagnosia, in which case they tragically can only recognize ONE object at a time. Combine these innaccuracies of perception, and pretty quickly you realize that we’re probably wrong an awful lot of the time. If you think you’re seeing meaningful patterns in the appearance of numbers or objects for instance, it’s possible that you’re falling prey to something like the clustering illusion or some form of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. All of this frailty of human perception is fine and dandy until you add the emotional component, and end up with a serious case of confirmation bias, which is why I jokingly referenced Fox News at the top. Much like a psychic, media organizations have – whether knowingly or unknowingly – gotten very good at manipulating subjective validation to feed the bandwagon effect. As a result, we end up with a bizarre variant of anthropomorphism, in which people ascribe human and in sometimes superhuman characteristics to talking heads. A pathetic fallacy indeed. I could go on about this for hours, but my cat is giving me that “Oh God, you’re not creating another Wikipedia linkfest masquerading as an article, are you?” look. Besides, I haven’t checked my astrology for tomorrow. So for fun, see if you can find the hidden message in this text by selecting the “xth” word of each sentence.
On The Internet, No-One Can Hear You Scream
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 25, 2010 by admin in Technology
Monday, October 25th, 2010I don’t know why we’re in such a hurry to create a massively connected, self-aware computer. Its first logical act would be to eliminate us.
  Sure. Act all cute and submissive. Personally, I’m not fallin’ for it. |
If you pay any attention at all to the tech press, you may have noticed a lot of buzz over the past couple of years about artificial intelligence, nanotech, robots, and other fascinating technologies. There was, for instance, a recent NYT piece called Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself, which talked about NELL, the self-teaching computer being developed over at Carnegie Mellon. And Wired.com has featured numerous articles about things like how the military is working on near-human robots, a real world c3po, and how they’ll all conquer us guided with thoughts from monkey brains. One of these programs even “discovered” a law of physics on its own. Dear God, haven’t the researchers working on this stuff seen The Matrix, Blade Runner, 2001, Terminator, or any of the dozens of other stories that outline where this will all end up? Dystopia is such a tired trope by now that I just made up a word for it: “dystropia“. But the fact that there’s a cliched sci-fi theme describing our impending demise doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. I recently poked fun at Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology