Wow, the past two weeks were nothing short of remarkable.
A subway train smashes into another on a line I ride regularly.
Not unexpectedly, Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett dies.
However, Michael Jackson and Billy Mays die rather suddenly.
California literally goes broke and resorts to paying its bills with IOUs!
The Washington Post figuratively goes broke and considers resorting to selling its reporters (and what little respect and credibility it has left) for up to a quarter million dollars.
Mark Sanford, while supposedly on the Appalachian Trail, hiked his way into a multi-year affair down Argentine Way.
Sarah Palin finally has her breakdown and resigns from the Alaskan governorship. She gives a speech that is nonsensical, even by Palin standards. Nobody has a clue what to make of it. Except Bill Kristol, who is always wrong.
And some guy shoots an employee at electronics store where I frequently go to not buy products.
Originally posted on sterlingnorth.vox.com
"Not at all," [AP news editor Ted] Bridis replied. "I don't think AP would have any problem with that."
What if the entirety of the story is a single paragraph such as this one?
How far the Dow Jones industrial average has fallen or advanced each trading day since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sept. 15. Since Lehman's fall, which touched off a paralysis of the credit markets and deepened the recession, the stock market has gone through an extended period of volatility that subsided during December but that has returned in 2009.
Followed by a table of historical DJIA closes. That is the entire story.
Note, that on the few occasions I linked to an AP story, I don't post the whole thing, despite the fact that AP stories disappear off the internet rapidly. They generally expire after two weeks. Which is reason why I don't typically link to them. Though that is probably why others quote them in its entirety.
Or has shower scenes been a regular feature of Day by Day?
“Taking this situation to its logical conclusion, Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, Tex., is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, Tex., and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male.”
-- Is My Marriage Gay</b> by Jennifer Finney Boylan for the New York Times.
And they renewed Wizards of Waverly Place.
Today is an interesting day. There is a little known holiday in America today known as Loyalty Day. Think about that. In a country whose founding tale involve that of a band of noble men launching open rebellion against their far-away ruler, and whom a large segment of its population romanticize a less noble rebellion against this very nation roughly four-score after its founding, and that politicians to this day invoke open rebellion to gain political support, that there exist on the books a holiday called Loyalty Day is pretty ironic. Perhaps it's no coincidence that also on this date, another event would take place that would teach us all about dramatic irony. Yes, today was the day, six years ago, Bush would produce the piece of stagecraft that would define his presidency: "Mission Accomplished". Unfortunately, it would define his presidency in the exact opposite way than he intended. Now, even the phrase itself can only be used in ironic fashion.
For those two reasons, I wish to declare a new holiday for today. Irony Day.
Originally posted on sterlingnorth.vox.com
Try again, York.
I'd have expected that obstructing something would be far more difficult than that!
This will be way more entertaining that the videos Joe Francis produces.
Your two fun links of dire predictions. A Russian professor implausibly predicts that the US will break up in two years. It'd be more credible if the prediction wasn't predicated on wealthy states withholding money from the federal government. It doesn't work like that here. The federal government sends money to the states. Anyway, the wealthy states don't have any money to withhold anyway. That said, the most implausible part is the idea that post breakup, South Carolina would be in the same country as Massachusetts! Now that is fantasy.
Roger Ebert stands on firmer ground here in comparison, and his message is that we're probably all screwed.
Originally posted on sterlingnorth.vox.com
I understand John Gruber's disdain of the term "Cult of Mac". It can be used to imply that nobody who buys a Macintosh computer, or any Apple product, does so for pragmatic or rational reasons. However, Apple has most successfully built and harnessed something that can be compared to a cult.
[Mark] Lindstrom, a marketing guru who advises everyone from fast-food companies to drugmakers, partnered with Oxford scientists to conduct a three-year, $7 million study scanning the brains of 2,000 people while they were shown various marketing strategies. What they found surprised them. In one of the most startling examples, the researchers scanned brains while the subjects were exposed to images of popular brands and religious icons.
Lindstrom wrote: "The room went dark and the images began to flicker past: A bottle of Coca-Cola. The Pope. An iPod. A can of Red Bull. Rosary beads. A Ferrari sports car. The eBay logo. Mother Teresa. An American Express card. The BP sign. A photograph of children playing. The Microsoft logo."
When Lindstrom and the researchers analyzed the results, they noted that strong brands fired up activity in parts of the brain controlling memory, emotion and decision-making. That was expected. But then they compared those results with what happened when the subjects looked at religious images. To their surprise, "their brains registered the exact same patterns of activity," Lindstrom wrote. "Bottom line, there was no discernible difference between the way the subjects' brains reacted to powerful brands and the way they reacted to religious icons and figures."
Of course, at the article shows Apple isn't alone in doing it. They are just one of the most successful at it. In fact, that very Martin Lindstrom has distilled it into nine steps of successful myth making for Ad Age magazine. Looking at the list, Apple succeeds with every single bullet point!
- A Clear Vision: Summarized by Lindstrom's piece as such: "Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them." If you're less a fan of haliography, then just say Steve Job's vision guides Apple in everything it does.
- A Sense of Belonging: Partly cultivated (The MacWorld Expo, helping launch various Mac User Groups, holding events at Apple Stores [see more on the stores below]), and partly organic (think of all of the Mac specific websites and publications that exist), enhanced very much by the crisis of the 90s (see below), Mac users have come to see themselves as belonging to a movement greater than themselves.
- An Enemy: Apple's most famous ad buy was the 1984 Superbowl commercial, where a rebel throws a hammer at the screen of a Big Brother figure. Then, the enemy was IBM. Since 1995, that enemy has been Microsoft whose Windows operating system is seen to have stolen the ease of use GUI concepts from Apple. That so-called theft been punished by an overwhelming marketshare in the computer desktop market. The rise of Windows nearly killed Apple, but it gave the Mac community its sense of embattlement and a enemy to hate.
- Sensory Appeal: This can mean one of several things here. If you think of an Apple Store, the interior is instantly recognisable to the point of being recently parodied by The Simpsons. Though I can extended it to the products itself. Steve Jobs famously described the interface of Mac OS X as lickable. Funny as that is, the point is Apple pays extraordinary amounts of attention to how their products look. You will not mistake an iMac for any other computer.When most people think of MP3 players, they now imagine an iPod. Jonathan Ive can be described as the second most important person at Apple.
- Storytelling: Folklore.org is the Old Testiment to the Apple story, but Apple is great at cultivating new myths for today's believer. Microsoft commentator Paul Thurrott expressed frustration over one particular story. The ad implies Microsoft is spending money on a marketing campaign rather than fixing its OS. Of course, that isn't true, given the release of "Service Pack 1" back in the spring, and continuing work on Service Pack 2. (And of course, bug fixes are released monthly from Microsoft.) And the real truth is that software development for everything but dead products (like WordPerfect) is continuous revision, refinement and repair, punctuated by release. The current version of OS X ("Leopard") is on its fifth revision since its release about 13 months ago. That version of OS X is itself the sixth since it was released in 2001. But, to most folks, Vista is irredeemably broken and is being abandoned in favor for Seven. Nobody describes Apple abandoning Leopard for Snow Leopard. In fact, both are moderate revisions on the current OS.
Apologies. I allowed myself to get sidetracked on a specific detail rather than looking at the overall point. Apple is excellent at storytelling. It's the innovative company that revolutionize markets. It's a story that the company will repeat at every opportunity. (Along with the implication that all other companies are vultures that will steal its innovations.) And they use the standard PR game of granting access to friendly organizations and freezing out others. The judicious use of press releases (like "Thoughts on Music" or the "Open iPhone Letter") have soothed consumer anger. This allows Apple to do things like sell DRM protected media but be seen as being against DRM. - Grandeur: Apple holds press events for revisions to its product lines. They invite reporters to a hall, where Steve Jobs will appear on stage, recall for the audience how the history of Apple innovation, and then introduce with great fanfare the newest products. The largest such event is "Macworld", where the Steve Jobs keynote serves as the State of the Apple Address. The press eats this up. The community eats this up (see "Sense of Belonging"). Very few companies can get away with this, but Steve Jobs is a rock star in this arena.
- Evangelism: Guy Kawasaski! However, much of that evangelism today comes from fellow Mac users. Success in this helps create an even stronger sense of belonging.
- Symbols: From the Lindstrom's article: "Examine an iPod, and you'll have problems finding the Apple logo." I don't know what iPod he uses, but on every one I've seen, the logo is large, right on the back. That said, he is right enough that the iPod itself has become a symbol just as strong as the Apple logo.
- Rituals: "Rituals build brands," he say. This one seems more likely to come from the grassroots than from above. I do not think "Box opening celebrations" came from above, but Apple does its best to make it feel special.
Originally posted on sterlingnorth.vox.com
Are you finished yet?
Have you started?
I haven't. I can't write a novel! That's crazy!
Why only "National" novel writing month, anyway? Have other countries decided on a different month?
Did you know this is National Blog Posting Month?
Did you post everyday?
It's quite obvious that I haven't.
Even though I've started posting more frequently this week, it wasn't intentional.
Yes, all of these posts have occurred by accident.
I've let a raccoon run across my keyboard.
That raccoon will probably become a famous reporter for Time Magazine.
I remember that like it was only yesteryear. Our new golden age for the ultrawealthy was going to last forever.
A few people quoted in that article may need to reassess some opinions.
(Nobel hat-tip)
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
sterlingnorth- Sterling Ambivalence
Syndicate
