Category: Arts and Culture

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Google vs. “Sicko”

Google ad sales rep Lauren Turner spoke out against Michael Moore’s “Sicko” on a corporate blog, but didn’t stop there. She went on to tell the healthcare industry that Google was there to help them fight back. The industry could counter “Sicko,” she suggested, by buying Google ads promoting all of their good qualities.

I’m all for corporate blogging — transparency is good. In this case, what’s transparent is the fact that Google (or a Google employee – remember, this was a corporate blog, not a corporate statement) feels that advertising is a fine way for deep-pocketed corporations not just to sell products, but to cloud debate on an issue that affects the whole public sphere.

Machinist: But it wants us to believe that we should resolve public policy disputes through search marketing? Advertising is no longer just for selling soap — it’s for democracy, too. Note, first, the irony: Michael Moore accuses the industry of throwing up a haze of marketing, P.R. and lobbying to hide its practices, and Google tells Big Healthcare to respond by buying up more ads.

Turner later posted an apology for the post, but only for her error in framing Google’s policy on the blog; the idea of pushing AdWords/AdSense as a great way to shape public opinion, rather than just to sell products, stood.

Music: Devendra Banhart :: Anchor
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Buck Refills!

Standing in line with Miles for a soft pretzel at Marine World yesterday, found myself staring at big sign hawking a giant plastic bucket emblazoned with the MW logo, which one could fill with a choice of popcorn or cotton candy for a mere $7 (“Buck Refills all day!”) and thinking of Michael Pollan.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan describes the tricky relationship between capitalism and the food industry. You can always sell people more shoes or CDs – we just make space to accommodate them. But humans have a built-in limit to how much food we can consume. Food makers who have to satisfy shareholders’ demands on the bottom line to sell more [widgets/chalupas/corn products] every year have a tough job.

The tension between nature-limited appetites and capitalism’s need to expand, always expand, explains two things: 1) The obesity epidemic, and 2) The relentless introduction of absurd new food combinations in the drive to manufacture desire. Fast food joints re-conjure new variations on the same old limited palette of ingredients. Taco Bell sells little beyond tortillas, cheese, beans, and beef, yet manages somehow to find new ways to recombine them into Mongo Chalupas and Super Beefeater’s BurrTacos year after year. Fruit Loops Cereal Straws are drinking straws made of Fruit Loops material, lined with powdered sugar. Each suck of milk from the bowl brings a mouthful of sugared milk. When done, eat the straw. You see where I’m going with this.

The giant bucket is not a recombinant food creation – what could be more elemental than popcorn or cotton candy? The giant bucket represents the other kind of attempt to sell more food – gi-normous portions (is there a 128-ounce Coke portion available yet? If not, give it time). But it does represent an unbelievable markup on one of the cheapest food items you could possibly manufacture, with the possible exception of bottled water.

We resisted the giant bucket and enjoyed our pretzel, but the entire day at Marine World felt like equal parts pleasure and pain, this weird collision between enjoying the marvels of the deep blue sea (the people mover that carried us along the inside of a glass tube through a tank filled with sharks and sting rays was an experience of rare beauty) vs. a miasma of the most crass and offensive commercialism, not to mention the depressing weight of massive crowds, overpriced everything, and long lines for just about anything, was confusing.

Next time we either head for the tidepools ourselves or bring our own lunch (though park rules explicitly forbid this – wonder why?)

Music: The Avett Brothers :: I Would Be Sad
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Ben Franklin’s Moral Precepts

Ben Franklin’s Moral Precepts:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Via Weblogsky, who considers Stewart Brand to be today’s closest living analog to Franklin (though I don’t think he means it in the moral context).

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Patenting Yoga

Not all goes well when East meets West. The U.S. patent office has been granting patents (yes, patents) on yoga postures and practices, and India’s government isn’t happy about it.

Searches of the database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office show dozens of yoga-related patents have been granted, including one for a breathing exercise, and more than 1,300 such trademarks have been registered.

First of all, I find it almost impossible to imagine that American practitioners are busting moves or other yogic practices that have never been conceived in 5,000 years of Indian tradition. Second of all, is nothing sacred? Third of all, the absurdity of patent overload has been going on for years, but just keeps getting sillier. Except it isn’t silly. It’s bad.

via Weblogsky

Music: The Fugs :: Fingers Of The Sun
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Looking Glass

Birdhouse Hosting congratulates long-time user (and frequent commenter on this blog) Jim Strickland, who just had his first novel, Looking Glass published by Flying Pen Press.

Dr. Catherine Farro, or “Shroud,” as she is known online, is a 40-year-old paraplegic. She works in a virtual reality tank on the security team for a large discount store chain. Friday, payday, she is attacked in the virtual world, where violent hackers run rampant. …

Way to go Jim! Huge congrats.

Music: Phyllis Dillon :: Woman of the Ghetto
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Maker Faire 2007

Spectacle-Tm Spent the day with Miles at Maker Faire 2007, where you can’t swing a cat without clobbering a team of reality hackers. Enjoyed the giant Mousetrap game (perfect functional replica of the original, writ large (very large)), the myriad bicycle hacks from Cyclecide, the whale blimp, Ukey Stardust (the entirety of David Bowie’s ;em>Ziggy Stardust performed on ukuleles), the Victorian mini-mansion on wheels Neverwas Haul, The Disgusting Spectacle (kids running on a hamster wheel cause giant to pick enormous gobs of snot from nose), playing with stop-motion claymation video, performance by the original Pepsi and Mentos dudes, the sonar-controlled self-balancing skateboard (which both Miles and I rode!), the endless procession of robots both sleek and gritty – some of them engaged in mortal combat, others the picture of gentility.

Flickr set posted, though I think my set from last year was better (in fact, I think Maker Faire was better last year in general, but not by much – may have been a state of mind, or creeping jadedness). But Maker Faire has already become an amazing father/son bonding tradition thing for us. Now I just need to learn to weld before he turns five.

Music: Velvet Underground :: Sweet Jane
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Those Fanatical Atheists

For the Ottawa Citizen, Dan Gardner asks just what is supposed to be so radical about Dawkins’ and other popular atheists’ views. Is it what they’re saying, or how they say it?

But just what is the core of Dawkins’ radical message? Well, it goes something like this: If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so. That’s it. That’s the whole, crazy, fanatical package.

Why does fighting for sense and sensibility in full public view make someone a radical? Why do some claim that atheists are just as fundamentalist as the fundamentalists?

This is completely contrary to how we live the rest of our lives. We demand proof of even trivial claims (“John was the main creative force behind Sergeant Pepper”) and we dismiss those who make such claims without proof. We are still more demanding when claims are made on matters that are at least temporarily important (“Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” being a notorious example).

Or is it, as I suspect, the mere fact that they’re saying it all? The strange truth is that questioning religion is still equated with the crossing of a cultural taboo — even (strangely) among agnostics.

We’ve had this discussion here before, but the “fundamental” difference bears repeating: Fundamentalists ask us to accept metaphysical claims without evidence; atheists ask us to question everything — even atheism.

Re-published with public comments on richarddawkins.net.

Music: Deep Rumba :: Si! No!
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Turtle Egg Defender

Santo Que es mas macho? Sea turtle egg, or Mexican wrestler? Millions of Mexican men believe eating sea turtle eggs will enhance their sexual potency – an unfortunate reality for endangered turtles like the Leatherbacks.

Wrestler supreme El Hijo del Santo (“Son of the Saint”) has been appearing in ads assuring his fans that he acquired his super wrestling powers with no help from turtle eggs. Now that’s a role model. Also in on the campaign is Mexican supermodel Dorismar.

The model appeared in print ads wearing a slinky black bikini alongside baby turtles scurrying across a beach. “My man doesn’t need sea turtle eggs, because he knows they don’t make him more potent,” reads the ad’s caption.

Brilliant tactic. I’m trying to imagine how similar campaigns might appear in other countries where species are threatened in part due to demand for animal parts with alleged aphrodisiac powers. Which super-hunks or glamour-pusses are going to stick up for the rightful owners of Chinese tiger penises, or African rhino horns?

Music: Califone :: Pink & Sour
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nonfictionmedia

Birdhouse Hosting user Scott Squire has a gorgeous new portfolio site capturing some of his representative photography and “moving pictures” (not quite video, but not just photography either). Loved his photo slideshow Jump School, on U.S. Army paratroopers in training. Squire also remains one of the most interesting wedding photographers I’ve seen. The site for his coming book Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley is also hosted by Birdhouse.