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Scam marketing a film scam

Okay, so two Czechs get an art grant from their government and use it to come up with an ad campaign for a new "hypermarket" (ie big-box store) in Prague that doesn't actually exist. In their eyes, the project is a way to satirize capitalism in the post-socialist state. They make a documentary of the whole affair, call it Czech Dream, and shop it to distributors. (It played here at the Tribeca Film Festival recently but I missed it.)

On the website, a trailer for the film portrays a climatic moment: one where the thousands of people who travel some distance for the store opening realize that it's all a ruse and proceed to beat the shit out of the film directors. But here's the catch: the trailer is itself fake. The violent confrontation never happened. When people realized they'd be had, they just shrugged their shoulders and went back to their daily grind.

If you read in-between the lines in the small print on the website, you'll realize the trailer is part of the ruse... but all this begs the question of what exactly the directors are satirizing. The Guardian referred to the film as "ingenious" and that may be (like I said, haven't seen it), but I find this brand of clever annoying. Any of you seen it? (Via Adland)

New from Stay Free! magazine

From issue #24:

The Freaky Universe of McDonald's Advertising:
A brief video history
by Tim Harrod

"Ever since the Earl of Sandwich first ordered meat between two pieces of bread in 1765, entrepreneurs have sold sandwiches to their neighbors who want one. This article is not about those people. Here we will explore the much larger and eviler business of getting them to want the sandwich in the first place. The next step--physically vending a carefully formulated chemical stew that resembles a sandwich--was already explored extensively in Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's famous long-form Jackass stunt, which shocked the eight people who have never eaten at McDonald's with the blockbuster revelation that the food there is bad...."

CONTINUED

Reminder: Wizard People screening Tues. in Brooklyn

Just a quick reminder about the good times to be had at Southpaw tomorrow night. Wizard People screening. (See the nice VILLAGE VOICE review here.) Music before and after the show with DJs Digestif and the Meat Mistress. Free copies of Stay Free! And more!

Wizard People screening
     (aka Stay Free! #24 release party)
8 pm sharp; doors open at 7:30
Southpaw - Tuesday, May 31
125 Fifth Ave. (between Sterling and St. John's)
Park Slope, Brooklyn
(718) 230-0236
$5 cover

Note: Most people will be seated on benches for the movie; feel free to bring a pillow or cushion. We won't make fun of you... just remember: those cold, hard seats are all Warner Brothers fault!

NY Times on Clear Channel

Anyone who doubts that Clear Channel was behind the "pirate" radio station in Ohio mentioned earlier should doubt no more. The New York Times got one of the company's robots on the phone, who explained that the company launched the station to promote a format change. Says the robot (Mr. Lankford to you):

"Clear Channel, as I see it, is dedicated to entertaining radio and to getting results for our advertisers," Mr. Lankford said, noting that the company owns both conservative and progressive talk radio stations. "There's a hole in the market here and we're going to fill it."

...and that hole is (drum roll, please) progressive talk. Yes, I will say that again: Free Radio Ohio is to be a progressive talk station! Now if you'll excuse me I think I'll go shove an icepick in my ear.

(Thanks, William Moree)

p.s. Can anyone recommend any noncommercial (or at least non-Clear Channel) progressive talk radio in Akron? Email me or post comments and I'll add your suggestions here.

Piracy is Good?

Some of you might have read Mark Pesce's two-part series Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV. For the uninitiated, here are parts I and II.

Pesce argues that Hollywood needs to give up fighting illicit downloading and find a new revenue model (no surprise there), but his plan leaves some questions unresolved. He suggests cutting out the middleman by abandoning the networks and having TV producers work directly with ad agencies. Sounds good to me. But his "big idea" for making money is to integrate more advertising into the shows. The problem I see is that this doesn't leave space for noncommercial programming. One reason HBO shows are such a success is that they needn't rely on ad revenue; viewers pay a premium price for quality. How will that work with internet-based distribution model where everything is free?

Phone ring tone set to top U.K. charts

Video killed the radio star, now cell phones have killed the video star.

From Business Week: A cell-phone ring tone based on the sound of a revving Swedish mo-ped, "Crazy Frog Axel F," appeared set to top the British singles chart Sunday, outselling the new single by Coldplay by nearly four to one.

Sounds to me like poetic justice. Now if only someone could base a cell-phone ring on the sound of a toilet flushing...

(Thanks, Joe Garden!)

Internet delusions

It used to be taken for granted among employees at TV and radio stations that every so often you'd get calls from schizophrenics complaining about the voices in their head. People with schizophrenia are prone to hallucinations, and in the Western world one of the most common themes in those hallucinations is media-related; people will attribute their delusions to TV, radio, and various forms of advertising. (A friend of mine has a brother with schizophrenia who used to be obsessed with subliminal advertising.) So I guess the new study showing that psychotic delusions increasingly concern the internet shouldn't be a surprise.... especially given I've had my share of internet-related delusions myself!

Remixing MoMA

The New York Times has a story today about folks who have made irreverant audio tours of the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, and other art establishments. If you have an iPOD you can download these podcasts and follow along as tour guides comment on the works currently on display. Neato!

It's all in your brain, girls

Update, 6/5/05: Mind Hacks points out other problems with newspaper coverage of this story, in that it misinterprets the study's findings.

The Independent UK published a story last month claiming, "Anorexia Linked to Brain Defect, Rather Than Social Pressures." "The full story leaves a considerably different impression than the headline. The professor who led the research, Bryan Lask says his research shows a genetic pre-disposition to anorexia; as he says, people aren't "born anorexic."

There may be a grain of truth to this. After all, a variant of anorexia preceded the rise of electronic media. But fixating on brain chemistry like this drives me nuts.

If any mental illness can be tied to socio-cultural causes, it is eating disorders; anorexia and bulemia are as scarce in societies without TV as societies before TV. Remember the Fiji Islands study [$ req.; see article below]: before TV, voluptuous female figures were the norm; after TV, a sudden rise in eating disorders. An internet seach for pro-ana sites will result in dozens (if not hundreds) of sites by anorexics, who post photos of Calista Flockhart and other rail-thin models for inspiration.

Among teens, an unhealthy focus on body image is kind of a national hazing rite; the vast majority of my girlfriends in high school worried about their weight. About half of my close girlfriends, I later found out, actually had full-blown eating disorders. I was a chronic dieter myself -- and I only weighed 120 lbs!  It's pretty clear to me that most eating disorders go undiagnosed or untreated; many of us, who never saw ourselves as anorexics or bulemics, grew out of it.

Those who see anorexia as a biology-based disorder see it as a discrete problem: you either have anorexia or you don't. But the health effects of our obsession with thinness would be more accurately imagined as a continuum, with people who literally starve themselves to death on one end, and the girls who merely feel like crap about their bodies on the other. When you look at it this way, tracing the problem to a brain defect starts to look ridiculous.

Pointing to brain chemistry has obvious advantage, of course: it gives pharmaceutical companies a chance to offer drug treatments.

- - - - - - - -

The New York Times
May 20, 1999, Thursday
Study Finds TV Alters Fiji Girls' View of Body

By ERICA GOODE 

BODY
"You've gained weight" is a traditional compliment in Fiji, anthropologists say.

In accordance with traditional culture in the South Pacific nation, dinner guests are expected to eat as much as possible. A robust, nicely rounded body is the norm for men and women. "Skinny legs" is a major insult. And "going thin," the Fijian term for losing a noticeable amount of weight, is considered a worrisome condition. But all that may be changing, now that Heather Locklear has arrived.

Just a few years after the introduction of television to a province of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu, eating disorders -- once virtually unheard of there -- are on the rise among girls, according to a study presented yesterday at the American Psychiatric Association meetings in Washington. Young girls dream of looking not like their mothers and aunts, but like the slender stars of "Melrose Place" and "Beverly Hills 90210."

"I'm very heavy," one Fijian adolescent lamented during an interview with researchers led by Dr. Anne E. Becker, director of research at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center of Harvard Medical School, who investigated shifts in body image and eating practices in Fiji over a three-year period.

The Fijian girl said her friends also tell her that she is too fat, "and sometimes I'm depressed because I always want to lose weight."

Epidemiological studies have shown that eating disorders are more prevalent in industrialized countries, suggesting that cultural factors play a role. But few studies have examined the effects of long-term cultural shifts on disordered eating in traditional societies.

Dr. Becker and her colleagues surveyed 63 Fijian secondary school girls, whose average age was 17. The work began in 1995, one month after satellites began beaming television signals to the region. In 1998, the researchers surveyed another group of 65 girls from the same schools, who were matched in age, weight and other characteristics with the subjects in the earlier group.

Fifteen percent in the 1998 survey reported that they had induced vomiting to control their weight, the researchers said, compared with 3 percent in the 1995 survey. And 29 percent scored highly on a test of eating-disorder risk, compared with 13 percent three years before.

Girls who said they watched television three or more nights a week in the 1998 survey were 50 percent more likely to describe themselves as "too big or fat" and 30 percent more likely to diet than girls who watched television less frequently.

Before 1995, Dr. Becker said, there was little talk of dieting in Fiji. "The idea of calories was very foreign to them." But in the 1998 survey, 69 percent said that at some time they had been on a diet. In fact, preliminary data suggest more teen-age girls in Fiji diet than their American counterparts.

The results of the study have not been published, but were reviewed by the psychiatric association's scientific program committee before being accepted for presentation at the meetings.

Several of the students told Dr. Becker and her colleagues that they wanted to look like the Western women they saw on television shows like "Beverly Hills 90210." One girl said that her friends "change their mood, their hairstyles, so that they can be like those characters." "So in order to be like them, I have to work on myself, exercising and my eating habits should change," she said.

But Dr. Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, said that he doubts that television was the only factor in the changes. "I think that television is a kind of metaphor of something more profound," he said.

In contrast to the solitary couch-potato viewing style displayed by many Americans, watching television is a communal activity in Fiji, Dr. Becker said. Fijians often gather in households with television sets, and sit together, drinking kava and talking about their day's activities, the TV on in the background.

"What we noticed in 1995 is that people had a sort of curiosity, but it was a dismissive curiosity," Dr. Becker said. "But over the years they have come to accept it as a form of entertainment."

Fiji residents have access to only one television channel, she said, which broadcasts a selection of programs from the United States, Britain and Australia. Among the most popular are "Seinfeld," "Melrose Place," which features Ms. Locklear, "E.R.," "Xena, Warrior Princess," and "Beverly Hills 90210."

Dr. Becker said that the increase in eating disorders like bulimia may be a signal that the culture is changing so quickly that Fijians are having difficulty keeping up. Island teen-agers, she said, "are acutely aware that the traditional culture doesn't equip them well to negotiate the kinds of conflicts" presented by a 1990's global economy.

In other Pacific societies, Dr. Becker said, similar cultural shifts have been accompanied by an increase in psychological problems among adolescents. Researchers speculated, for example, that rapid social change played a role in a rash of adolescent suicides in Micronesia in the 1980's.

Former Nazi wants credit for designing VW logo

Hitler's role in launching Volkswagen is well-documented, but it is nonetheless entertaining to hear that a former Nazi party designer is suing the company over its logo.

Before heading off to that Homeland in the sky, Nikolai Borg wants Volkswagen to recognize his contribution to the company. According to his IP lawyer, Borg helped design VW's logo and seeks only credit, not money, for his work.

Sounds like someone in crisis management is working overtime this weekend.

(Via Adfreak)

Update to Clear Channel post

Since Clear Channel took down the Radio Free Ohio site, I've posted text from the site here.

Also, the sleuths at WOXY uncovered remnants of the Radio Free Ohio bulletin board, which Clear Channel also took down.... so if you wants to make a donation to Radio Free Ohio (!) or just mouth off, you still have a chance.

Nets Arena Plan Stuffed

I don't know how I missed this, but yesterday's New York Post reported that the MTA was going to have open bidding on the Atlantic Yards instead of fake negotiations with Forrest City/Ratner and the Nets.  (Registration required)

I can't be too excited, but I'm hoping that this will be a more honest bidding process than the Jets West Side charade. I was disheartened a bit when I read that "[r]eal-estate experts doubt any serious rivals would make a play for the Atlantic Yards, because Ratner has already cut deals with many of the private homeowners near the site." Still, fingers crossed.

(Via dailyheights)

As for the West Side stadium bid, I'm pleased to say that the state legislature is doing a good job of bottling up the public financing bill until the International Olympic Committee makes its final site recommendations for the 2012 Olympics. (Paris is a lock, by the way.)

(Via Field of Schemes)

Say It Loud!

While looking for a Viva Judaica Foreskin Extender, I came across African Pride Hair Relaxer.

(Thanks Alexandra!)

More 911 Madness

An 86-year-old woman in Charlotte was arrested for harrassing 911 operators to complain that a local pizza place wouldn't deliver a single slice. Further charges were added when she bit the officer who responded to the call. That seems unfair; the woman was clearly very hungry.

(Via The Smoking Gun)

Previously: BK 911

Radio Free Clear Channel

It's official: even Clear Channel is sick of Clear Channel. The company has set up a fake pirate radio station [taken down, 5/26/05] in Akron, Ohio, which it's using to hurl insults at other Clear Channel stations. For about a week, Radio Free Ohio has feigned overthrowing Ohio's media monopoly by bleeding its broadcasts into other Clear Channel stations. Sayeth the website:

Radio in Ohio sucks. We know, We've listened.

Radio has changed. Gone are the days of big name personalities who weren’t afraid to play what they wanted. Gone are the days when we could hear a newsman deliver the news about what was happening in my town without follow-ups on runaway brides or stories about a Game Show host bedding a contestant.

Most importantly, gone are the days of multiple viewpoints and opinions. Instead we get corporate mandated opinions from talking heads. Corporate controlled music playlists, and so on.

Except for the line about "big name personalities" (I mean, who are they supposed to be pining for? Dick Clark? Alan Freed?) it's not bad, huh?

The station was outed by someone at WOXY, who looked up the Radio Free domain name and saw that it was owned by Clear Channel in San Antonio.

I supposed this isn't all that surprising coming from the company that pioneered the art of making generic, nationally produced newscasts sound as if they're local. Still, it's hard to believe that upper management would have their heads so far up their asses as to think this is a good idea. Chances are they plan on using this "guerilla" marketing to convert one of their stations to a new "alternative" or liberal talk format, but all it's really going to do is piss people off.

Anyway, I think of all this as good news: Clear Channel is so desperate to defend its turf that it'll even try joining the chorus of critics.

(Thanks, Sarah Riegel!)

Update: The RadioFreeOhio website is now just radio silence; nothing but a launch date and a promise of "revolution." But we've posted some text from the site here.

Update 5/30/05: Clear Channel acknowledges stunt. See this followup post.

Waiting to Expel

I was reading in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (copied below the fold) about the ongoing research into treating premature ejaculation as a "disorder." In the absence of drugs designed for the purpose, SSRI antidepressants such as Paxil and Zoloft are being prescribed; the new drugs in the pipeline are also SSRIs, even though SSRIs are known to have "sexual side effects such as damping libido."

So, you will last longer before orgasm, but won't enjoy it very much.

One drug under development, dapoxetine, also causes nausea. So let's tally this up; with these treatments: It takes a while to reach orgasm. The sex isn't particularly enjoyable. And you get nauseous. It sounds like they are trying to turn men into women. (Or at least the women I've dated.)

The Next Wave of Sex Drugs; In Wake of Viagra, Pharmaceutical Industry Targets Another Male Malady

By JANE SPENCER and SCOTT HENSLEY
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May24,2005;PageD1

The drug industry has made billions by taking the stigma out of the once-taboo subject of erectile dysfunction. Now, it is targeting an equally delicate problem.

A number of pharmaceutical makers, including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and several biotech companies, are testing new drugs to treat the sexual complaint of premature ejaculation. The condition affects 15% to 30% of American men, according to many estimates. That makes it more common than erectile dysfunction, which affects about 10% of men. In the wake of the success of impotence drugs like Viagra, which are now a $2.5 billion-a-year industry world-wide, drug companies hope the emerging treatments could represent the next generation of blockbuster lifestyle drugs.

One of the new drugs, Johnson & Johnson's dapoxetine, has been under review by the Food and Drug Administration for six months and soon could be the first treatment approved for the condition. A major study presented yesterday at the American Urological Association annual meeting in San Antonio showed dapoxetine pills could help men with the dysfunction delay orgasm. Before taking the drug, the men in the study ejaculated less than a minute after starting intercourse, on average; the drug helped them last about two to three minutes longer. The study, which also showed the drug has some unpleasant side effects including nausea, has been submitted to the FDA as part of the final stage of the drug-approval process, known as Phase III. Even before a drug is approved specifically for the condition, some doctors are quietly prescribing a number of existing drugs. The most common are a class of antidepressants that includes Paxil and Zoloft and has been shown to delay orgasm. Other approaches include prescription topical numbing agents such as lidocaine and a range of unproven over-the-counter products, such as the herb damiana.

Researchers are also exploring whether erectile-dysfunction drugs like Viagra can alleviate premature ejaculation.

The move to treat the disorder with drugs is sparking debate about whether drugs are always necessary. A number of past studies have shown that nondrug interventions, such as therapy and behavioral changes, can be 70% to 80% effective. Even the new study on dapoxetine found that men taking a placebo were also able to increase their staying power.

Some critics worry that the drug industry may try to cast a range of normal sexual behavior as problematic in an effort to create a market for the new drugs.

But like impotence, premature ejaculation is recognized as a legitimate medical diagnosis, and is listed in the official manual of mental disorders used by the psychiatric community. As with other conditions that were once though to be purely psychological, such as depression, research increasingly suggests the condition has a biological basis.

The idea of treating it with a pill emerged only recently. Some see it as just the latest step in the drug industry's growing push to target lifestyle issues.

MEN'S HEALTH

Prevalence of male sexual problems:

•Climax too early: 30.7%

•Anxious about performance: 17.8%

•Lacked interest in sex: 14.7%

•Trouble maintaining or achieving erection: 10.2%

•Sex not pleasurable: 8.3%

•Unable to achieve orgasm: 7.8%

Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, based on survey of
1,410 men, age 18 to 59

There is some speculation about whether the drugs could delay orgasm in men with normal sexual function -- potentially creating an even larger lifestyle market. Jon Pryor, chairman of the University of Minnesota urology department and the principal investigator on the dapoxetine study, says he believes the drug could potentially delay ejaculation in the general male population, though a potential downside could be an inability to achieve orgasm at all. Johnson & Johnson says it is testing the drug strictly on men diagnosed with premature ejaculation and will market it only to that group if it is approved.

Drug makers face some challenges if they want these new drugs to rival the likes of Pfizer's Viagra, which passed the $1 billion sales mark within a year. A report by Merrill Lynch on Johnson & Johnson's drug pipeline estimated that U.S. sales of dapoxetine in 2008 could range from $350 million to $1.15 billion.

Dapoxetine didn't significantly improve the sex lives of everyone who tried it in the study. Less than 50% of the dapoxetine study participants reported "good" or "very good" satisfaction with sex at the end of the study.

One challenge for drug companies, doctors and patients is defining what constitutes "premature." A recent study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine sponsored in part by Johnson & Johnson attempted to define the problem by giving stopwatches to the wives and girlfriends of 1,587 men, and asking them to measure the period between penetration and ejaculation. Men who considered themselves "normal" averaged 7.3 minutes. Men who considered themselves "premature" averaged 1.8 minutes. But the study also found that anxiety over the issue varied greatly.

"The number of men who want to be treated for PE is far less than the men who report having it," says Ira Sharlip, a urologist and spokesman for the American Urological Association.

Johnson & Johnson is confident there will be a market for the drug. "There's a lot of cynicism out there about if this really is a condition or not," says Usman Azam, the company's vice president of urology drug research and development. But he notes that 10 years ago, people thought the same way about impotence.

Dapoxetine works in a similar manner to SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) antidepressants like Paxil, which regulate levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain -- but it works much faster and can be taken one to three hours before sex. Ongoing research suggests that changes in serotonin metabolism in the central nervous system may be responsible for the timing of ejaculation. Ironically, SSRI antidepressants are known to have sexual side effects such as damping libido. But the sexual side effects may be less-pronounced in a short-acting pill.

Pfizer is also testing a short-acting SSRI to treat premature ejaculation. The experimental drug had progressed to the early clinical trial stage in 2003, according to a review of research projects the company released that year. A Pfizer spokesman declined to give an update on the project but said the company "is conducting studies." Several smaller companies are also working on pills, including Enhance Biotech of North Carolina.

Some doctors have also been studying whether impotence drugs could help men with premature ejaculation. The results are mixed. While one study suggested sildenafil citrate, the active ingredient in Viagra, can delay ejaculation, a more recent study found the drug did not. (Even with Viagra, men lose their erection after ejaculation.) The new Johnson & Johnson-funded study on dapoxetine involved 2,614 men age 18-77 in stable, heterosexual relationships. All were diagnosed with premature ejaculation. (That meant they typically ejaculated in under two minutes after sex started and felt considerable distress over the issue.) One group took a 30-milligram dose of the drug, another group took a 60-milligram dose, and a third group took a placebo. Wives and girlfriends timed intercourse with a stopwatch over a 12-week period.

Men taking the highest dose of the drug were able to last for just over three minutes, up from an average of 55 seconds. But they also had the highest rate of side effects: About one in five experienced nausea and 6%-7% experienced headache, diarrhea or dizziness. Side effects were milder at the 30-milligram dose. On that dose, men were able to delay ejaculation to about 2.8 minutes. Men in the placebo group were able to delay ejaculation slightly -- to about 1.8 minutes.

Did somebody say healthy?

Meanwhile in London, McDonald's drums up  business

From the Children's Hospital and Health Center website:

It’s important for children to have good nutrition and their favorite foods, especially when they are sick and in the hospital. We’ve planned our menus to include foods that are healthy and liked by most kids.

    * Patient meals and snacks
    * Cafeteria Hours
    * Vending machines
    * McDonald's

And this hospital has plenty of company.

The Fruit That Ate Itself

During "snack time" on a recent overseas flight, we were befuddled to receive a small package of "orange-flavored" craisins. Now, we have no problem with giving a cute (if a tad misleading) name to dried cranberries. But throwing in orange flavoring? We figured most people, when hungry for the taste of an orange, would simply eat an orange, not seek it out in craisin form. Evidently, the good people at Ocean Spray disagree. Could this be the first step in the development of a "mega-fruit" that dwarfs Mother Nature's offerings? What's next, banana-flavored apples? Pumquats, now with three times the pineapple?

Philosophically, this is even more troubling. Think about it too much and your brain melts. We'll just stick with red meat and deep-fried Twinkies from now on.

Product music today

Via Metafilter, I recently discovered this mind-boggling collection of IT-related corporate anthems. Corporations have used songs to rally employees for decades, of course. Many companies (especially department stores and railroad companies) had in-house musical groups in the 1920s... and industrial musicals were the rage among managers, who used them to recruit and motivate employees in the 1950s and 1960s. But who knew companies still made promo music?!

Granted, a solid percentage of these songs weren't actually sanctioned by management, or at least not with any degree of seriousness. "At Honeywell Our Quest Is Quality," for example, was written by an enthusiastic employee in the early 1990s. And the wretched, Philips-themed remake of John Miles' 1976 hit "Music"--which simply replaces the word music whereever it appears with "Philips" (as in "Philips was my first love / And it will be my last / Philips is my future / And it will ever last")--is probably a fake.

But some of them were indeed created for corporate events and miscellaneous rabble-rousing. Of these, the ones I found entertaining are Hewlett-Packard's ode to its fallen email program, OpenMail; Richard Stallman's "Free Software Song" (which uses the melody of a Bulgarian dance tune),  "Come on Board with BlackBerry" (performed calypso-style to the tune of  "Love Boat"). Many of these songs, like the Starbucks number we posted earlier, are based on awful pop hits that they manage to make awful-er. (Hmm, wonder if they got permission...)

Sport Fishing

Stay Free! Issue #24 is slowly being uploaded to the website. We've just added a pair of interviews that I did with Andrew Zimbalist and Neil DeMause about how sports team owners get the public to pay for private stadiums.

Unused rail yards have never been so popular. Owners of sports teams across the United States see these large, unused spaces as ideal locations for new stadiums. Proponents of stadium building tout their projects as a combination jobs program, civic-pride-generator, and tax revenue bonanza, but the reality rarely lives up to the hype.

Baltimore and Denver built stadiums for their baseball teams on abandoned yards and now the owners of the New Jersey Nets and New York Jets want New York to do the same. Nets owner Bruce Ratner plans to move his team to Brooklyn, where he hopes to build on the Atlantic Yards. The project would be getting more attention if the Jets hadn't been simultaneously plotting to build a new stadium above the Hudson Yards on Manhattan's West Side. Not surprisingly, both stadium plans require New York taxpayers to subsidize construction.

Andrew Zimbalist, best known for his critical analysis of stadium funding, consulted for Bruce Ratner on the Nets proposal. Along with Roger Noll he edited the revolutionary essay collection Sports, Jobs & Taxes. His new book, National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer, was published in April. He spoke with Stay Free! by phone about public financing for stadiums and his evaluation of Ratner's Atlantic Yards project.

Neil DeMause is coauthor, with Joanna Cagan, of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit. A native New Yorker and longtime Brooklynite, he monitors plans for new stadiums across the country at his website, FieldofSchemes.com. Stay Free! met Mr. DeMause at Vox Pop in Flatbush to talk about the local stadium proposals.

Reading Salon

I just caught up on reading the past month or two of Salon. A few items of note (you have to watch a commercial or subscribe to read these):

Don't buy it!
In this shallow, muddled critique, writer Stephanie Zacharek dons an indier-than-thou attitude toward shopping magazines, referring wistfully and unironically to the "early days" of Lucky, before the editors sold out. Zacharek -- a committed shopper herself -- calls Lucky, Cargo, and its ilk "art rock masquerading as art" and yearns for a magazine that portrays buying as "a way of exercising our own creativity." For those of us who hate shopping, this is like having an alcoholic review beverages; her idea of what's good and bad are on a completely different plane. I personally find shopping magazines refreshingly honest. There's really not much difference between Lucky and Glamor, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, or Self -- those are all essentially shopping magazines, too. At least Lucky et al. admit it.

American Girl crazy!
This is the Salon I've missed. Margaret Talbot wrote this smart and eye-opening piece on the American Girl phenomenon. She attributes part of the dolls' success to KAGOY; parents who fear their daughters growing up too fast see the historical dolls as a sort of an antidote, an anti-Barbie. Talbot also shows that American Girls are an economically and racially diverse lot; the company has created a Native American, African American, and Latina, and attempts to teach tolerance through history. However, the dolls are so expensive that only middle and upper-class families can afford them. Ironically, they end up dividing girls in the real world between the haves and the have-nots, as only those who have get invited to American Girl-related playdates and those who don't are left out.

God? Sure, whatever
I mention this article only because it reminded be of a superb piece that appeared in the New York Times Magazine a few years ago, The Trouble with Self Esteem, by Lauren Slater, which basically argues that self-esteem is grossly overrated.

Pimpin is easy...in Brandweek

Check out this ad from a recent issue of BrandWeek. When I was teaching 12th graders about mass media, one of the ways I'd illustrate the central role of commerce was to familiarize students with trade ads, which always manage to portray the target audience as affluent, sheep-like spenders (often a touch glassy-eyed). So I've seen a ton of these things, but this one's a new beast... not so much the prostitute-like solicitation or the promise to "get em' while they're young," which appear in many trade ads targeting young people. No, I'm talking about the barcode. Where have we seen that before? A similar image -- of a man with a barcode on the back of his neck, with the title "The Product Is You" -- once appeared in Adbusters. Another, on the cover of Kalle Lasn's book Culture Jam. Reminds me of a clip I heard last week of a KROCK DJ telling a hostile crowd at a Pavement concert, "We OWN you!"

(Thanks, Rob Walker)

Copyright holder demands that the blacks know their place

The Rogers and Hammerstein Foundation withdrew the license to perform some of the music in Big RIver from a high school production because it used reverse racial casting (or, more accurately, colorblind casting that resulted in reverse-race casting*) for the roles of Huck Finn and Jim. Way to keep that black actor in chains, R&H! Maybe instead of a slave, he can play a drug dealer or pimp in the next production.

Obviously the foundation doesn't see it that way; it argues that the role of race in Twain's story requires that proper respect be given to the race of the characters in casting. I can't help but think  they are missing the point. Nobody watching the play will become confused about the history of race and slavery in our country. Once the audience adjusts  to the skin color of the actors it will be able to watch the play, and understand the weight of the racial issues it portrays, in a way that I think Twain would have appreciated.

(Via Sivacracy)

* It is easy to assume that this was a Joseph Papp-style stunt casting in which the point of the production was to reverse racial roles. In this case, it doesn't appear to be true. The white actor playing Jim is apparently a big kid with a deep baritone; the African-American actor playing Huck comes up to his shoulders. According to the director, switching their roles for the purpose of maintaining racial consistency would have been a silly sight gag because the young Huck would have towered over the older, stronger Jim.

Roads to Salvation

...but no tailgating

Highway billboards have been around for so long that we hardly notice how intrusive they are anymore. Once they became ubiquitous, they just became background noise. But the noise is getting kind of preachy. Jim Hanas has a good piece on the return of the Godspeaks billboard campaign.

God speaks through billboards? I guess He decided that the whole "signs and wonders" thing was too ambiguous.

Introducing the H2 Salute

Perhaps this archive of photos of people shooting birds at Hummer drivers may inspire you to do the same, though personally it reminds me of the homeless guy who sits in the subway silently muttering profanities to himself. Then again, as Charles pointed out, Hummers are basically a big, rolling "fuck you" to the world; these folks are simply responding in kind. That's all fine and good, but if you're concerned about public safety, let me suggest that you not take a photo of yourself flicking the bird while driving.

(Thanks, Andrew Hearst)

King of Beers Executes Disloyal Subject

From the Associated Press:

Ross Hopkins, 41, filed suit in Weld County District Court, saying American Eagle Distributing Co. has no right to tell him what kind of beer to drink when he is off-duty.

Hopkins said he was fired in May 2003 after the son-in-law of the [Budweiser] distributorship owner saw him drinking Coors in a Greeley[, Colorado] bar.

When Coca-Cola did the same thing a couple of years ago, the union claimed it was retaliation for organizing activity. The AP story doesn't point to similar motives in this case, but I can't help but feel sorry for the guy. I can certainly understand why he wouldn't want to drink Budweiser, but it seems a shame to get fired for drinking a Coors. It's like getting punished twice.

(Via Metafilter)

BBC wants to be free

I couldn't help but notice a certain irony to Wired's embrace of the BBC. As Cory Doctorow writes, the BBC has been outdoing itself lately in opening up access to its content and encouraging its audience to remix, repurpose, and experiment. For the copyright reform movement, in has become a model media outlet. But how does this fit with Wired's free-market ethos? The BBC is closer to a socialist model than any mainstream outlet we have here in the US; it's funded by the British government, which charges TV owners a household license fee (tax). Are the libertarians finally recognizing the possible advantages of public funding?

My Pepsi hallucination

Whenever I look at those new Pepsi ads, this is what I see (as illustrated by Mr. Torchinsky).

What's wrong with this picture?

Study says acne drug does not cause depression (May 16, 2005, Reuters)
A popular acne-fighting drug that has been linked to birth defects and is being monitored for ties to suicide did not cause depression in a group of adolescents, a study said on Monday.

Acne drug reduces teen depression (May 17, 2005, Boston Globe)
Accutane, an acne drug that a Food and Drug Administration whistle-blower said was too risky to be widely sold, has been shown to reduce adolescent depression.

(Via Psych Central)

Separated at Birth, inanimate edition

I've always found Circus Peanuts a fairly repellent candy. And I've never been too big a fan of the flavor of earplugs. Now I know why.

So really, the differences seem to be scale, slight color variation, and packaging. Perhaps one is sweetened more, too.

Defend this, Johnson

From the NYT letters to the editor:

We can defend our extensive TV viewing today as providing as much education as it does entertainment. Absorb a couple of hundred Law and Order episodes, and you just may lay the groundwork for becoming a good defense attorney. Do the same with C.S.I., and you will have a layperson's grasp of pathology, medicine and trauma. And Everybody Loves Raymond has to be the most comprehensive exegesis of the complexities of marriage and the parent-child relationship that I have ever seen — or read.

I kid Mr. Johnson, of course. This isn't at all what he is talking about and I can't imagine that he would defend the person who wrote this letter.* On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of muddled thinking that people who hear about his research are likely to assume.

Trust me: the only thing that people should "learn" from Law & Order about defending themselves is to exercise that right to remain silent until there is a lawyer around to do the talking.

* If the person was serious. I suspect that C. I. Campbell of Moorestown, NJ was making an ironic joke that was mangled by the letters page "editor"; Carrie disagrees. I speak from experience: I refused to let the Times publish a letter that I wrote because the editing process so altered the tone and meaning of my original letter that I didn't want those words published in my name. Others haven't been so lucky. (Click here and scroll down to #29.)

I tried to call C. I. to clear this up, but I haven't found a working number. If you how to contact him/her, please drop us a note.

Still more integrity than Talon News

The Hindustan Times appears to have published, in full, a press release from Pizza Hut about the introduction of the Freshizza. The "reporting" includes this gem:

The new crust is neither too thick nor too thin. It has delightfully soft texture and uses a uniquely flavoured tomato sauce, Mozzarella cheese, combined with an exciting range of toppings and garnished with orange Cheddar cheese.

Still doubt it was a press release? How about this?

An international brand with an Indian heart, Pizza Hut made its foray into India with a dine-in restaurant in Bangalore in June 1996.

I assume the crack HT staff is hard at work on a science feature describing the engineering miracle that gets cheese inside the crust.

(Via Heaneyland!)

"Are you SURE you're using that kidney?"

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a disturbing article about organ donating. Turns out that there are essentially no regulations protecting donors -- no followup, no nothing. So if you donate a chunk of your lung and run into respiratory problems six months later, you're pretty much out of luck. In fact, a substantial number of kidney donors end up having to get kidney transplants themselves. (We don't know how substantial because these things aren't tracked.)

The federal government has hired a private corporation to oversee organ donations, United Network for Organ Sharing, but that group has no regulatory power. So when hospitals prompt family members to donate by referring to "unused" kidneys, or use other manipulative measures, the injured parties have little recourse.

Anyway, it's a great piece.

Buying books and things online

Some of you may have noticed the ads for Amazon and Powells I just added to the blog. In our struggle for world domination, Stay Free! has signed on as partners to these sites, which means 5-7% of all purchases by people who click-through to these sites will go to Stay Free!  Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone is planning on buying a $2,000 flat-screen TV anytime soon. (By the way, most blogs that link to Amazon have this deal, so anytime you're thinking about buying from Amazon and want 5% less of your money to go to the powers that be, just click through to the site from an affiliate.)

May the Forcefed be with you

Tim was the first to figure out how much you would have to eat to collect all of the promotional Star Wars Skittles and M&M's wrappers. Now the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood had cited Tim's math and found one more gluttony-inducing promotion, this one from Burger King:

To collect all thirty-one Star Wars Super D toys “for free,” kids will need to buy more than five Burger King children’s meals (690 calories, 28 grams of fat, and 35 grams of sugar) per week during the six-week promotion.

Is Jabba the Hut one of the toys?

Museum prankster strikes again

Remember the guy who surreptitiously hung up his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Brooklyn Museum, among others? Well, word has it the artist known as Banksy is back in London. He placed a piece of his, a bogus historical relic, somewhere in the British Museum, where it has remained undetected "for quite some time." Tired of waiting for a proper unmasking, Banksy is now offering a reward to the person who can find his piece among the historical artefacts in the museum collection. Here's a hint for treasure-seekers: it's the only cave drawing you'll find that features a shopping cart.

(Via Eyeteeth)

Pricing the Priceless: the perils of cost-benefit analysis

I've just added a fine interview from issue #23 to our online magazine archives:

Pricing the Priceless: How much would you pay for a case of chronic bronchitis? What is a humpback whale worth? And how many poor kids can your company kill per year? Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling discuss the sordid world of cost-benefit analysis. (See also: The Costs and Benefits of Setting Yourself on Fire.)

Strawberry, cherry, and lead

NOTE: OC Register links require registration; see BugMeNot for easy login.

In April 2004, the Orange Country Register reported that candies made in Mexico and sold in the U.S. are laced with lead. Lest you need convincing that the current FDA is a disaster, here's proof: the agency has known for over a year that Mars Inc. is selling the candies and failed to do anything about it. As the Register reports,  leaded candies are still on the shelves.

Mars, for its part, gets to play the Good Samaritan. In response to the Register story, the company announced a "voluntary recall" of the leaded goodies... (I love that term, voluntary. It's as if removing toxic candies from the market is an act of charity. As if Mars is doing us a favor.)

Most all of the tainted candies are Mexican brands not widely advertised in the U.S. (The Register created a helpful guide to avoid them; see also these posters in English and Spanish.) Candy manufacturers south of the border produce two versions of their products: a cheap, spicy version is made for Mexicans -- that's the one laced with lead -- and a bland, lead-free version designed to pass U.S. standards. Invariably some candies intended for Mexico end up here, where they're consumed by (surprise) mostly poor and working class latinos. Though this scenario is ripe for conspiracy theories, it's really a matter of simple economics. I think it's safe to say that we'd see a very different response if the tainted candies were, say, M&Ms and Snickers.

(Thanks, Pat Johnson)

Microsoft wants your thoughts

Have you heard the one about Microsoft's recent announcement of a short film competition? Titled Thought Thieves, the contest is about intellectual property abuse (though not the abuse you may have in mind):

Thought Thieves is about people stealing and profiting from your creation or innovation. Think about it: how would you feel if you saw your hard work being passed off as the property of someone else? What would you do? We want to know! Send us your short film on intellectual property theft by 1st July 2005 for your chance to win £2,000 worth of film and video equipment vouchers.

Microsoft wants to pitch piracy as a plagiarism issue, but if you take this at face value, who the target thief supposed to be? Negativland? The Guerilla News Network? With pirated movies -- truly pirated movies -- there's no question of who the author is (though the question of who's getting paid is another matter entirely).

I don't know about you but I think it'd be terribly funny if Microsoft's contest judges got more than they bargained for -- piles and piles of videos, works critical of the copyright cartel as well as random found clips, bootlegs, and orphaned films. Calling all pranksters...

(Thanks, Ed Halter)

Diabetes Association gives Cadbury a little sugar

We mentioned earlier that Cadbury Schweppes is now a proud sponsor of the American Diabetes Association (ADA).  It looks like the ADA is giving Cadbury its money's worth: the group is now denying that there's any evidence showing that sugar has anything to do with getting diabetes.

My favorite quote from the story is that the endorsement is only for diet sodas, as if the main products the company makes aren't candy and sugary sodas.

Maybe Anheuser-Busch can put an endorsement from MADD or AA on O'Doul's.

(Via Commercial Alert)

Libertarianism, I'd like you to meet Darwinism

From USA Today:

People who ride in pickup trucks use seat belts less often than passengers in cars, and the consequences are deadlier: A higher percentage of people killed in pickup truck crashes didn't buckle up compared to those in passenger cars, the government reported Monday.

I expect the opposition to motorcycle helmet laws will work itself out this way too.

Are you gonna trust me or your lyin' centrifuges?

Jesus, people, let's get the story straight: is TV is making people smarter or not? Because of TV cop shows, audiences have unrealistically high expectations of police departments. Investigators are calling it the CSI Effect. It is hard to tell if this is good for the defense or the prosecution:

[S]ome defense lawyers say CSI and similar shows make jurors rely too heavily on scientific findings and unwilling to accept that those findings can be compromised by human or technical errors.

Prosecutors also have complaints: They say the shows can make it more difficult for them to win convictions in the large majority of cases in which scientific evidence is irrelevant or absent.

Now, as ever, all that really matters is having the right lawyer ... but anyone who has been watching TV cop shows knows that already.

Other Famous Photograph Quotes

This is from about 5 years ago, but I was always struck by the similarity. It's from a Variety article about the release of the boring Will Smith and golf movie The Legend of Bagger Vance. Was this intentional? I doubt it. But I sure as hell hope it was.

Music videos quote famous photographs

One of the dirty little secrets of the music biz is that directors sometimes base their music videos on pre-existing photographs. I say "dirty" because some of the borrowing has all the subtlety of an MC Hammer hit. This (excellent) 1996 article from Film Comment refers to the practice as plagiarism, and I certainly wouldn't go that far, but it's hard not to empathize with some of the copyright rights holders mentioned here. Robert Frank, for example. Don Henley took some photographs from Frank's classic book The Americans, recreated them, and made them appear to come to life in his video for "The End of Innocence." Where Frank's book was a somber meditation on class and the mythical American Dream, Henley's video was an unabashed celebration of that myth. A generation raised on MTV wouldn't know the difference, or even catch the reference. If I were Frank, I'd be livid -- and he was. Henley ended up having to pull the video from MTV. Still, this doesn't make laws forbiding artists from transforming copyrighted works a good idea; a law that prevents odious or hackneyed borrowings will prevent critical or beautiful ones as well.

(Thanks, Blue Montakhab)

Wal-Mart's latest expansion

No longer satisfied with being the world's largest retailer, largest grocer, third largest pharmacy (so far) and (eventually) largest bookseller, Wal-Mart is moving into a new sector: church.

In recent years Wal-Mart has hosted dozens of its employees' weddings. My heart breaks for Beverly McCutcheon, who got married at an upstate New York store. She has so internalized Wal-Mart's draconian labor policy that is almost seems romantic that her friends are economically imprisoned at work during normal wedding hours. Says Ms. McCutcheon,

We're a very close family here. All my co-workers are friends. They couldn't get the day off. So, I brought the wedding to Wal-Mart.

It is no mystery why Wal-Mart is more than happy to host the wedding. Ms McCutcheon again:

I think everybody should get married at Wal-Mart. What better place to get married. I can shop when I'm done.

Yes, why follow up the ceremony on the happiest day of your life with camraderie and dancing when everyone can just get back to work and you can pick up a new garden hose. Word is that Barbara and her new husband are honeymooning in the housewares department during her Monday lunch break.

(Thanks, Iain Aitch!)

JAMA study finds that you can't trust JAMA studies

I always love when the Wall Street Journal runs stories critical of the pharmaceutical biz because it justifies my paranoia about taking newer prescription drugs. Last week's report on worrisome medical journal articles is no exception. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association basically concluded that doctors and other medical professionals can't trust sources like...the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Why? Because the authors of JAMA articles, who are often funded by drug companies, have a strong tendency to leave out inconvenient details about drugs' safety and efficacy... but no surprise there. The real shocker is that the clinical trials detailed in medical journals were usually designed for purposes other than what the authors describe. In other words, the "scientists" conducting clinical trials will start off testing a drug for, say, its effect on chorelsterol levels; once they find out it's not working, they'll switch gears and come up with a different end-goal -- for instance, lowering the risk of stroke -- and never report the change.

The journals, for their part, like to point the finger at individual scientists, but they really should be taking a serious look at their conflict-of-interest policies.

Kids, don't smoke these delicious, candy-flavored cigarettes

It looks like the tobacco companies have found another way to not market to children: they've introduced cigarettes with candy flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, and "Midnight Berry."  According to USA Today, "Tobacco makers say they're just trying to get adult smokers to switch brands by offering a wider array of choices." I wonder if they have the same spokesperson as Hostess.

Personally, I prefer the real thing.

Unbossed and Unfancy

One of the guilty pleasures of the otherwise quite serious documentary, "Chisholm: Unbought and Unbossed" is watching the campaign ads of the various Presidential candidates. The tune for "Nixon Now" (You can download the ad here) is surprisingly catchy and unrenlentingly optimistic, especially in contrast to the images of the war in Vietnam. The ads by McGovern, Humphrey, and Wallace are all refreshingly talky, on point, and on the issues. Chisholm herself comes across as straightforward, funny, and full of integrity.

If campaign commericals interest you, A Historical Look at Campaign Commericals lets you download whole commericals from 1960 to the present, making a good case for the argument that it isn't just nostalgia; political campaigns, even after the arrival of television, focused more on substance than they do now.

Eat, Consumer!

Someone has gone after the USDA's new Food Pyramid by posting a look-alike website for the US Department of Agribusiness. The language isn't as subtle as some of the Yes Men's best pranks, but we appreciate the effort.

(Via Sivacracy)

Stay Free! in St. Louis this weekend

For those of you making the trek to St. Louis this weekend for The National Conference for Media Reform, I'm going to be on an panel about intellectual property -- along with the esteemed Kembrew McLeod and Siva Vaidhyanthan -- on Saturday at 11 am. Also, Charles and I will be hanging out in the "exhibit" area, with piles of Stay Free! back issues and other goods that we are forbidden from selling but are allowed to offer as donor "premiums." (Leave it to leftists to come up with such a policy....) Anyway, come by and say "hi."

The short history of flash mobs

Here's one of my favorite articles from the new issue of Stay Free!:

Remembering Flash Mobs
Who'd have thought a single email designed to mock New York scenesters would have turned into an international craze? The founder of flash mobs talks to Stay Free! about his experiment in social networking. Interview by Francis Heaney.

New issue of Stay Free!

A new issue of Stay Free! should be in a store near you by the end of May. If you don't want to wait, you can buy it online. Or if live near South Central, Brooklyn (Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Boerum Hill, and Prospect Heights), you can pick it up FREE in these places.

• Bill, the founder of flash mobs, looks back on his legacy
• How stadiums turn public money into corporate profit (interviews with Andrew Zimbalist and Neil deMause)
• A brief history of McDonald's commercials
• Restaurant reviews by Eugene Mirman
• The Federation of Black Cowboys
• Negativland's Mark Hosler interviews a man who makes robots for Christian theme parks
• Interview with Jeffrey Meikle, on the cultural history of plastic
• Carrie McLaren on advertising and the idiot consumer (historically)
• Interview with Mark Peters, candidate for Brooklyn DA

Museums go shopping

Reader Chad Laird tells us:

There is an interesting article by Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times today about corporate sponsorship of art museums.  Kimmelman focuses on the way museums must maintain a difficult balance between profit and public trust, but also touches on how corporations elevate products like Chanel to art-with-a-capital-A. Conspicuously absent is any mention of how artists such as Hans Haacke have been dealing with these problems since the 1970s.

(Thanks, Chad!)

More sinister than Habib Marwan

I am not ashamed to admit: I am a huge fan of the TV show "24." Haven't missed an episode. Sure, I winced at "12:35 a.m." this season when the show took a sharp turn to the right: A pesky lawyer from "Amnesty Global" kept the Counter Terrorism Unit from using force to obtain crucial information from an associate of the terrorists. (And did they also want us to think he was a Jewish lawyer? Oy vey.) But I kept watching. I'm hooked.

However, a new low was hit this week at "3:07 a.m." Habib Marwan's ever-resourceful and carefully multcultural band of terrorists attempted to jam CTU's satellite servers. Ah, but the bad guys were thwarted because of the new security system installed just last week. And it was made very clear that it was a Cisco Systems security program. Corporate America saved the day!

In this admittedly stressful 24 hour day, more than 6 hours are already commercials. They've been repeatedly infiltrated by moles, but I hoped CTU was safe from product placement.

New, updated Wizard People

The Illegal Art Exhibit is pleased to report that we've just received a new, updated version of Wizard People, Dear Readers, Brad Neely's much-loved (albeit unauthorized) take on the first Harry Potter movie.

For those of you in New York, we will be screening the new WP in a couple of weeks:

Tues., May 31, 8 pm (sharp!)
at Southpaw
Park Slope, Brooklyn
(part of our SF! issue #24 release party). 

I've also posted lo-res mp3s of the audio on the Illegal Art website, so you can get it for free as long as you are reading this.

The most significant changes are in the second half of the movie, so if you don't want to fuss with downloading the whole thing again, just get disc 2. The new version reflects the improvements Brad made in the course of performing the movie live. Basically, he continually added new, funnier lines and took out the dead ones, then rerecorded the audio and improved the syncing.

For more on Wizard People, see NPR, Salon, and the New York Times.

BzzOff

Thank you Creative Commons, for reversing your decision to allow BzzAgent to conduct a pro bono buzz campaign. Fortunately, we weren't the only folks creeped out by the unapologetic pod-person-like BzzAgents who promote products to their unwitting friends. Creepiness aside, the campaign for Creative Commons struck us as more insidious than, say, a campaign for Al Fresco sausage.

While we won't presume to doubt that Dave Balter, BzzAgent's founder, is a fan of Creative Commons, we also do not doubt that he is a businessman. Chances are, he is hoping to Bzz-market ideas along with consumer goods. Whatever one thinks of political discourse in this country, at least our barroom squawking has the merit of being generated by true believers. We'd hate to see BzzAgent turn to politics, but we suspect it is part of the business plan.

We prefer our paid-for campaigning public, thanks.

A soldier of God defends his copyright

Howard Hallis created this lovely parody of Jack Chick comics a while back, which earned him a takedown notice from Chick. He could have made a fair use defense since this is pretty clearly parody, but, rather than worry about it, Hallas decided to remove the strip himself.

Also check out Hallis' Picture of Everything, a series of sprawling illustrations in which he manages to include every identifyable person, character, or thing in his life: from Dr. Seuss to the Patridge Family, the Jolly Green Giant, Crass, Count Chocula, and Gamera, alongside his family and friends.

And the circle is complete

Promoter of wisdom-through-thoughtlessness Malcom Gladwell reviews Steven Johnson's paean to enlightenment-through-passivity (about which we should talk less, but can't) in this week's New Yorker. Proving, I guess, that even the New Yorker would rather watch TV than read the New Yorker.

If you will excuse me, I have to gather up the bits of my brain, as my head just exploded.

(Via Gawker)

This street is my street

New to Brooklyn is a street art project that claims a copyright in its emphemeral chalkiness. I spotted one of these a few days ago, but I didn't have a camera at the time. Fortunately, Paul Peter did, and he posted a pic on the Daily Heights message board, which I reproduce here. Enforce that copyright at your leisure, Ellis G.

(Via Daily Heights and City Noise)

More on watching television

Wired magazine asks: Why are IQ scores rising around the globe? The story is by Steven Johnson, the same guy who wrote Why Television Makes You Smarter (which we discussed here and here). Both pieces reflect the arguments Johnson makes in his new book, Everything Bad Is Good for You.

I found the Wired story interesting, but don't buy it. Even if we accept that IQ is a viable measure of intelligence; that the different IQ tests created over time measure the same quantity; that the tests are implemented objectively, with samples representative of the population at large, there are problems with Johnson's argument. For one, he oversimplifies the IQ findings (New Scientist, 3/2/02) and overstates his case. As Johnson acknowledges, the significant leaps in IQ scores are found mostly in a certain kind of problem solving: one measuring visuo-spatial relationships. Researchers point to a number of possible explanations for the changes in IQ, but Johnson ignores those. He also ignores all countervailing data (for instance, the fact that the same researchers have found *declining* IQs in industrial nations over the past five years), and attributes all positive changes to media use.

My main problem with the article, though, isn't in the details but with the suggestion that we should "Stop reading the great authors and start playing Grand Theft Auto."

Though it may surprise a few of you, I don't doubt that TV has helped us improve our faculty for visuo-spatial relationships. My concern is that by shifting our attention from the page to the screen -- by watching more than we read -- we are losing more than we gain. Obviously, television does some things better than print. If you want to teach people how to tie a Windsor knot, showing a video beats handing out written instructions, which would make a relatively straightforward task seem like a confusing, complicated exercise.

But what about philosophy? Which medium better prepares us to understand, I dunno, utilitarianism? Or tort reform, intellectual property law, or biochemistry?  Reading and writing help us acquire the ability to reason, to analyze arguments, and to spot errors in truth and reason. Television is not only inferior for communicating complex ideas, it works against them.

I remember watching the first Bush/Gore debate with several friends in 1999 and all of us felt that Bush won. Gore came off like a real tightass: patronizing, uncomfortable, fake. Bush was a guy's guy, someone you'd enjoying chatting up, even if you disagree with his politics (and all of us did). Months later, I read a transcript of the same debate and was blown away by how different it seemed. Gore responded to questions in complete sentences; he stated his positions and supported them with clear, salient evidence; he pointed out contradictions in Bush's platform without succumbing to the easy impulse to "go negative." Bush, in contrast, repeatedly dodged questions by turning them around and by mouthing lines from stump speeches. He demonstrated shockingly little grasp of the issues and spoke robotically in stock phrases ("from the heart," "uniter not a divider," etc.)

Seeing this on TV, I failed to notice the substance of the debate; my experience is far from unique. It's now taken for granted that tan and handsome JFK trumped sweaty, stubbly Nixon in an infamous televised debate, but what is often left out is that the majority of people who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon won.

And remember John Kerry? Part of the reason he lost the election was his inability to conquer television. By making nuanced, complicated arguments, he set himself up to charges of flip-flopping. It's like that old Nickelodeon tagline: You can't do that on television. And the reason you can't do that lies partly in the commercial nature of the medium, but, more fundamentally, in its syntax.

Words and sentences allow us to state explicitly the relationship between things. We can say, for example, "I'm not going to support that campaign finance bill, even though I support campaign finance reform, because that bill will prevent real reform from ever passing."  Or, "If elected, I'll help keep jobs in America by getting rid of loopholes in the tax code that allow US corporations to operate taxfree offshore." On televsion, such statements are reduced to "He is against campaign finance reform" and "My opponent will raise taxes."

Words allow us to specify cause and effect; to state something's relationship to the past or future; to distinguish potentialities from possibilities and probabilities. There's really no way to do this with images; unlike connecting words and sentences, the relationship between images is vague and open-ended. A screen may show and woman crying and then cut to a man on the phone at work. Viewers make assumptions about the connection (romantic relationship? sexual harrassment?), assumptions that have gotten easier over time, as producers have established certain conventions... but there is no "propositional syntax" equivalent to print. (Television includes language, of course, but it is first and foremost a visual medium.)

Television's vagueness, far from being a hindrance, is actually its strength. Television is, after all, primarily an engine for advertising and selling, and advertising relies on the power of suggestion. Companies would sell a lot fewer goods if they had to rely on words. If, instead of showing images of handsome, sultry men, the the makers of Viagra stated outright, "our drug will make you sexy," they'd sell a lot less of it, because the language would ring false. We don't process images in the same way. We don't see an image and think, "Is this true?" or "Does this support the claim?"

* * *

What annoys me most about this whole debate is the way it's framed, as if Johnson and the Wired set are proposing something radical or transgressive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their problem is, what again? People aren't abandoning the great authors for Grand Theft Auto fast enough for them? There's a powerful, "great author" cartel holding pop culture down?

Face it, the people promoting reading habits and advocating limits on the time children spend with electronic media are pretty well marginalized. The only reason to promote television any further than it already it is to make the people who feel guilty about watching feel better about it and themselves. Everything Is Bad for You is self-help disguised as science.

Let's remember that the blog world itself is largely populated by technophiles. Some of the concerns I've expressed about television barely scratch the surface of what you can find in books; the ideas of important thinkers such as Neil Postman are essentially absent online.

So, anyway, I think I'll end this with a plug for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman is extremely unpopular with the technorati, who tag him as neo-Luddite (which, after all, he was). But Postman is one of my heroes. If you pick up the book, think of him as a kindly old man who may hate your music and your TV shows but who nonetheless has a lot to teach us.

Leslie Stahl in 1984

Regarding the television discussion, I thought I'd throw out another anecdote: In 1984, CBS ran a piece by Leslie Stahl that included footage of President Reagan visiting people at nursing homes and interacting with the handicapped. The report criticized Reagan and discussed how his funding cuts were actively harming these people. But after it ran, Reagan's campaign called to thank Stahl for the report.  She couldn't believe it, but Regan's rep told her something to the effect of "no one listens to the words." And he turned out to be right. A subsequent "CBS study found that less than 25 percent of Stahl’s audience understood her message while most thought that her piece was a positive news story on Ronald Reagan." (source) As Stahl later told an MIT audience:

When the pictures are emotional and powerful and when you are saying something that conflicts with them, the messages aren’t married; the pictures will drown out what you say.

Speaking of precocious children

From the Columbus Dispatch:

At least 696 Ohio children who were newborn to 3 years old received mental-health drugs through Medicaid in July. Hydroxyzine [an antihistmine prescribed for its sedative properties] was prescribed most often, with about three-quarters taking it. More than 90 of the children were on another antihistamine, 48 were taking anti-anxiety medication and 28 were prescribed antidepressants, including Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, which have been found to increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in some children. Twenty-seven received Valium, and 18 were on antipsychotics.

(Via AIA)

What's that stench?

Advertising Age reports that Proctor & Gamble has come out with a deodorant for 7-year-old girls.

“Girls have started using deodorant younger and younger,” said Dave Knox, assistant brand manager at P&G overseeing the body-spray launch. “If you don’t target the consumer in her formative years, you’re not going to be relevant through the rest of her life.”

People in Knox's business refer to this as KAGOY: "kids are getting older younger." The term handily includes not only cultural and social dimensions but physical as well. As Entrepreneurial Connection tells it, "Puberty begins almost a full year earlier than it did 50 years ago, likely as a result of better nutrition as well as obesity."

Better nutrition? You sure about that?

Great piece on America's supposed "lawsuit crisis"

I've been wanting to do something on tort reform in Stay Free! for quite some time now, but this Washington Monthly article (October 2004) by Stephanie Mencimer would be hard to match:

False Alarm: How the media helps the insurance industry and the GOP promote the myth of America's "lawsuit crisis."

See also the critical discussion of Mencimer's article.

Demand it your way at Burger King

With all due respect to Flava Flav, sometimes 911 isn't to blame for being a joke. From Food 911 to Nanny 911, TV has done a pretty good job of redefining "emergency."

Currently making its way around the internet is this hilarious audio clip of a woman calling 911 because the Burger King drive-through screwed up her order. Just listen to the sense of entitlement in the woman's voice and wonder at the dispatcher's ability to remain polite and professional.

(Via someone who linked to Stay Free, but I don't recall who.)

"What do you mean by 'celebrity bacteria'?"

Sometimes it's best to let a site speak for itself. Just be sure to read the FAQ.

(Via WFMU)

Ford shoots for the sky

A friend just sent me this internal memo to all Ford employees, urging them to watch out for "Upcoming Ford Vehicle Integrations in Your Favorite TV Shows!"

If you enjoyed our April 24th episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition... you won't want to miss all of the exciting, new, high-visibility product integrations we have planned through the second quarter. These vehicle integrations into highly rated TV shows will help us to create a more meaningful connection with our consumers, and even change a few lives along the way.

For example?

American Idol -- Wednesdays Through 5/25, 9-9:30pm EST, Fox
Each Wednesday during the season, the show integrates a fun, energetic music video featuring remaining American Idol contestants singing and interacting with Ford vehicles!

Why do I get the feeling that after sending out this memo, the woman who wrote it went home and cried?

(Thanks to Mark Hosler)

Introducing the Intellectual Property Badge

Remember, Boy Scouts aren't military tools -- they're business tools.

(Thanks, Steven Brookenthal!)

On the persistence of crap

All these compelling posts about the ability of television to make you smarter, the perceived increasing complexity of television shows, the responses, etc, made me realize something: while there are perhaps many more complex shows than ever before on television, there's still a collossal amount of crap: take CBS's Listen Up or Yes, Dear -- oh God they're awful. Really, you'd have to be freshly struck with a 2"x4" to happily sit through five minutes of that laughtrack-soaked crap.

But the good news is this is not a sign of any cu