July 2008 Archives
Foraging patterns designed to protect a hive assist police in tracking serial killers, who tend to exhibit similar behavior:
Geographical profiling (GP) is a technique used by the police to find serial offenders. The search is narrowed down using two common traits: most attacks happen fairly close to the perpetrator's home, but beyond a "buffer zone" that prevents the attacker being recognised or noticed by neighbours.
By mapping out the locations of crime scenes, police aim to identify the buffer zone and prioritise their search in this area.
Bumblebees also leave a buffer zone around their nest to prevent predators finding it, so Nigel Raine, from Queen Mary, University of London, UK, and his colleagues wondered if they could be used to test the effectiveness of the GP model. . . .
By combining computer simulations of the bees' movements with geographical profiling, the team found they were able to locate the entrance to the bees' nest, showing that the police technique was effective.
The researchers say they have also found ways to improve the profiling technique. They have observed different types of foraging behaviour among the bees that could be used to refine the algorithms used by the police, helping to make the technique more accurate.
The resentment continues to build. From the comments:
My dad did the eco-friendly wedding thing last summer. I was a bridesmaid and his fiancee made us carry POTTED PLANTS down the aisle instead of bouquets. They were planted in her garden following the ceremony.
No, I'm not joking, and that was just the beginning.
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Ha. This "laudable trend" is all well and good until you're the wedding planner who has the unenviable task of finding suitable silkworms or the bridesmaids who have to weave some crazy dress train out of organic fair-trade sunflowers.
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So... can we just put eco- in front of anything now and have a hack write a story about it? I'm an eco-writer. All my notebooks are made from twice-recycled newspapers (that themselves were made from recycled Greenpeace posters). I use a quill pen and my own blood for ink. My computer is made of parts I scrounged from the junkyard. My inflated sense of self-importance is completely biodegradable.
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Want to be more eco-friendly? Go nude.
The first time I saw a picture the cover I knew I had to find this comic. I mean, this was the greatest mystery of our times, and I had to learn the answer. So as I scoured flea markets throughout PA & New Jersey, I looked and looked . . . and found it.
And man, was I pissed.
I mean, it's bad enough they're racing to raise money for old-school foreign aid, which we now know ain't all that. I wasn't plugged into that scene when I was nine, so no upset there. No, the real problem was that the race itself was a crock. The heroes run into a couple groups of lame criminals and then end the race in a tie.
A friggin' tie.
So I found the next one, and DC went all postmodern everything-looks-different-from-different-perspectives on me, thereby fostering the disillusionment with crit theory that kept me from smoking clove cigarettes and quoting Foucault in grad school.
Eventually I got the one that set things right but by that point I'd read Green Lantern/Green Arrow and realized it was just a pointless game.
The cover story in today's Women's Wear Daily featured Gwyneth Paltrow wearing the latest designer t-shirt for Key to the Cure, the annual cancer-related charity initiative of the the Entertainment Industry Foundation and Saks Fifth Avenue. The article (firewalled, alas for you) reviews the history of the effort, which has engaged a series of Oscar-winning spokeswomen and raised money in the usual ways.
Below: one of the project's aims, an example of its emotional effect and other recent shirts:
“There is not a woman alive who is unscathed or untouched by cancer,†Wilson said. “For me, the idea to actually fund scientists to help find a biotester, which would be a blood test for breast cancer, is very important. That is in our reach in our generation.â€
Chapman Meyer agreed, adding that the T-shirts also served to help those affected by cancer on an emotional level. When a friend of her sister was in the hospital dying of cancer, Chapman Meyer recalled sending a batch of the Stella McCartney designed T-shirts for the patient and her friends. “They all wore it around her bed, rallied and put her in the T-shirt,†she said. “I think it just gave this friend of theirs who was dying of cancer hope that maybe her daughter wasn’t going to."
Or maybe it just made everyone gathered around the bed feel good about themselves, which isn't the same thing.
UPDATE: OK, I've had my caffeine, so a brief word about that bedside anecdote.
At some point you might read on this site that I'm t y p i n g m y la st pos t from de at hbed, and I know you'll all rush there to send me off. If I have a fatal disease & you decide to cheer me up by slapping on a tee shirt for a race for a cure that I've clearly lost & speculating that there's an off-chance my offspring will survive my cruel genetic legacy, the gleam you'll see in my eyes will not be an inspirational moment of hope. It will be me summoning every last ounce of energy I have to get out of that bed just one more time so I can f**king whup your healthy ass.
Y'know, the direction cause marketing is going nowadays, I think I'm going to quit social enterprise and go do PR for a strip joint. Another year or two and there isn't going to be much difference.
In case you missed this before--or miss having it around for free--Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is up again here. Besides being a quality show that points to the future of sustainable online entertainment, it's also a wry look at good intentions gone bad--an all too common story in the charitable world.
Staying up late to correct typos + plot out a couple paragraph revisions in my social enterprise article, part of which reminds me of the above picture. When I'm enjoying my writing it tends to be geometric; for example, my dissertation didn't work at all for me until I started thinking of it as a Mobius strip.
A less shocking charitable crime than the last one, but while we're on the theme here's the latest on how the economic downturn has made even the Hamptons a bit declasse--and, like the Depression before it, is giving rise to a new generation of vigilante heroes:
We heard this from someone working at Super Saturday in the Hamptons this weekend - for the uninitiated, that's the giant designer sample sale with $1,000 tickets and all proceeds going to ovarian cancer research - and this is what they said:
"I was at [a designer jean]'s booth, and at the end of the sale, you bring whatever you haven't sold to the charity drop-off and it's given away. So we had about twenty pairs of jeans left - we sold, like, three hundred - and we packed them up and got ready to walk them over to the charity drop-off, on the other side of the field, and this guy with a SUPER SATURDAY VOLUNTEER t-shirt comes up and he's like, "You don't have to do that, I'll take care of it."
Our intern got a little suspicious, so she followed the guy - and he stuck the 20 pairs of jeans in his own car and drove off! She didn't say anything - I guess she should have - but we're gonna be scouring eBay, and if those jean styles come up next week in bulk, we're gonna try and bust him."
This weekend five women from the Netherlands endured a horrific experience while participating in a charity event:
Five young Dutch women between the ages of 17 and 25 were raped by a group of Kenyan men last Thursday during a working holiday organised by the Amersfoort based charity Livingstone.
A spokeswoman for Livingstone on Monday confirmed the report which was published in the Reformatorisch Dagblad newspaper, reports ANP news service.
The attacks took place while a group of 12 Dutch volunteers were working on rebuilding a school. Despite security measures, around 10 men forced their way onto the terrain using a neighbour as hostage, reports ANP.
The intruders, who were armed with a gun and other weapons, demanded all those present, including local people and children, to surrender their valuables. Five of the Dutch women were taken to another room where they were raped.
‘They also tried to rape a number of local women but they were eventually left alone because they had babies with them,’ the spokeswoman for Livingstone told ANP.
Staff at the organisation are ‘extremely shocked’ by the attacks and have immediately suspended the Kenyan project, she said.
Maybe explosm.net should send the women a few commemorative t-shirts.
Blah.
Another charitable fundraiser at the San Diego Comic-Con Browncoat table, although it looks like this one is run by the Browncoats and somewhat less controversial. Maybe. Felicia Day, for folks who don't know, recently appeared as the love interest in Dr. Horrible.
As mentioned before on this site, the Browncoats have an impressive record of charitable fundraising.
The frantic sped-up life of New Yorkers--in 1906.
AVN Media Network provides legal advice to budding porn webmasters. It's a lot like the sort of thing you'd hear in a b-school entrepreneurship class, except with shemales and Hot Bukkake Nuns.
NSFW, obviously. Just another reminder that behind the image of sex without consequences there's an all too mundane reality.
Speaking of which, this is as heartbreaking as this is poignant.
Kate Andrews tips us off to a program in the UK designed to promote volunteering with a musical incentive--give four hours, get a ticket to a special concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
Trading four hours in exchange for Busta Rhymes hardly seems a fair swap, but there ya go.
P
Pictured above is a new t-shirt by gone green, "an independent tiny group of peaceful people representing peace, love and happy times."
And, apparently, the unlicensed appropriation of someone else' copyrighted graphic. The giveaway that it's not just a coincidence: the inclusion of the original's distinct design flaws.
This sort of thing happens more than the charitable community openly admits. In fact, I was recently at a do-gooder colloquium in which one of the participants raised a concern about how common it is for folks in these meetings to publish ideas discussed there as their own, thereby undercutting the research of the person who originally raised them in what was understood to be an academic discussion. A prominent academic's response: if you really want to change the world, you should be glad that I publish your ideas--even if I'm the one getting all the credit, the most important thing is that your useful knowledge is helping society.
To which I replied then, as now, bullshit. The academy has norms of attribution; the commercial world has moral rights and commercial licensing. You don't play by those rules, you're a self-seeking opportunist, even if you excuse your theft of someone else's creative insight on the grounds that it's saving the world.
The Community Interest Company is a legal form created for social enterprise. Touted as a symbol of success for a while within the social enterprise bubble, the CIC is not living up to its hype. SSE raises a few of the points made by CIC critics; since they're similar to points I make when telling folks why I don't think the form is a success I'll second 'em here:
Interesting to note that Jonathan Bland has come out to say that there hasn't been enough marketing of the Community Interest Company model. Interesting, also, because of what he said was "absolutely shameful" . . .
But isn't the 'shameful' aspect, if any, that "all that work" and "all that money" went on a legal structure that doesn't appear to be producing any lasting changes to the sector. And that this is the case is as much a structural issue (i.e. how it was set up: the details of the structure) and a choice issue (i.e. there were lots of options anyway) as it is a marketing one. And that all that work and money could have gone into something that might have had a game-changing effect on the movement.
What has become evident is that there are critics of the structure for different reasons: on the one hand, those that feel the regulation around the structure is not sufficiently strong, nor the community interest test sufficiently rigorous, to ensure democratic accountabillity in the governance of the CIC. On the other, there are those who feel that the dividend cap prevents a decent level of equity investment. Finally, there are none of the benefits that a charity might receive (rate relief, tax relief, gift aid etc).
And this is why so many have been writing about this story, and about the CIC structure: at a start-up level, CICs have difficulty (or simply can't) in accessing start-up grants, and don't have any of the benefits associated with a charitable structure. If they are trying to achieve inward investment once established, that is also proving very difficult. In a sense, as someone jokingly said to me, it's "classic third way"....
The star of Firefly and Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog conjures money for charity with a wave of his hand.
Congratulations to Matt Brady & the entire Newsarama team for winning this year's Eisner award for comics journalism! Comics with their blend of words and pictures are the lingua franca of the information age, and for well over a decade Newsarama (in all its various incarnations) has done a great job in providing readers with news, history and analysis.
Possibly the strangest news story this week--a guy tries to win back his ex-girlfriend by . . . well, here's the nefarious plot:
A man who had been dumped by his girlfriend offered a friend £20,000 to kidnap her while disguised as a Dalek, a court heard.
James Wakefield's bizarre plan was for Aaron Rawson to don a £40 toy Dalek voice-changer helmet from Woolworths so that the woman wouldn't recognise him.
He would then abduct her from her home at knifepoint and take her to a wood. . . .
Rawson, 21, claimed he thought Wakefield was joking until the next day when he bought the helmet, along with other equipment including night vision goggles, handcuffs, an air pistol, a balaclava and a boiler suit.
It's a bizarro version of Abducted by the Daleks, the unauthorized soft porn film in which the Daleks kidnap women in the woods and order them to strip.
Moral of the story: People are weird.
For those of you who are into intellectual prpoerty, this is a fun case. In 1965, Robert Morris College broke off from a school that a few years ago decided to rename itself Robert Morris University. Then the Robert Morris College board of directors decided to rename it as a university. Robert Morris is seeking a judicial declaration that changing its name won't infringe on the RMU trademark.
OK, the UK's Social Enterprise Coalition does good work, but this video on "What is Social Enterprise?" effin' blows. Holding hands, doves, snow angels, the gratuitous kiddy cheer at the end--I think the only cliche missing is a puppy. I thought fusing business with charity was supposed to put away stuff like this!
This tee-shirt available at San Diego Comic-Con features a cartoon & catchphrase that's achieved a fair bit of currency on the web. And it's not the only one in the genre, as this thread on Safer Campus illustrates.
Because drugging women and having sex with them while they're unconscious is sooooooo amusing.
Really, if I were advising the Comic-Con management I'd tell the dealer either to pull the shirt or leave. Promoting rape, even--especially--in jest, is inconsistent with the group's mission and also puts it at risk of a lawsuit should an actual incident occur.
Crafty remix of the giant WB bag -- a dress! ComicCon 2007, San Diego, CA.jpg, originally uploaded by gruntzooki.
A San Diego Comic-Con attendee refashions a WB bag into a dress in this image from last year.
Comic-Con International is a marketing extravaganza for comics and movies, but it's also a recognized tax-exempt charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Some observers--including nonprofit watchdogs--have suggested that the commercial hype is inconsistent with its charitable status.
Blog@Newsarama posts my analysis of this issue.
Elsie the cow (1949) Vintage Comic Book. Also Elmer the Bull, originally uploaded by Rick Rack Attack!.
Advertising as children's entertainment in 1949.
The picture above was taken at Frankie & Johnny's, an old New York steakhouse that's scheduled to be replaced with a new condo complex. Forty years ago this was commercial glitz; now it's a fading phantom of a lost authentic city.
We've been chatting about the social role of Starbucks in light of the closing of 600 stores, so I thought it might shed a little light to go back to an article I read way back in law school, when Starbucks in New York were relatively exotic.
In the piece, then and future CEO Howard Schultz describes his strategy of making Starbucks more than a corporatized McDonald's of coffee--an approach that had won him a national award, presented by Vice President Al Gore, from a nonprofit organization for "courage, integrity and social vision in business."
So, why coffee? His ardor for the product started in 1983 with an epiphany in an espresso bar in Milan. "I saw something special," he says. "Coffeehouses in Italy are a third place for people, after home and work. There's a relationship of trust and confidence in that environment. As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in."
Then there's the coffee itself. "How many things do people in America drink every day?" he muses. "Coffee is such a social beverage, a personal beverage. There's the romance of coffee, its history. We had an opportunity to utilize the relationship I saw in Italy, the safe haven of the coffee bar, and package it with undeniably great coffee and service that is completely different from most establishments in America. I mean, we can change how people start their day." . . .
"My father didn't finish high school, and what I remember most was the way he was treated in his adult life, which beat him down. He didn't have the self-esteem to feel worthy of a good job. So, I try to give people hope and self-esteem through a company that respects them. Dad never had that opportunity. The culture and esprit de corps of the company is where I and others in Starbucks have come from. Every one of our actions have to be compatible with the quality of our coffee. It never lets you down."
This strategy is a big part of the reason why social enterprise types have fallen over themselves praising Starbucks as the very model of a do-gooder company.
But it raises some serious questions about social responsibility when things go south. Once a company has positioned itself as the social hub of a community--often at physical locations that are themselves prime geographic hubs--leaving does more than create a retail void. It leaves that community unanchored and re-frames a zone of interaction as a failure. Yes, communities can adapt, but the negativity also has the potential to cascade.
I'm not saying that Starbucks has a responsibility not to close any stores; at some point its metastatic growth had to subside if not contract. But the harsh response does illustrate why a number of business folk prefer to leave talk of social responsiblity out of corporate rhetoric. If you brand your company as one that will never let people down, the blowback can be even greater when it does.
This evening after work I dropped by Apex Art for a guided tour of its new exhibit, Nessie Does New York: Monetizing Myth, Legend & Culture. The host for the evening: the illustrious and able Dr. Alexis Macnab, who besides being an internationally renowned Scottish cryptozoologist is also a rising star at Tribeca's Bat Theater.
The event was a wonderful display of museum exhibit as performance art, taking us through a mock-serious mash-up of various cryptozoology myths that then sequed into a playful debunking in the presence of various forms of trading on the myth.
Pictured above is a close-up of one of three ceramic dioramas prepared for the exhibit; the scene, you might recognize, is the infamous Patterson Bigfoot film referenced on this very blog a few days ago. The stylized folk-art pop evinces the populism of the myths as cultural elements prior to becoming mass market industries.
From there the exhibit moves to TV documentaries on the featured cryptids, a subtle jab at how commercial and nonprofit educational media perpetuate the myths for their profit (as if to underscore the point, this is where Alexis debunks reported sightings, while four different docs somberly recount the evidence as fact).
The exhibit ends with a couple fun scenes. One is a wall of drawings made by museum visitors, with most of the drawings done by children. Finishing it up is a room of crypto-tchotchkes, many of which come from various tourist sites associated with the creatures. If business is commodifying the lifeworld, this is the lifeworld getting a piece of the action for itself.
All in all a great break; if you're in town by August 2 and interested in the relation between commerce and creativity, it's well worth checking out, even without the talented Dr. M. If not, you can take a video walkthrough & read the explanatory brochure on the Apex site.
Though if you're like one of the people in our group who thought it was straight crypto with a real visiting cryptozoologist, you might want to stick with National Geographic.
AMC has placed the finale of the first season of Mad Men online for free, with the last part conveniently starting at one of the greatest moments in TV history: Don Draper's presentation for the Kodak slide projector.
The scene's nostalgia theme has been on my mind quite a bit this week, no doubt due to current events. The gourmet soft swirl trendlet that's been evident this summer caught the attention of the NYTimes, and the purveyors of this ice creamy goodness note their fondness for the Carvel, Dairy Queen & Mr. Softee of their childhood.
A poster on the subway touts the upcoming last concert of the Police for PBS, part of a partnership in which the Police and PBS have joined together to promote classic rock as "television that is untainted by commercialism."
And of course, we can't forget the mothership of nostalgia marketing, the San Diego Comic Con, which the child consumers of the fifties through the nineties have grown up to make comics a respected creative art, playing a role similar to that of leading filmmakers from the nineteen fifties through the seventies.
It all reminds me of the work of Ellen Dissanayake, who writes about the human proclivity for "making special" as the heart of evolutionary aesthetics. We take the found items of existence--childhood, work, mere survival--and create something more.
From Wednesday's New York Times, laments for the closing of a downtown Newark Starbucks:
When a Starbucks opened on Broad Street here almost eight years ago, it was not seen as a bland new spigot of a corporate coffeepot, but as a gathering place whose very existence would have seemed impossible a decade before, a symbol of a knocked-down city’s attempts to get up.
So when Starbucks announced last week that the Broad Street branch would be among the 600 stores that the coffee company is closing around the country, the reaction here was especially emotional, a mixture of anger, disappointment and frustration.
“They’re not going to close the one on Wall Street!†one man exclaimed.
The closings of hundreds of the coffee chain’s branches have certainly caused consternation in other places. But the cafe in downtown Newark is in some ways unique, a high-profile sign to all the people who fear the city that life is normal — if one accepts that part of “normal†is the ability to buy a slightly expensive cup of coffee and a scone in the morning.
So work commitments have you stuck at home while every one else who reads comics--and given the size of today's comics buying market, I mean that literally--is out gallivanting at the San Diego Comic Con. What's there to do except wallow in self-pity and stay late filing TPS reports?
I'll tell ya what, grasshopper. Y'see, thanks to good folks in the Siegel case, you now have a chance to spend this weekend living out the Con's charitable purpose by getting a comics education right here at your computer screen.
The latest briefs from both sides are available, with the Siegels and DC taking their best shot at legal questions arising from the Siegels' copyright interest in the Superman material in Action Comics 1. If the briefs were just dueling legal analysis, I might have just posted the links with a just a promise to write more about it later once my own deadlines are met, but there's more.
A lot more.
- Historic documents from 1938 and 1939 pertaining to the sale of the rights to Superman.
- The findings in the creators' 1947 case.
- Selections from Jerry Siegel's unpublished biography.
- Lengthy expert testimony, including a statement by DC Comics President & Publisher Paul Levitz.
- Web pages that sell Superman stuff (OK, not so exciting there, but look what's next . . . )
- Free comics entered as exhibits by DC to illustrate its legal points.
There are also complete copies of Superman movies, but alas, these have been sealed so as not to be made available for free online as government exhibits.
OK, so it's not quite the Con, but if you & your SO read this stuff while dressed up as Wolverine & Slave Girl Leia it can be a reasonable substitute.
A Lutheran pastor in Wisconsin built a church out of 12000 Lego bricks. Inside he placed its parishioners: toy SpongeBob and Batman, whose Batmobile waited outside.
As Faith Central points out there has been some controversy over Batman's religious affiliation, tho given his social status and 1930s origin Episcopalian would seem to be most appropriate fit. Add to the mix the fact that (in pre-Crisis continuity, anyway) one of Bruce Wayne's ancestors was the Revolutionary War hero--and Episcopalian--"Mad" Anthony Wayne and you have a fair match.The pastor said the project helped him reduce the stress from working so closely with his congregation.
“It can be stressful dealing with the realities of people’s lives,†he said. “It brought me peace and it brings others joy.â€
Regardless, the Lego church seems to be no longer on display, so a C&D would seem to be superfluous!
Murketing rounds up the latest on claims that Starbucks' decision to close in certain locations is a betrayal of corporate social responsibility.
A key excerpt from Dallas:
Starbucks is an iconic brand that means something more than just a company. It’s become a sign of middle-class American modishness. To get a Starbucks in your neighborhood meant that you were validated, in some sense…
For Starbucks to leave means that your part of town, in terms of social psychology, is downwardly mobile.
And from LA:
Starbucks is about more than a cup of coffee in many neighborhoods. That block-letter logo on a strip mall marquee can be considered a public stamp of approval, a symbol of hope, a suggestion of brewing economic vitality. . . .
Starbucks likes to be known as a company with a conscience. CEO Howard Schultz is fond of telling reporters that the firm tries to balance "profitability and a level of benevolence."
I tried calling company headquarters Monday to ask how that balance played out in these decisions. But all I got was an e-mail from a public relations firm, saying:
"Starbucks recognizes the potential social implication that closing these stores may have on the communities they serve. However, it is necessary to make decisions that will strengthen Starbucks U.S. store portfolio . . . and ensure long-term value for our partners, customers and shareholders."
So much for benevolence.
Note the common theme in each of the above: Starbucks is "more than" just a purveyor of coffee. Live by the third space, die by the third space; for communities that are losing their only Starbucks (unlike Midtown Manhattan, which won't really miss six out of the 38 Starbucks on every block), the loss is akin to the closing of a school, playground or prominent church.
It's easy to ridicule, sure, but indicators of downward mobility can be deadly to a community that seemed to be coming out of the muck.
Via Core 77, a report re the boom in sales of branded products made by compulsory labor in prisons:
With orders flooding in on the association's Internet shopping site, all items are currently sold out. The popularity has been so great it is planning to register the logo — designed by a prison official — with the patent office, Nakajima said.
“We thought the character for 'jail' would turn people off, but that turned out to be the big appeal," Nakajima said. "Especially, young people seem to like it.â€
Under Japan's criminal law, the production is part of corrections and vocational training, not for profit, Nakajima said. The Hakodate inmates don't get any bonus from the booming sales of the jail brand and any profit will be used to fund the labor program, he added.
A 1920 ad insinuates links gum to fruit, fostering an association between gum and good health.
It's a link that may seem like a stretch now, but ninety years ago folks didn't have fruit year round & the exotic fruit pictured here--pineapples! oranges! bananas!--was particularly valued. In fact, there's a revealing Skippy cartoon from this era in which Skippy receives an orange for Christmas and is the envy of all the neighborhood kids.
The girl doesn't look too enthused by the sound coming out of her cassette player. Perhaps she expected that with all the different tapes there would be more than the same tune, which is apparently a musical version of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
An interesting blend of commerce and identity symbiosis--as a teenage, BAiNG robbed a McDonald's. He served 12 years (!) for the crime. Now he works with a youth program as an inspirational speaker at juvenile detention centers. To promote his work, he entered a McD's online Big Mac jingle contest--and now he's a finalist. Far from being ironic or lapse by McD's PR, allowing the video to remain in the contest--and, I hope, win--promotes the company as a selfless member of the community, more than just a heartless corporate borg.
A sixty-year-old recreational drug user--and from chocolate to coffee, aren't we all?--catalogs his experience. (Via Jane Sample.) Here's a hit of LSD:
First of all, the “cooks†of the late 60’s and early 70’s were ever so much better than those that came later. Real LSD, not cut with junk or made by some amateur, is in fact a real eye opener like Timmy Leary said in his lectures and books. . . . I do think that it changed my view, perceptions, in that it made me aware of how much of what we see, hear, taste and smell is a function of our brain’s programming. . . . Spinning the dial of a radio and stopping for an instance on some station and the words or tune fitting perfectly into the next spin and stop of the dial as if I had some special magic. Magic. Yes that is word that fits some of my trips. On acid, sometimes, felt that I was in perfect synch with the flow of everything around me. Perfect timing and seeing all the connections between things.
It's a feeling akin to what you get when you study current network theory and stop to work out its deepest implications. Not in a hippy trippy way, but with a bit of rigor and a healthy dose of fun.
Convicted wife-and-unborn-baby killer Scott Peterson has a blog. Top of the page since Christmas: his confession that he & his wife (!) didn't do enough for charity back in the day, followed by a conditional commendation of his mother-in-law for reportedly planning to give a charity all the profits from her book.
Y'know, even if you maintain your innocence, using your prison blog to say the victim didn't do enough for charity doesn't exactly improve your public image.
Here's the post for posterity:
12/26 - Perhaps a Commendation
Laci and I enjoyed supporting education.
I believe that we both volunteered at elementary schools during our high school years.
Later, we were lucky enough to do some things for our college alma mater.
We could have, we should have, done more.
We gave money in our twenties, not time, and time truly is more valuable.
I was pleased when a scholarship fund was established in Laci's name at the
high school from which she graduated. Thank you to those who did this.
It hurt when my donation from jail to this fund was almost rejected, but it was
finally accepted. I assume that this fund is active and productive, I hope so.
The fund is at Downey High School in Modesto, any donation to it is
a wonderful way to carry forth the memory of my wife.
This is titled "Perhaps a Commendation" because if a rumor I heard is correct,
my Mother-in-Law, Laci's Mother, deserves applause. The rumor is that all the
profits from her forthcoming book will be given to an educational charity,
perhaps the fund at Downey High. I hope that this rumor is true.
Some people have done things to profit off of my wife
and son having been taken from me and murdered.
The profits from this possibly going to charity would counter this
disgusting trend. If the rumor is true, what a wonderful act.
- Scott
I stayed up tonight to catch the last installment of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and it didn't disappoint. If you haven't watched all three, go do--and if you have, on your second or so go round pay attention to the recurring theme of Dr. Horrible's desire to create systemic social change--and get a bit of cash.
Y'know, I've never read this story featured on today's Daily Cover, but I think the only way I'd be satisfied is if this were truly what Supergirl did with her exes.
My favorite part: her obligatory self-indulgent laugh. Ha ha!
OK, so yesterday I attended a meeting. Interesting discussion, but since it was under a cone of silence I can't say much. So a few reflections:
1) When someone referred to the current legal status quo I started to say "The status is not . . . quo" but figured no one would get the joke. Sometimes there's no more awkward feeling than explaining a sly reference. Kind of de-slies it.
2) The most important thing for social enterprise right now is not changing the world, disruptive innovation or creating new metrics. It's to become boring. Incredibly, mind numbingly boring. Once the mechanics seem routine, the medium is more apt to flourish.
3) I bent a nice person's ear for way too long with an overview of an upcoming article on identity, religion and business. But it's a coooooool article, with lots of naughty bits. It will truly be the most profane piece of religious writing I've ever done, which is a big reason I think it's right on the money. So, sir, thank you for indulging me as I ran through it--you asked great questions & were a big help.
OK, meeting over. I'd thought I'd come home and write observations here, but that must wait until I process this shocking revelation: when McDonaldland's Grimace first appeared, he was evil and had four arms.
Oddly enough, this picture is pretty much the scene now in my kitchen.
That's one of the things we'll be discussing in meetings today.
And it is. Especially if you're one of the groups that has to follow it.
From Phil Selby's cartoons-often blog, The Rut.
Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN.
Such a use of the Red Cross emblem could constitute a "war crime" under the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law and could endanger humanitarian workers in the future, according to international legal expert Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association.
The same is true if you sew the emblem on your jacket and use it to impress attractive charity workers who are lonely and far from home.
Uh, not that I ever did that.
CRYPTONITE EXTRA:
No doubt I've seen the Patterson film one too many times, because my first thought when I saw this picture was, "So the Red Cross found Bigfoot???"
I've had Bob Fosse on the brain today, and maybe I'll say a bit re that tomorrow. For now, the casting call for the upcoming Spider-Man musical has hit the web.
An odd little thing popped out when I read it. Note the Mary Jane description:
OPEN SINGERS/ACTORS CALL FOR SPIDER-MAN, A NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL
Directed by Julie Taymor, Music and Lyrics by Bono and The Edge of U2
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:
Peter Parker: male, 16-20’s, great Rock voice, can be nerdy with understated sex appeal, good sense of humor
Mary Jane: female, 16-20’s, beautiful girl next door, strong pop/rock singing voice
Principal Woman: female, 25-35 years old, Amazing Rock vocals, think Sinead O’Connor with a Middle Eastern /Bulgarian/Greek/ twist. Foreign, world music types are great, foreign accents are great! All ethnicities.
spidermancasting@gmail.com
What stood out for me: the implicit contrast between "girl next door" and "all ethnicities." Couldn't a beautiful girl next door be Middle Eastern/Bulgarian/Greek with a twist?
Tho all would be forgiven if Principal Woman = Aunt May.
Draft article submitted, with a McLuhan finish. Hooray!
This graph of Flickr groups pretty much sums up what I'm trying to translate into words in my article. Now I'm working on the footnotes, which is the least fun part of any work but is at least close to the end.
People’s Resistance organized hunger strike on December 26 in front of Karachi Press Club. In solidarity with honorable judges who are still under house arrest., originally uploaded by *abro*.
I'm not sure exactly what this Pakistani protester means, but I'm too busy to figure it out. Today marks the home stretch of one of the articles I've been writing on social enterprise, so it's back to work for me, resisting the temptation to shove the mush.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan opened with a historic frontispiece (below) showing the king made up of his subjects. Here's a variant in the 1657 edition of the "Playful Colloquies for the Ladies or Women's Room Conversational Games"--although given the publication history it's possible the image might have appeared first in the 1640s. BibliOdyssey has more on this work & it's well worth reading.
A vintage Avon ad ties into racial progress and identity creation. What ads like this grasp: the role of design in liberating the self from reductive determinism, which can be particularly important in a society that defines women exclusively in terms of household management and objectified sex.
Dear Jane Sample points to this unfortunate example of why you really shouldn't rely on web translators.
Another unusual Green Lantern reference via Postsecret.
A poignant meditation on syntax and meaning by ee cumming, noted in a tribute to the late Linux.com editor Joe Barr:
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other:
then laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
I'm in the midst of a dreaded deadline doom, so no time for substantial comment except to note that Marc Toberoff, the Siegel family's lawyer, has just won another major copyright termination case. The property: Lassie. The issue: whether a prior re-grant of rights can extinguish termination rights. You can read the opinion here; Nikki Finke offers this summary.
Of additional interest to readers of this site who like comics: in assessing the state of the law, this Ninth Circuit appellate court opinion (p. 8540) cites as an analogous Second Circuit appellate court decision, Marvel Characters v. Simon, arising out of Joe Simon's effort to regain Captain America, which ultimately ended in a settlement. Like the Lassie case, the Simon decision involved a previous contactual agreement that could have voided termination rights--in particular, by reclassifying Simon's Captain America work as work-for-hire.
It's the second prominent bit of news re creators' heirs over the past couple weeks. In the U.K., Damien Hirst led more than 500 artists & artists' families in calling for heirs to get royalties for the resale of works of art. Here's a key passage that resonates with why heirs have termination rights in the U.S.:
Our loved ones often sacrifice a lot to support the artist in the family. When it comes to the inheritance of a legacy, ensuring the preservation of works, operating charitable trusts and investing in British artists of the future are just some of the activities undertaken by heirs, often at considerable expense. The royalties arising from the resale right will help fund these projects.
We should be entitled to bequeath our intellectual property – the value of our life's work – to our families.
UPDATE:
This morning I received an excellent question from Michael Grabois re the effect of the Lassie case on the Siegel lawsuits. Here's my answer, brewed along with my morning tea:
Corporate organization is like that who-slept-with-whom map on the L Word--when you chart things out you can find all sorts of unexpected connections. Today, Valleywag looks at the Guardian group's big money acquisition of Paidcontent.org and finds a good punchline:
[T]he sale is odd in many ways. . . . But it does resolve one thing: PaidContent's odd domain name. Insiders have long been quizzical about the ".org", supposedly reserved for nonprofits, on a plainly capitalist blog. Guardian Media Group is owned by a nonprofit trust. Blogging not-for-profit? An apt description of the enterprise for the vast majority of its players.
The Black Canary Barbie--to be released in October--gets a dressing down on Jezebel. Below: the equally criticized Catwoman Barbie.
From William Saletan's Crap and Trade:
Last fall, New Delhi hosted the World Toilet Summit. At the meeting, experts estimated that 700 million Indians lacked access to proper toilets. "Defecating in the open can contaminate water supplies and spread diseases such as diarrhea," Reuters observed. Accordingly, India committed to increase its spending on rural sanitation by almost half, "building toilets for hundreds of millions of its poor and homeless." The country's minister of rural development pledged, "By 2012, India will be free of defecation in the open."
It illustrates a point I make in my classes re the unsustainable (ha!) distinction between do-gooder enterprise and straight commerce--if social benefit is the determining factor, every plumber is a social entrepreneur.
And hey, why not? As someone whose winter snow chores included shoveling a path to the neighbor's outhouse, I will be forever regard indoor plumbling as the apex of social good.
FYI, click through the Flickr pic for translations of the above guide to using a Western toilet.
Part of a series on Refacing Government Tender. Note that the mask is not the only design element in the visual joke.
A stunning artifact in the Art of War series. More here.
The article: Automatic inattention to attractive alternatives: the evolved psychology of relationship maintenance
There can be important reproductive benefits to maintaining a long-term romantic relationship. As a result, humans may possess evolved psychological mechanisms designed to help them maintain their commitment to a long-term mate, particularly when faced with attractive alternative relationship partners. The current study identifies a relationship maintenance process that involves being inattentive to alternative relationship partners. Experimentally eliciting thoughts and feelings of romantic love—an emotion thought to have evolved for the purpose of relationship maintenance—reduced attention to alternative partners at an early, automatic stage of visual perception. Consistent with evolutionary models of mate selection, this reduction in attention was observed only for opposite sex targets displaying high levels of physical attractiveness. This research illustrates the utility of integrating evolutionary models of mating with theory and method from cognitive science.
LOVE can make you blind, quite literally.
Jon Maner at Florida State University in Tallahassee and colleagues asked 57 students in heterosexual relationships to write about occasions when they felt extreme love towards their partner. Another 56 students wrote about feeling extreme happiness.
The students then viewed 500-microsecond flashes of 60 photos, comprising equal numbers of highly attractive and average-looking men and women. As the faces disappeared, they had to rapidly identify shapes that appeared on the screen - a measure of their subconscious visual attention to the photos.
Students primed with thoughts of love took significantly less time to identify shapes after viewing an attractive face of the opposite sex, compared with those who had written essays on happiness. It was as if being in love meant that they were "repelled, rather than grabbed", by attractive faces, says Maner. This may help explain why people in love do not seek out other mates.
The religious analog:
But I say to you, anyone who stares at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (The Gospel of Matthew 5:28)
What the new research would seem to indicate is that the latter is less a mystical sacred sexual breach than a folk observation of the same phenomenon confirmed by academic experiment--attention to another is arguably evidence of a decline in commitment. Important to remember in this context: adultery back in the day was less about sex and more about one's contractual obligation to provide material resources.
If you're into McLuhan, media and cognition, this is one rockin' article. Abstract below:
It has been proposed that social interdependence fosters holistic cognition, that is, a tendency to attend to the broad perceptual and cognitive field, rather than to a focal object and its properties, and a tendency to reason in terms of relationships and similarities, rather than rules and categories. This hypothesis has been supported mostly by demonstrations showing that East Asians, who are relatively interdependent, reason and perceive in a more holistic fashion than do Westerners. We examined holistic cognitive tendencies in attention, categorization, and reasoning in three types of communities that belong to the same national, geographic, ethnic, and linguistic regions and yet vary in their degree of social interdependence: farming, fishing, and herding communities in Turkey's eastern Black Sea region. As predicted, members of farming and fishing communities, which emphasize harmonious social interdependence, exhibited greater holistic tendencies than members of herding communities, which emphasize individual decision making and foster social independence. Our findings have implications for how ecocultural factors may have lasting consequences on important aspects of cognition.
Should have worked even later last night--would have seen this on the Woolworth Building, which is across from my office. Ah well. Accounts of the cross-marketing event can be found here and here, which apparently also included flashing the bat-signal onto the main campus of Pace University, where I teach.
The commodification of city space is an increasingly important question. I'd be interested in learning what approvals the PR firm behind this obtained in order to run the event.
To see the importance of considering the interests of various local communities, one need only look at the negative reaction to the decision to move all the Macy's fireworks downtown to accommodate NBC, thereby cutting out the Queens and midtown viewers who gathered to watch from their traditional viewing locations. Should residents of New York and its surrounding environs have a say in how the skyline becomes a promotional tool?
Mexican comics featuring Memin Pinguin have traveled north of the border, and residents of Houston are upset with the depictions of its African-Mexican leads.
Defenders of the comic cite Memin's "valuable lessons" for real life as justification for not pulling the books from the shelves--and have been known to counter that African Americans offended by the images are insensitive and offensive in regard to Mexican culture.
Folks with a long memory for comics controversies will recall the earlier controversy sparked by Memin Pinguin stamps, which are mentioned in the CNN article and available for your perusal in this Flickr post.
Via Metafilter, links to the complete HQ version of Tod Browning's classic Freaks. This film made a tremendous impact on young me back in the day, and it remains one of my favorites--if you've ever heard me referring to someone as "one of us," watch the scene below (starting at about 3:00) to get the reference.
Via Reverse Cowgirl, Ray Caesar's Day Break Study 2 Above, available for $7,000+ at the Jonathan Levine Gallery--but not, I presume, Diamond, where you can find somewhat less creative variations on the transformative Bat-girl theme.
Brail wine bottles designed for Lazarus Wine.
When civilization is collapsing and the Dreyer's is all gone.
JustMeans is a social enterprise social network that's been doing bang-up work in connecting folks to jobs. It's now in the midst of a major expansion, part of which is a new blog, All Things Reconsidered, on which yours truly just wrote his first post. Even if you think I'm a complete idiot (and yes, you're probably right), it's worth checking out for the other folks posting there.
The subject of my first post: ospop. "Chinese labor shoes."
Doctor Who.
For folks who can't see the connection between my professional life and these various and sundry interests, I'd suggest first--if ya got nothing better to do this summer--that you reread my article on nonprofit design and look for the various thematic hints I've been dropping on this here site. I also have a few larger projects that will make things clearer, and as they get farther along I'll describe them in more detail here.
But for Doctor Who, there's also a more direct connection than my universal theory of do-goodery: Doctor Who is itself a social enterprise, an innovative hybrid venture in service of the public good.
No, really. Y'see, the BBC is a corporation expressly formed for public purposes, such as "sustaining citizenship and civil society," "promoting education and learning," and "stimulating creativity and cultural excellence." Doctor Who is not just the show that receives the greatest number of mentions in the BBC's Annual Report; it's also regularly cited as a show that strengthens families, teaches children, fosters creativity and embodies the highest values of the dramatic arts. Moreover, Doctor Who generates substantial financial returns through the BBC's commercial arm, thereby funding not just itself but the whole of the BBC's public mission.
Of course, with this public mission comes a range of issues quite familiar to anyone who was worked with charitable dramatic productions. How much is appropriate to spend on talent and special effects? Can a program be too commercial? And in a morally diverse society, exactly what social values should it espouse?
Once Series 4 has been shown in its entirety here in the States I'll post an illustrative scene or two, but for now, just this simple observation. When you come into my office and see the show playing in the background, the Daleks on bookshelf and the sonic screwdriver next to my laptop remember--this stuff isn't just entertainment; it's saving the world!
Above: a screen shot for a faux.0 text ad for Gardasil, the controversial HPV vaccine.
Below: where I found it.
A week or so ago I wrote about Grant Morrison's work on comics and corporate identity. Here's a picture I came across today captioned "Grant Morrison as a Young Man." The book he's reading--Batman from the 30s to the 70s--is most appropriate given his current work on the character, which draws heavily on the 1950s material that forms a substantial portion of this collection.
The Batman book is one of several that made lit crit seem old hat by the time I got to college. When you've seen five decades of variation in one character--or read the classic Batman Nobody Knows, where each kid has his own idea of what Batman's like--such things as the death of the author or the social construction of reality seemed to be a convoluted rehash of the comics I'd been reading since I was three.
Land of the Free is a series by photographer Steve Schofield in which he uses "portraits of science-fiction costumers in their homes in Britain" to "investigate how, through a sub-cultural world of fandom, like-minded people establish a fictional existence to escape the everyday."
It's part of the FreshFacedAndWiledEyed exhibit now up in London, described in more detail here by Worldchanging.
i
In light of the parties' failure to reach a settlement agreement by the date set by the court, the judge has set dates for the parties to brief the issues raised by the Siegels' regaining ownership of the Superman material in Action Comics #1.
You can find five of the issues in this document from February and the other two in this order from March. My Blog@ series discusses the background--and of course, there will be much more on this here or on Blog@ in the months to come.
Designed by Little Friends of Printmaking for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Free Summer Kids Camp screening of the classic 1966 Batman movie, this print captures how the movie itself says different things at the same time to kids and adults.
For me growing up, Mad Magazine was *the* window to the world of 1950s and '60s ad design. Now, of course, we see the same this world through the lens of Mad Men, which itself pays homage to Mad's take not just in its title but the occasional knowing reference in the show itself.
Now the show takes things a step further--with a killer Ad Age parody promotional insert.
A response to this t-shirt.
An American Red Cross volunteer in 1919. No Caption Needed has more photos on this theme--be sure to scroll down for the punchline.
I've repeated it enough to folks in the Real World that I should also say it here: a museum should not be a mausoleum, a place where design goes to die. Yet that's what they've become, much to their detriment in traffic and dollars. That's one reason why cutting-edge folks in the museum community are trying a host of new things to give life to the dead--such as this effort by the Tate Modern which is inviting street artists to paint its walls.
The Darwinian marketplace reigns supreme at the otherwise tranquil Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, as programmers look to material ROI in determining which spiritual teachers to hire:
The course listings can seem almost like a collection of randomly combined buzzwords: “path,†“wellness,†“Rumi,†“goddess,†“awakening.†But deciding what goes into those catalogs is a process that leaves little to chance or flow. With one hand firmly on the bottom line and the other grasping for the spiritual firmament, the people who run Kripalu are engaged in a sort of permanent yoga stretch.
“We’re constantly re-examining,†said Kripalu’s president, Ila Sarley. “What are the needs? What are the needs of the market, and what are the needs of society?†In the end, everything comes down to what will bring bodies in the door. “What we’re looking at,†Ms. Sarley said, “is what will someone pay to take a vacation to do.â€
The sure thing: celebrities.
Not so good a bet: do-goodery.
A program on “Conscious Kitchens†featuring the cookbook author and food activist Francis Moore Lappé was poorly attended. “Some of our more socially conscious programs tend not to draw as well,†Ms. Sarley said. “Probably we should have focused more on foodies and gourmet.â€
It's an important lesson to keep in mind--far more people will say they'll buy a socially conscious product or service than will actually lay down the cash.
Via Blog@, news of another controversy involving charity and exposed flesh--this time, a risque drawing of the Hulk and She-Hulk gets rejected for inclusion in a Heroes Initiative auction. We've seen this value clash many times:
Naturally, Frank’s cover would have sold for thousands. Sober estimates (much more trustworthy than the alternative) run at $8,000. It’s a shame. That’s a lot of money for a charity to lose.
Earth Times reports on the controversial charitable blogging of a 19-year-old girl named Xiao Yun, who is posting pictures of herself on a Chinese message board to raise money for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. The gimmick: the more people give, the more pictures she'll post.
Judging by the many photos flying around the web, her fundraising strategy has been pretty successful--so much so, in fact, that she's been banned in Thailand, a response not exactly unfamiliar here in the U.S.
This is a web page created by Do Good Design, a Scottish firm that targets the social enterprise market. Design firms of this type are a growing market, so much so that educational institutions are getting into the mix. For example, not too far from me in NYC: The Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation.
And yes, as I was reminded again last night, I really need to be applying good design to my eponymous placeholder site. But hey--it was the first HTML I ever did, 10 years ago, so it's, like, a protected historical monument or something. Still, I will get rid of it, old picture and all, someday soon when I catch up with my writing projects, honest!
I had one of these back in the day--1969--but even in the environmentalist heyday that was the late sixties & 1970s I never thought of cartoon puppets as the cutting-edge of sustainability. Yet an astute commenter makes the connection:
You know, I think that one great way to reuse plastic bags—since nobody knows what to do with them—is to reintroduce puppet bags.
The same would go for superhero Slurpee cups, I think. I rarely if ever threw those away after one use--eventually I sold most of 'em to collectors.
