February 2009 Archives
I've been immersed in school biz & writing this week, but I look forward to posting some of the results as soon as the big mystery project is done. In the meantime, here is the view from my apartment. It's a real source of inspiration and a big reason I took the place--the Chrysler Building's expression of the transformative ideal sparks reflections for my work literally every morning and night.
Via my morning email
A grocery bag from Whole Foods. What interested me most: profit-maximization listed as #4 and framed by "wealth" and "growth."
A sign of the times at the Union Square Whole Foods. Muhammad Yunus is on the Advisory Board of the company's Whole Planet Foundation, which, along with Grameen America, funds microlending in Queens.
The Food Network was filming an episode of Good Eats at the Union Square Greenmarket this morning. Passing this sign meant that I will not receive any proceeds from the t-shirts blazoned with my face that are sure to become a mass market phenomenon once the show airs.
Via InfoAesthetics, which provides an explanation of this interactive graph.
So much information in this check-out charitable tie-in: DR, Heart Foundation, DR's Dollar Club, Coke, Dasani, Nestea, Heidi Klum, fashion--it's a veritable cause-marketing event horizon, sucking the whole store into a black hole of virtuous commerce.
Still in the midst of an intense writing project, but I had to note this interesting news item concerning admission to a new play criticizing Israel's recent actions in Gaza:
Rather than charging admission, the London production is asking audience members to contribute money to Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British-based group. Ms. Churchill has taken the unusual step of agreeing to license the play to theaters at no charge, as long as admission is free and donations are solicited for the medical group, according to a statement in the script.
It's another example how we use the design of exchange to re-focus attention.
Speaking of entrepreneurial rhetoric, were I not in the midst of an immediate project I'd have a lot to say about this must-read post on Gifthub re government support for well-known social enterprises.
It's a phenomenon we see in entrepreneurship more generally, as businesses and business leaders that benefit from tax breaks, government contracts, family wealth or high-profile connections sing the praise of self-sustaining ventures. Smaller, less connected ventures flock to this siren song, only to be surprised when they crash.
This isn't to say that the SEs in question are wrong for taking support where it comes--just that we have to be brutally honest about their utility as a general working model.
A meditation on the long-term educational & cultural impact of Guitar Hero, in the current Atlantic:
Greg LoPiccolo was at pains, too, to point out the educational component. “The game does set you up, in a way, to be more receptive to learning about how to create music,” he said. “You learn about time, you learn about what the parts are … There’s this natural, intuitive knowledge about how songs are composed and arranged that the game totally gives you. My guess is that in five years’ time there’ll be an explosion of garage bands.”
This is a rather busy work week for me--you should see the results of it soon--so posting will probably be light. Still, given what I've been studying re Grameen Check, I couldn't resist posting news of another fashion-related social venture that I noticed while walking home today: DR2's readings of Love, Loss and What I Wore.
$50 bucks a pop, but for a good cause. Perhaps the fashion-and-celebrity connection is a way to patch around the deep discounting that other arts groups feel they have to use now to attract an audience.
I took this picture near my office in July, 2009, as a way of memorializing what struck me as an interesting phenomenon of the time: the marketing of mortgages to first-time buyers as a social benefit.
From a few weeks ago, here's a news story describing a foreclosure auction by Emigrant Mortgage, the company with the ad in the pic.
This really is a great machine, even when put together.
My background today has been Turner Classic Movies, which has been playing a series of films and short subjects from the 1930s. There's quite a bit of fascinating stuff here re the interplay of technology and culture, particularly in relation to an economic crisis.
The cliche that "Americans flocked to escapist entertainment" is enticing, but wrong--there's nothing escapist about it. It's all quite strategic, even at its most playful.
I'll explain this more here & elsewhere once I finish a hard-deadlined project, but for a glimpse of what I'm up to just check out an old Robert Benchley mock-educational short. Stuff like this sounded a death knell for the professoriate as a profession with authority--when everyone has access to rich data and mass communication, someone who claims to hold the information franchise becomes inherently ridiculous.
Does that make the academy obsolete? Not necessarily. However, with seventy+ years more of technological development, the need to adapt becomes even more urgent.
It's class prep day for me, so for now, not much new except my latest posts over on JustMeans, one of which expands upon the lessons social enterprise can learn from the history of conservatism.
That's the theme of my latest JustMeans post, sparked by today's Voice09 keynote by David Cameron.
The Catholic Church revives an old nonprofit design trick in its revival of indulgences. They're not for sale--you just have to make a donation:
There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. . . .
“Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the Catholic magazine America. In a secularized culture of pop psychology and self-help, he said, “the church wants the idea of personal sin back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.”
“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.
A profound meditation with bonus fractals:
"A person has to participate," Studs Terkel liked to say. That's how I feel. Meditating on futility--that's no way to live. One of the most useful pieces of advice ever given me, at a time when I despaired, was: Act as if. Act as if you make a difference. If infinity is too big for you, live in the day. Shakespeare as usual expressed this better than anyone else, and it took him six words: To be, or not to be. That wasn't simply an expression of the Existentialist choice between choosing to live or die. It was the choice to act, or not to act. To participate.
"Martin Luther said if he knew the world ended tomorrow, he would plant a tree," Werner Herzog told me. "I would start a film." What would I do? Plan to review it, and ask my editor to save some space in the paper. If you admire Herzog, you might want to pre-order your tickets. In the cartoons, there are always those wild-eyed guys with a placard saying, The End is Now. We are saved by a loophole: It is never Now yet.
The sex and social marketing trend hits the Wellington Zoo, whose new advertising campaign blends an orgasmic audio track with an adults-only theme to attract Valentine's Day business for its dining room. You don't actually get to have sex at the zoo; what you're really buying is a candlelight dinner overlooking an animal enclosure.
Over at Blog@Newsarama, a librarian comments on comics as an educational enterprise:
Lots of educators are starting to use comics in the classroom. The average superhero comic book issue has roughly 2,000 words. Imagine reading just one comic book a day for a year; you will have read 500,000 words! That's the equivalent of 25 children's or teens' books. That's a lot of words.
Equally important: the kid learns basic principles of graphic design and storyboarding, which are as important to literacy today as words.
One of the highlights of today's visit to the New York Comic Con was getting to talk with the good people at ComicConnect. When we chatted about my work, they immediately declared historian's privilege and let me take a closer look at this original copy of Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman. For those of you who are counting, that's about $250,000 in my hands--and yes, I gave it back!
The provenance of this copy is interesting. The seller purchased it back in 1951 for, IIRC, 35 cents. He was nine years old. Incredibly, the book remains in great condition for one bought by a kid in the days before comics were collectibles--it's CGC graded at 6.0.
Beyond the treasure trove of historic books on display, what interested me most in my time there was hearing about the firm's various experiences with collectors and sellers--potent illustrations of our quintessentially human reaction to creative genius and time.
Redlining refers to a practice of in which people who lived in certain parts of a city could not get certain services, such as loans. This practice came to mind when I was looking over the movie listings for Coraline in Manhattan, where Coraline is playing in 3D in every theater--well, except in Harlem, where the three-dimensional version is not available.
Maybe sometime I'll get a chance to say why, but it has been an interesting week.
Above: one of series of capes available on Etsy. For more, click the pic or go directly to babypop.
My thoughts over at JustMeans.
And for another tangentially football related theme, check out The Super Terrible Social Enterprise.
A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, originally uploaded by Miller Info Commons.
A lot has happened over the past seven days, things that have got me thinking a lot about the ethics of history.
Maybe we'll chat a bit about that here soon enough.
Lux celebrity cancer jewelry from the height of the most recent bubble.
