You know there's a lot to be said for friendly competition, which is why I'm going to let you know why our resident Minister of Enlightenment and HQ Blogger, Mr. Matt Grant, has a blog well worth visiting.
For one, he gets access to incredibly interesting people in both the Marketing and Creative fields.
Two, he podcasts a lot, so you can listen on the way home or in the comfort of your own Elliptical Machine.
Three, he's incredibly smart and insightful.
Yes, it sounds as if I might marry him.
Not to worry, he's taken.
And is really, really not my type.
Really.
To prove my point this week Matt has a two-part conversation with James Intriligator, a man who received his doctorate in psychology from Harvard and now has a post in the Center for Neuroscience and Consumer Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor.
James is currently doing quite a bit of work on how the brain perceives brands and how brands build up in brains over time.
Though it's no man rapping about sectional furniture, it's pretty compelling stuff.
Interesting study in marketing: a cheap (10 cent) pill doesn't kill pain as well as an expensive ($2.50) pill, even when they both are the same placebos.
Crazy, huh?
Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, published his findings in a letter in the March 5th edition of Journal of the American Medical Association (full text is $15 or read the Science Daily article here or listen to it on NPR's Morning Edition here).
Ariely said, "Physicians want to think it's the medicine and not their enthusiasm about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of interaction between patients and physicians."
And cost. Don't forget perceptions based on cost.
Consider that researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford's business school "have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag."
Researchers found that with higher priced (which were identical to lower priced wines) more blood and oxygen was sent to a part of the brain "whose activity reflects pleasure".
The researchers added: "Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer's ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality.
And, back to the $2.50 pill, "Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles." ( By way of CNET News.)
Which is why you shouldn't blame me if this post stinks. As I opted for coffee at home to help me write rather than the $4.50 latte up the street at Starbucks.
Better, I say, to dance with the robots... (four prototype robots dancing to Beck's "Hell Yes", that is.)
Or the myriad dancers and choreographers from around the world.
I'm referring to the Slow Dancing exhibit down at the Los Angeles Music Center, which features:
"43 larger-than-life, hyper-slow-motion video portraits of dancers and choreographers from around the world, displayed on multiple screens."
Each dancer does a 5 second dance movement, which is captured on a high-speed camera shooting 1,000 frames per second. The 10 minutes of extreme slo-mo are amazing to watch.
If you're in the ADD crowd, there's a choice of four screens to choose from at any time.
Meri from our office passed this on: Zandt County Criminal Justice Center in Texas is painting the walls of its prison pink in hopes of making it "a brighter, soothing, more cheerful place for prisoners to reflect on their crimes", according to Sheriff Pat Burnett.
They aren't stopping there, inmates will be switching from orange to pink jumpsuits (with the exception of prison trustees, who will continue to wear black-and-white striped jumpsuits).
Why all this new love of pink you ask?
According to the sheriff the Mason County Jail, who did all this in 2005, his county's re-offense rate is down by 70 percent.
The strange thing about this? (Besides that I'm deciding to blog about it, I mean.) I'd heard this story over ten years ago, with the advent of Drunk Tank Pink rooms for violent offenders.
But the interesting fact I'd understood was that the effect pink rooms were short lived. Eventually, people get used to the color and it will have no effect on them. (I'm thinking of the garbage truck driver who, after 8 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, has to have a different sense of smell than the rest of us.)
A little searching and, sure enough, I was close...
Dr. Alexander
Schauss, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Biosocial
Research in Tacoma Washington, was the first to report the suppression
of angry, antagonistic, and anxiety ridden behavior among prisoners:
"Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of
pink, he can't. The heart muscles can’t race fast enough. It’s a
tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the color-blind are
tranquilized by pink rooms." (1) In spite
of these powerful effects, there is substantial evidence that these
reactions are short term. Once the body returns to a state of
equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state.
1) Sheriffs aren't exactly scientists 2) If you design an ad in pink, make sure people aren't going to hang it in their room 3) It's surprising no one has destroyed Angelyne's Corvette
Eight years ago, Teresa Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at
Harvard Business School, collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries
from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the
consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries.
Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from
various companies, she coded the entries "for creativity by looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea."
What she found is probably not a big surprise to many of your creatives, but may be to some higher ups you may know:
Six Myths of Creativity:
1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization
The full article can be found in this Fast Company Magazine article, which can be easily printed out and placed on someone's desk.
Once again, has to be seen to be believed. If you have 8 minutes (exactly) you will see an amazing Photosynth demo from Blaise Aguera y Arcas at Microsoft Live Labs, that will blow your mind.
Watch how far he can zoom into each photo (close enough to see each letter of a newspaper, not the pixels) and the power he has grabbing tagged photos from Flickr.
Thanks to the folks at the TED conference in Monterey for posting the link (and Emily for passing along!)
Legitimate Package Rip Off or Market Share Hogging?
YOU DECIDE!
A small organic plant food company, TerraCycle, is being sued by Scotts Miracle-Grow who claims the upstart's packaging too closely resembles its Miracle-Grow product line and that it is making false advertising claims.
Scotts owns roughly 59% market share, according to AdAge, and TerraCycle believes that the suit is based on their move into big name stores like Home Depot, Target, and the like, where Miracle-Grow is king.
Scotts says it's more about TerraCycle's unsubstantiated claims for "superior performance" and that TerraCycle's packaging is "confusingly similar" to Miracle-Grow's.
Did I fail to mention that TerraCycle's product is made from worm poop and distributed in recycled bottles?
Sorry.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't tell you that TerraCycle has turned the suit into a marketing opportunity. They've launched the site SuedbyScotts.com which parodies the difference in the companies in a very David and Goliath fashion. They also are careful to point out 81 different brands of lawn and garden products with yellow and green labels just like TerraCycle and Miracle-Grow.
First Steven D. Levitt's book Freakonomics which explores such non-economist subjects as "Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What
kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?", now this. Well, it was just a matter of time before other economists start weighing in on subjects like creativity, right?
David Galenson, noted economics professor from University of Chicago recently released the book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity". (Apparently no one told him that title's a bit long for the average person to remember when trying to mention it at a cocktail party.)
He divides creatives into two different camps:
"Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their
major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual
innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually
at an early age."
You probably know the old newsman's adage, "Dog Bites Man is not news, Man Bites Dog is news".
Then exactly what is "Panda Bites Man, Man Bites Panda"?
Maybe the Chinese don't even know this particular adage. Otherwise the man in this BBC story would have never gotten drunk and wandered into a cage to feel (and eventually bite) a very large live panda.
Turns out these animals are bears.
I went to the San Diego Zoo to see the pandas, but the line was so long I eventually gave up.
Good thing, because I kept thinking how much fun they'd be to pet.
And if you like this sort of thing and are interested in making your brain stronger you might want to go and visit the SharpBrains site, which is a place to do just such a thing.
I'm not saying your brain is weak. (Susie. Why do you always think these things?) Just that you might find this a fun place to visit. Or a frustrating place. Depends on how you think of puzzles.
By the way, I keep seeing articles that point out keeping your brain active by working on on puzzles, playing card games, and such keeps your mind more alert and can prevent mental aging.
I wish I could just remember where I saw any of them.
Maybe tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, this one is really annoying:
Count the number of times that the letter F appears in the following sentence: “Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years�.
My friend once asked a writer who worked on Letterman's show why #2 was always funnier than #1. The writer told him they needed a not-so-funny #1 so they could go into commercial break quicker.
Now you know the secret.
Everyone has at least a Top 5 List, right? Those lists drawn up on notebooks during dull high school classes (Top 5 Classic Rock Ballads, Top 5 Vodka Drinks, Top 5 Most Boring Teachers). With the advent of blogs, MySpace, and Friendster, everyone who visits your site can know your Top 5.
But what about those people you'll never see again? Like the checker at Ralph's Supermarket. Wouldn't it be great if she knew you really, really enjoyed Faulkner's Light in August?
Now there's a company that can help you out with such things by putting them on a t-shirt for you! T-lists will help you put your Top 5 Films, Top 5 Overrated Bands, and the like on a sweatshop free T.
It's like free advertising for your brain!
By the way, any thoughts Top 5 Favorite Things about Autumn?
Fewer Tourists
End of White Slacks Season
Surly Teens Back in School
Heavily Discounted Spiral Notebooks
Slowly Gaining Back Winter Weight
Can't wait to see yours! (Either here or on your T-shirt. You pick.)
Art Center is currently running, in its Williamson Gallery,a study of personal mobility. One one side, B(yikes!): Eccentric Mobility includes the "admirably unconventional.
Forgotten designs from the past and current feats of backyard
engineering provide a glimpse into serious tinkerer/designers' creative
depths, and pay homage to the ultimate simplicity of the bicycle as an
icon of non-polluting sustainability."
Above is the
"BEHEMOTH" (Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine... Only Too Heavy), which was powered by Steven Roberts, who became a nomad (albeit a well connected one) in the 80's. Other works include spring walkers, personal hydrofoils, and odd bikes from the far past.
On the other side are works by Art Center students, who were asked to design a human/electric-powered personal vehicle for
the year 2025.
Wouldn't that be weird if it just looked like the Flintstone's car?
(You're probably guessing why Art Center refuses to give me my degree.)
I do love me some Treehugger blog site, but there's a problem. Possibly because I read most of my blogs at work (it's okay, they know), when I go to see what post they have that day, I don't just get one, I get more like 12 to 14.
As of this entry, they had 15. Some of which were continued on other pages.
That's a heck of a lot of reading on one blog.
The point is, even if the reading is compelling (as it is on Treehugger), is that too much for the average blog reader? Or is it showing us that blogs can evolve into something like a daily newspaper that's focused on particular topics?
Treehugger must've been thinking the same thing because they recently ran a survey asking readers if they thought they were posting too much, too little, or just right (fairly savvy, right?).
The overwhelming majority, 510, said they were posting the right amount every day. Not enough posts, said 205 others. Only 75 (including yours truly) said they were posting too much.
I'm not alone here, but my crowd seems to be trailing a distant third.
(Believe me, I see a lot. Just a few days ago I thought I saw a monkey stealing antennas off cars in our parking lot, but it turned out to be an overturned shopping cart.)
I think I can claim workers' comp for the damage to my retinas after viewing this one for 3 minutes.
Feel free to look at the illusion, then contact your HR Department immediately.
I like environmentally-minded thinking. Maybe more than a lot of people in Los Angeles. Say, the ones who keep buying Hummers to drive in a city that gets 12 days of rain a year.
But there's a fringe of environmentalists I'm sort of afraid of. You could call them the lunatic fringe. (But not maybe to their faces.)
I was trying to buy flowers today and wondered what the people over at Organic Bouquet had to offer. They had lots of nice things, but I was confused by the term Biodynamic. Luckily, they explain everything on this site.
"Biodynamics does not employ pesticides, herbicides or synthetic
fertilizers."
Good so far.
"Instead, it relies on manure, crop rotations..."
I'm with you.
"...biological
pest control, and cosmic forces to put life back into soils and into the ecology of the farm."
Ack!
Did I just read "cosmic forces"?
"...cosmic forces..."
Yes.
You are trying to get me to buy something that has been altered by cosmic forces?
There are many fun and mysterious buttons on craigslist, most which should not be pushed while at work.
But sheer curiosity took me to the "etc." button. What could "etc." mean to the people at craigslist? People who have already created buttons like rants and raves, therapeutic, missed connections, over 50, and housing swaps?
It seems the etc. section is where you go when you feel your sleeplessness, abdominal discomfort, or gambling problem should not only be shared with a research company, but earn you up to $400.
Earlier in this blog (Yesterday? Last year? It's so hard to tell...) I was discussing how brokenhearted I'd become finding out that the Boiling Frog Syndrome is a myth. How, then, was I to explain such phenomenon as becoming accustomed to eating handfuls of wasabi peanuts without blinking an eye?
Luckily, the Oceanographers have come to my rescue. Again.
Fisheries scientist Daniel
Pauly coined the term "shifting baseline syndrome" in 1995. It's explained this way:
"Shifting baselines are the chronic, slow,
hard-to-notice changes in things, from the disappearance of birds and frogs in the countryside to the increased drive time from L.A. to San Diego. If your ideal weight used to be 150 pounds and now
it's 160, your baseline -- as well as your waistline -- has shifted."
It's the perfect way to explain going from, say, Mozart to Madonna in under 200 years.
Though, sadly, I'm sure Vienna had their own Madonna, she probably just wasn't so popular.
A few weeks ago I was reading a White Paper put out by Factivia titled Boiled Frogs and Your Company's Reputation (mostly about text mining). But what interested me most was its use of the classic tale of the boiling frog, an example I've been using for years to illustrate how people can't always detect slow, small changes.Here's their White Paper's take: "...you can place a frog into a pot of hot water and he’ll notice the environmental change and jump right out. Same goes for cold water�he detects the temperature difference and leaps from his predicament. However, if he goes into water at room temperature and then the pot is heated up slowly, poor Froggy doesn’t notice and happily boils to death without jumping out."
Brilliant, huh? Mostly because you can use the boiled frog example to explain how one little tiny pint of ice cream a night can adds up to 50 pounds by the end of the year or how the good people on Easter Island ended up deforesting their island by cutting down every single tree over a century or so.
The problem is, the story is completely untrue, according to Snopes and a Research Professor Emeritus from the University of Oklahoma's Department of Zoology.
Dang it. I've been using that example for years. And apparently people writing White Papers for Factiva and any number of people found by doing a quick Google search for "boiled frog".
I think I'm going to be spending the rest of 2006 going through every article in Snopes and The Straight Dope until I feel comfortable going out to a party again.
Though it might not help.
I was talking to someone at a party last Saturday who used the words "alluvial plain".
Didn't people used to go to parties just to get liquored up and dance?
One of the amazing things about the Internet and search engines (besides proving me wrong at parties), is how quickly you can find something you've been pondering on your commute.
Say, thoughts about brake lights for the front of cars (helps pedestrians and people turning left see if the car is really going to stop), TVs with advertisements in elevators (which I began to think might be evil, but a company called Captivate Network didn't agree), and lastly, biodegradable bags.
Biodegradable bags!
A company named Bio-Bag, has come up with a way to make trash bags, lawn & leaf bags, pooper scooper bags, and shopping bags out of corn without a trace of polyethylene (which apparently will be keeping those other shopping bags flying around windows, through storm drains, and snagged in trees around the Los Angeles basin for over 100 years. Which is probably why San Francisco is considering taxing them).
What struck me most was the thought "Why didn't anyone think of this before?"
Of course, someone was thinking about it before. All I had to do was use Google to find it.
So I bought a bunch of different from a place called Dirt Works (their site could use some improvement, but all prices include shipping and is probably run from a guy working out of a large garage in Vermont, which you have to love).
How about this: California taxes plastic bags and subsidizes the biodegradable ones?
I was talking to Ozzy today about phone numbers. The reason phone numbers in most countries are seven digits long is that scientists believe (or believed) that a person's short-term memory can only hold an ordered list of about seven items at a time.
Yup, little known fact.
Someone once said, "Memory is quite literally what you forget with."
More Places To Avoid Getting Your Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe
Popular Science Magazine Epson Ink Jet Owner's Manual Worse Homes and Gardens Magazine The Salmonella Daily I Love Lucy Reruns Any recipe that includes the words, "Empty outdated medications into pan" Easy Bake Oven Recipe Booklet The Amnesiac Monthly Smudged recipe card where ingredient amounts, times, and oven temperatures are unreadable That guy waiting for the bus and talking to himself High Times Magazine Backpackers Monthly Children Tofulicious Weekly The back of a Pringles can From anyone who tells you, "Aww, a little pink meat never hurt anybody"
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