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Nothing is offsides

I always assumed that you had two choices in the face of rampant corruption: dig in your heels and fight it or shrug your shoulders and deal. Then I realized that there is a middle ground: whistle past the graveyard.

The Nigerian Football Association has announced a new rule: referees can accept bribes, but they can't do anything in exchange for them. I was horrified until I realized that they based their new policy on our campaign finance system. So I just went back to whistling.

Crab Apples

Apple Corps, the Beatles' iconic record company, is currently suing Apple Computers, the nerds' iconic hardware company. Apparently the Apple logo is, well, the Apple logo. The nerds and the Fab Four agreed in 1991 that the nerds wouldn't use the logo to sell music. iTunes, anyone?

But when two mega-rich companies that are probably both equally in favor of DRM are fighting each other, do I really care who wins?

Diskonte Macht Frei

There will be no criticism of the great and powerful Wal-Mart! The corporation sent a cease-and-desist notice to Walocaust. They also sent a similar cease-and-desist to CafePress, which immediately stopped selling the Walocaust T-shirts. (No surprise...)

Wal-Mart claims that the Walocaust site dilutes their trademarks and is likely to cause confusion. There is no way that anyone in the U.S. would possibly think that any of this was approved of by, or is associated with, Wal-Mart. But it does say a lot about Wal-Mart's self-image. And, I suppose, its plans to take over Europe.

Fortunately, Walocaust proprietor Charles Smith isn't taking this lying down. He went to Lawrence Lessig for counsel, and now, through Public Citizen, has filed a complaint against Wal-Mart in federal court. I can't wait to hear Wal-Mart argue that Nazi imagery is indistinguishable from their own trademarks.

Some call it nuance

The Smoking Gun has a copy of John Kerry's advance team instructions from the campaign trail. I can't believe how clearly Kerry reconfirmed the flip-flopper tag. It is so bad that I think he may have to resign from the Senate.

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J.C. Penney targets anorexics, bulimics

I don't know if anyone has noticed but J.C. Penney has been trying to reinvent itself with "a new kick-ass attitude" (in the words of one company rep). As USA Today puts it, "the goal is to change America's view of J.C. Penney as a grandmotherly place that has sensible, moderately priced clothes and home goods..."

... to a place where anorexics can shop freely.

Or at least that's the impression you get from Penney's new line of women's clothing, called  "ana"—a slang term for anorexia. (See our post on pro-ana web communities for background.)

Marketing faux pas or subversive teen-targeting? You decide.

(Via Consumerist)

The Multitasking Generation

Time had a decent cover story last week:

Are Kids Too Wired for Their Own Good?
What science tells us about the pluses—and minuses—of doing everything at once

I'd say the subhead is a bit aspirational. There's no actual science in the article, though the writer did quote a neurologist and defined a remote, appropriately meaningless part of the brain ("Brodmann's Area 10"). This story more or less simply reiterates concerns that Jane Healy raised 15 years ago in her book Endangered Minds. 

But it's good to see a solid, critical piece on this topic that isn't laced with the typically pop culture-bashing or teenphobia.

Why "free" often doesn't come cheap

Interesting anecdote in Sunday's New York Times: in his new book The White Man's Burden, William Easterly discusses one example of how the millions of dollars that the U.S. and other Western nations give in foreign aid are wasted.

Say you want to reduce the number of deaths due to malaria. Public health officials tend to agree that a cheap way to do that is to encourage the use of insecticide-laden mosquito nets in poverty-stricken, equitorial countries. So the U.S. has poured millions of dollars into distributing free mosquito nets. Problem is, the nets end up getting used for things other than protecting people from mosquitos. Why? Because people face no costs for taking multiple nets--or for using the nets for whatever purpose they like. Easterly shows that by working with local groups to sell the nets for as little as 50 cents, donor nations can dramatically improve the results--more nets get out to people who use them for the intended purpose, and thus fewer new cases of malaria.

I love this story because it validates some long-held instincts I've had about selling Stay Free. Whenever I bring bunches of Stay Free! to conferences or other events, I try to sell them for low price--usually $1--instead of giving 'em away free. People who get something for free too often treat it as trash; they'll pick it up without thinking about whether they actually want it, but even a nominal fee will jolt them into consciousness and force them to make a decision.

Stay Free! #25 now available

The new "pranks" issue of our print magazine is now available - free in Brooklyn, cheap everywhere else. A partial list of contents:

Media Virus: Social networking expert (and creator of the Contagious Media Showdown) Jonah Peretti explains how silly videos and email pranks created the Bored at Work Network.

From the Bush Twins to the Anorexic Beach Lady
An Interview with Museum of Hoaxes curator Alex Boese.

Hoaxes in History: The Report from Iron Mountain

Around Town with Eugene Mirman

Benjamin Franklin: Original Prankster

And more. Full table of contents here.

WHERE TO FIND US?
Brooklynites can usually find us in one of these places. Otherwise, the best place to get Stay Free! is straight from the source. In addition to the print mag, a digital version (pdf) is available for $1.95.

Work + life - blog

Apologies for being incommunitivo lately. I've become as obsessed with working on my new house as I was with this blog last year. I spent pretty much every cent I have on this place and I've promised myself that I'm not going to let it look like every shitty apartment I've rented.

Besides, as much as I love blogging, I've needed a break from the computer. I make my living as a web & graphic designer—or try to (if you know anyone who needs a designer, please let me know).... and no human should spend as much time at the machine as I've been spending. This is by no means a goodbye to blogging, but rather a statement of the obvious - I can't keep up with daily "content providing" anymore.

Smoke'em if you got'em...

Thanks to a lawsuit against the tobacco industry, millions of documents, commercials and internal videos made by and for the cigarette manufacturers have been made available at the Minnesota Tobacco Document Depository. University of California, San Francisco has digital versions of many of these documents and videos. They've made some of the materials available at UCSF Tobacco Control Archives hosted by the Internet Archive.

Some highlights...

"Winston tastes good" commercials.

Why People Smoke? - a video made by Philip Morris Europe.

Virginia Slims Advertising Study

Besides enjoying the nostalgic marketing of old cigarette commercials, these videos offer a fascinating view into what happens when smart people with lots of money market a hazardous product to the world. Enjoy!

Comedy on Sunday

So sorry to disturb you, but if you happen to be in or near New York this Sunday at 7, I'm doing a show worth coming to at Mo Pitkin's. Perhaps there should be something funny in this attempt to promote a comedy show, but I elect to save it for the stage.

I will be joining Rachael Parenta, Will McKinley, Daniel Wright and Jess Wood for an inexpensive night of damn good comedy in which we make audition tapes and barely recoup the stage fee.

Blacklisting at Craigslist

I read today in the NYT that a group is suing Craigslist because the site does not fully screen out real estate ads that overtly discriminate. I'm down with policing housing discrimination, but I had two thoughts when reading the article: (1) making it illegal to state a preference in advertising probably only minimally keeps someone who wants to discriminate from discriminating and (2) does this apply to shares? Because I'm not sure that it should apply to shares.

If I were in the market for an apartment, I would want to know if I my potential roommate was a bigot. (It would save me some time when apartment hunting.) So I created an ad that probably violates the policy but is more helpful than the one would have to write if he had a spare bedroom. Read it now; it probably won't be up for long.

Hardwood floors and new appliances are very hard to find in New York for under a thousand.

UPDATE: Posted at midnight, flagged and taken down by 8AM.

And now a word from our sponsor

After moving across town and settling into new digs, we have finally gotten the new "Pranks" issue of Stay Free! out. Hooray!

Those of you in and around Brooklyn can pick up a free copy in these locations (more to follow). Subscribers should be getting your issues on Tuesday or thereabouts.

I'll post the table of contents shortly. But first, I wanted to get out this important announcement from our sponsor, Merd Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Panexa.

Because it doesn't come with everything

My good friend Paul Haven has a new book coming out next week, Two Hot Dogs With Everything, a  novel for youngsters about baseball, superstition and magic. The book itself isn't particularly Stay Free-ish, but for the fact that it is by a friend of the magazine and includes a character named after me. So I was just going to write about it on my mostly dormant personal blog.

I ran a quick Amazon search to find the book. Fortunately, the book was easy to find. But kids don't have credit cards, so I guess Amazon wanted to make sure that the adults buying the book could get something for themselves.