Archive for the ‘Crazy Writings’ Category

« Older Entries

Oh, Baby.

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

There should be a law passed against the use of babies in an advertising context that aid to the deterioration of society, but that’s just an opinion. I have seen many ads that are just poor taste. Maybe a law is too far fetched but seriously, what are advertisers thinking!

The little miss coppertone ad (top) although it seems very sweet an innocent, it leads some groups in society to a pattern of “monkey see, monkey do.” This behavior gives way to beauty pageants which, sometimes, reinforce the idea that people should be valued primarily for their physical appearance. But how do you go from cute advertisements, to a suppressive behavior by people?

Who was to know that the cute Little Miss Coppertone ad could have potentially been a contributor to a person becoming Miss South Carolina in a contest like Miss Teen USA 2007.

Toddlers used in commercials also have mixed messages, put this ad of a baby holding a “safety razor” for instance.

Whatever the message Gillette is trying to convey; if a young child sees an ad with a baby playing with razor blades, looking like he’s having the time of his life. It is potentially harmful for those kids that do attempt to shave them selves, as a result of getting influenced by the imagery that the ad depicted.

These are examples of older advertising campaigns and although Gillette has moved on to better advertising, Coppertone has held on to their older imagery. The image of the little girl getting pulled on by the puppy is now an iconic image and the “monkey see, monkey do.” effect is proven by thousands of people replicating the iconic image.

Today the advertising world is full of baby imagery. Cute, innocent, defenseless babies. Babies that after birth are named after company names. Like GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman whose parents got paid $15,000 to name the newborn the casino web site as a name. Where is society going with this?

It seems that advertisers and the corporations paying for the ads should have enough morals to realize that using babies as subjects is wrong. It may be insignificant in some cases but can be seriously damaging in others.

Lets take a current baby campaign like E*Trade’s talking baby. What is the point that E*Trade is trying to make? Is it that people should be capitalistic since birth? Or that we are all babies at heart? The reality of using babies in a campaign, is clearly just to get attention. Some may consider this use of this imagery exploitation of babies. Some may consider it a strategy.

Humans brains are wired to respond to the sight of a baby. It is almost impossible not to notice one if it is within our sight.

James Breeze from usableworld.com.au shows us research that support evidence that babies take priority in our attention. We are wired to be subconsciously influenced by the baby’s actions. Are the babies calling for help, are they afraid or interested by something? What is the baby doing? We don’t really think about these things when looking at an ad. Through video tracking of eye movement you can gather data showing what people are looking at.

The image below shows an ad of a baby looking at the viewer. As it can be seen, the majority of the time spent looking at the ad is scrutinizing the baby, while the content of the ad is barely acknowledged.

The next image is of a baby that is looking at the content of the advertisement. It is very clear that the subconscious effect is focalizing on the message and not just the baby. This effect of diverting the focus from the baby to the text is key for people who use babies as objects in advertising to get optimum results.

So why are companies like Sonic and McDonald’s used such imagery to advertise their brands? The logic is mind-boggling. Specially when the imagery depicted is reaching a creepy level.

Some ads use agitational imagery to get to an interesting point across but the fact that they are using disturbing imagery will have negative ripple effects that may not be identified until it is too late.

This is why some ads should be look at with a conscious mind and people should realize that some depictions are clearly out of line and could affect society in a negative way. When we start glamorizing the neglect of children, thats we know that advertising has gone too far.

These issues need to be looked at, specially since we have a new baby boom occurring right now. There is a record number of babies being born, and everyone is thinking about babies weather in a positive or negative way (Lets hope positive). If we don’t do anything about the regulation of imagery in advertising, we will definitely be seeing more side-effects due to the poor choices made by corporations. And the least that people should do, is to be aware of all these issues.

Posted in Advertising, Crazy Writings, Fashion, Talks, The Web | No Comments »

Cool Video

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Wow,

these guys sure know how to impress a geek.
the band is OK Go

Posted in Crazy Writings, video | No Comments »

$2.71 for a Breakfast Sandwich?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

bacon and egg roll

This morning I purchased a Bacon and Egg Sandwich at the local Deli and noticed that the price written on the sandwich was $2.71, yes $2.71 and then I got a large coffee as well. The total was $4.54 cents which really confused me. I did some research on the probability of the number sequence in nature, since it looked so awkward to me. The number 4.64 was not important to me, it is only the byproduct of the number 2.71 which was really intriguing to me. I turned to the good old theories of Benford (Benford’s law) for an explanation. After an intense sense-making session, I concluded that the number was strange yet familiar and Benford did not offer any insight as to why the number looked so weird and stood out in my memory. I went on to google the number and Bam! I realized that it was the Euler’s constant which is 2.7182… There a a few numbers that stand out like soar thumbs. One is Euler’s Constant, the other is Pi (3.14159…) there is also Phi (golden ratio) So why was this important to me? Because these numbers are rarely seen in nature. I started thinking about the connections between Michael Maestlin (golden ratio) to Euler and then to Bedford. I wonder how they saw each other, was one the inspiration to the other, most likely. This stain of thought lead me to Paul Erdos and the popular Erdos number that mathematicians today like to figure out for themselves. If people mapped their connections to Bedford and Euler similar to their connections to Erdos maybe we would find interesting data about trends of human intellect. With all this going on inside my head, I started thinking about the connections that people have to one an other and the people between those connections. The small wold effect that was introduced to me by my Professor Clay Shirky and also greatly talked about by many social scientists like Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler (in the Book “Connected”) Things started to make a little more sense in mathematical terms.

connected book cover

The amount of influence we have on people is similar to Bedford’s law and this brought me back to the original point; why did the deli guy write $2.71 on my sandwich?

I went back and asked him how much a bacon and egg sandwich was. He told me they where $2.75 and then I realized that both the girl at the counter and my self, saw the number five as the number one. All this from a miss-written number.

Posted in Crazy Writings | No Comments »

Who cares about what you think.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Last week I conducted a mini experiment on the NYU social network.
I wanted to see how much traffic I could drive to my site by writing about Clay Shirky’s rant about women. It was not a very strong argument, but it was one that was aimed at opposing Clay’s point (which I am apposed to, but normally would never write about). The variable in question (which I actually learned about in Clay’s class); the piggy back effect in youtube videos. I was testing this effect with blog content.

From this post I was expecting to draw at least 30% more traffic just by piggybacking from Clay’s popularity. Which is a little more than 45 hundred site hits a day.

compete.com

Its been six days since I wrote a response to his post and noticed a 15% increase in traffic to my blog which was not anything impressive. I assumed that it was all traffic relating to the post, to my surprise I took a look at the my web site page views and as it turns out, my Shakespeare sonnet post got (which I spent no energy on creating) got the same amount of hits! This came as a surprise to me.

Pie chart

So what did cause the increase in traffic to my site? A combination of interest in my Art Robotica Project, and Damien Hirst from a global audience. 25% of my viewers are from other countries. That’s around 200 people a day. Which is pretty interesting.

As you can see, the piggy back effect did not work. The person I targeted to piggy back from, gained my site very small traffic results. What can be said about this experiment, that people actually care about context. A rant is mere thoughts by a person that don’t have heavy research behind them. This is a very good way to start a dialogue. Playing devils advocate is a good past time of Clay’s he mainly does this to make points or in this case, agitate people enough to begin a discussion. The rant was crafted in such a way that he was instigating a group enough to get a response. And the results, although his web traffic does not reflect the effect, where successful. 415 responses out of roughly 4,500 viewers, that’s roughly 10% participation rate! Very good results in my opinion.

“Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat” the most popular youtube video this week has around 2.4 million views and around 10 thousand comments. That’s around .00416% participation.

Even though my blog is linked from Clay’s blog via the site “Responses.” The amount of people that actually cared about my point of view towards Clay are less that those who care about my point of view towards the arts and artists. This was good experiment to find out who is actually ready my blog. It seems that people interested in art are reading this right now =)

I guess an other interesting thing a lot of people are starting to realize, is how to make use of the data available on the web. It took me a total of 10 minutes to do all this research and about 30 minutes to write this post. The mount of information available on the web is incredible. If 10 years ago, you asked the Author of a book, how many people bought and/or read their book that same day, they would laugh. Daily information was not available on things like that for people like Authors. If you asked them to publish an article in one hour so that 100 people around the world can see it with in minutes of publishing, it would probably seem like an impossible task.

Posted in Advertising, Crazy Writings, ITP, NYU-ITP, Politics, Tools | No Comments »

Sonnet 116

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

So nice:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare

Posted in Crazy Writings | 1 Comment »

Green Vs. Sustainable, Round 1

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

What is the difference between “Green” and “Sustainable” Products?

Well its pretty simple, Green is like the cool thing you can buy at the supermarket and Sustainable its like the thing you make with your own sweat and blood. Well maybe i’m being a little dramatic but you may begin to get the idea.

Sustainability implies a system that fits in comfotably with other systems and has very little or no disruption to the other systems. Lets take the Making of a piece of bread. Like a nice loaf of home made bread.


Well if you’re lucky and you may manage to make it will look like this:

To make the bread you will have to do the following. Find wheat, dry it, grind it to make flour. Get some eggs from a chicken, milk a cow to get milk, and this is the part where your recipe becomes modernized; baking soda. if you want fluffy bread you need to use baking soda. Now if you where McGuiver you know that you can easily replace baking soda with Natron and vinegar or lemon juice. But if you are not up to the challenge of finding a dried up lake and finding these dried up crystals, you may be forced to go to your local shop and… buy it.

So here are things that have affected us in a very dramatic way, the ability to know where in the heck these things we buy come from or are made. And here lies the problem for the difference in the things we consume. If you manage to get Natron by going to the lake and finding it and adding it to your mix, then you are on your way to making sustainable bread. Now here is an other tricky part; the baking of your dough. How do you bake something when you have no stove? Well you make a little outdoor brick oven! Its pretty simple, I remember making one when I was 8 years old that lasted about a year. It was made from medium size rocks that I found by the river and some mud/clay. You just stack them in consecutive circles on top of each other till you get a little dome looking thing like this one made by my Grandpa after mine fell apart.

So once you have your little brick/stone oven ready you get some wood and make a fire inside it to heat it up. eventually the wood burns out and all you have left are hot coals. this it the perfect time to use a stick or something to move the coals to the sides and then put your dough in the middle. after 20-30 minutes of baking plus the amount of time it took you to gather the ingredients and make your little oven, you will have delicious bread.

Now this system is pretty sustainable since you took things that will naturally replenish them selves. and you did not harm any systems to get and make your food.

If you don’t want to make your own oven, then you can… buy one at the local Sears, Home Depot or which ever store’s branding you find more appealing. This decision is where your bread becomes a little corrupt. A stove is not just found in nature. They need to be fabricated packaged and transported to a market place. This whole process takes a big toll on the environment, because unlike you and I who actually care about the periphery of the places we live, corporations don’t really care about the periphery of the area around their factories. The workers on the factory may care a little, but they have very little say on the matter because this is the way the industry works. So what ends up happening, a tremendous amount of energy needs to be used to make all of the parts that are needed to make this thing function, not to mention that an infrastructure to get the Natural Gas to your home needs to occur and then some company needs to dig out the Gas and pump it to your house.

Now there has been debates about what is more sustainable burning wood or natural gas, so lets say we omit this step into the making of our bread and say “maybe our new system is not so bad” well… lets just say its not.

So lets say you had to use the cheap baking soda, and maybe your milk was not from a cow you happened to have in the back yard. Maybe you went to the supermarket and got “Organic” Milk and “Organic” eggs. This is ok too, just make sure that your products are Certified Organic, otherwise you may be getting products that harm the environment and there fore are not sustainable. What about the baking soda, maybe you want to be fancy and use baking powder.

This simple decision just added a bunch of CO2 and has given a tiny bit of power to oil producing countries. Why because in order make the baking powder in mass quantities, package it, brand it and distribute it you just contributed to a new system that harms the environment ( wait, so what about the stove? uh, oh.) So your home baked bread is now a little less sustainable. But its still Green. So lets say you did not get Organic Certified products, you got your generic milk and eggs and flour, well you just contributed to animal cruelty, and more unsustainable systems and food production.

So now your bread seems a little less appealing, but its still Green because you made it your self, and that is a big plus. If you had not made that bread on your own, now you have to add an other system of mass production to the bread you buy.

Even if someone claims the bread is Organic, the systems that it took to get that bread to your table will already have spent massive amounts of energy, polluted the environment and no one knows about it because who cares… So this is probably why you have never seen “Green” bread or “Sustainable” Bread, because its almost impossible to have checks and balances for all the systems that go into bread production. So if you see a sustainable bread in your local market, you may want to laugh, unless you know the name of the guy that made the bread and he knows the name of the guys (and wife maybe children) who got the other ingredients, and they all used bicycles or horses to transport their products. With that in mind, lets think about that Green vs. Sustainability thing again. What we are really talking about is A. Energy Efficiency and B. Disruption of natural systems, like eco-systems.

How can we make a difference, it seems we are screwed. The only way that we can make a difference, is to get products from the sources that seem the least harmful (choose the better of the evils), in other words lets collectively use our power to get rid of bad systems. On that note, WTF is wrong with companies!
Seriously, a bike with a battery being labeled green!

Think about the impact of bread and multiply it by 100 and then you will get the harm being made by the production of these “green’ Bikes. I mean look at all the crap you have to manufacture for these things.



So I hope that made you think a little about the word Green. now the real way to go is with a Sustainable bike, made from sustainable things. A good alternative is the Bamboo Bike. Bamboo= !!! <3 <3 =)

Check these babies out:


there is even a tutorial online to make your own. Kinda like making your own bread.

now this prototype may still need work to be fully sustainable, but its a great start. So shame on green washing companies. “green” bike, LOL.

Summary:

I am not encouraging you to “buy” sustainable products or to “buy” anything at all! I’m encouraging you to see what stuff you can deal with out (story of stuff), and what things you should make on your own(how stuff is made). Instead of recycling that glass container, see if you can re-use it. Also it is good to tell your friends to not buy stupid stuff too. Like jeans that tell you to be stupid. Its time to be smart and its time to make sure that the people around us get smart too.

The problem is Cultural. Lets try to make our culture, the human culture better.

Don’t Be Stupid like Deisel:



This is an interesting post on livestock:
http://dianabuja.wordpress.com/tag/livestock/

Posted in Crazy Writings, Sustainability, Tools | No Comments »

A Rant About Women by Clay Shirky?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Wow

I guess I’m just trying to figure out why clay called me an “behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerk” All I wanted was a letter of recommendation. And then his next thought is clearly a con artist! Really! Me! And what does jail have to do with it? Is clay trying to gain a bad-ass persona, or does he just want to tell us that he likes to twist words to gain power?

With all jokes aside (me being a former student of clay’s and joking about he writing about my non existent recommendation) WTF! “women in general” what percentage is he talking about!? That’s kind of like saying that men in general don’t like to have sex, they just like orgasms! Talk about Polarization!

I truly disagree with Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women” maybe I owe my way of thinking to my mother, but Women should act as they do; like Women, like people! I think that penis and vagina is not an issue anymore. Its the culture and the all boys club way of thinking that’s the issue. In this world we need to form alliances with people to gain a bit more power, this is the general theory behind politics. The problem that women used to have and still do sometimes, is that there are many circumstance causing women to not pursue professional careers in specific fields (like engineering, programming and garbage collecting to name a few). Because of that, women that do get higher educations and choose to go into those careers with smaller female to male ratios, have a smaller chance of forming their own “all girls” club to gain power. But in this modern world is this really a good move? is having a little girls club or a little boys club a good thing? No. You cannot look at sex anymore unless you are crazy. I mean look at Richard Branson or Hilary Clinton for instance. Branson tends to get people together, regardless of sex, to work together for the better good (or profit) Good things happen when you get a mix of people engaging in dialogue. Hilary was close to getting the democratic the nomination in 2008 and that was not due to her “acting like a man”. The popularity she gained was due to her acting like her self and doing what she thought was best politically. We all know why Obama won, but Hilary is a good example when it comes to politics and power. I mean she went to Wellesley college! You don’t learn to “act like a man”, at an all girls school. You can argue that she would not have done it with out Bill’s help, so why did the Republican Party go with Palin?

The reason Shirky’s female students are not jerks (“women whose educations I am responsible for in particular, are often lousy at those kinds of behaviors, even when the situation calls for it.”) is most likely because he is of the opposite sex and people tend to be politically correct towards the opposite sex in environments like classrooms (well same sex and gender, age, etc. too, people in classrooms I like to think are well behaved). The possibility of a bad grade and offending a “good” professor are enough to keep anyone quiet, this is all an assumption though. Rivalries occur more frequently among people of the same sex because that gender gap is not present. The gender gap often represents either an obstacle or a lack of, depending on your point of view.

“asking women to behave more like men” is completely wrong. Women should behave like Women, gender has nothing with doing a job right (unless is like breast feeding or something?). If a female wants to be a football player, that’s awesome. If she wants to be a Ganitor that’s cool, but not really, but its cool! if she wants to be a chef or the president of the US that’s fine, we need more like that. If they mess up, big deal everyone messes up. Raising your hand to get attention and “risk public failure” has more to do with character and patience than knowledge and sex. As a matter of fact there is something more powerful than raising your hand, and that is talking with an assertive tone to address an answer or response. This happens very often now a days, and its good. You can definitely distinguish alpha males and females.

Bottom line is that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and “forceful and self-confident without being arrogant or jerky” is not the only way to gain power. Its more often that those who don’t need to yell that have the most power. As for “women wait for someone else to recommend them.” Apparently Clay never heard of Women like Cornelia Sullfrank or Rachel Carson two of my row models.

I get that Clay is trying to encourage a conversation (in his mind) that will get women inspired to go on. But indications that you may be a perpetrator of the sexist ideology is not the right way. Maybe Clay did not realize that this point would have as easily been made, with a bit more “Umph” and a less degrading tone by other means. Rants always polarize people. So if the goal was to toss wood in the fire, then we will not go cold any time soon.

My wish is that people (Men/ Women) would deal with other people with grace and stern conduct if any lines are crossed. You will never beat fire with fire (Well maybe in a Savannah with steady winds, but thats not the point) you will beat the fire with water or dirt and there lies the answer. An eye for an eye is part of an “all male” ideology. I’m glad that this era is gone because there just something not fully comforting about that thought.

Posted in Crazy Writings, ITP, NYU-ITP, Politics, Talks, The Web | 1 Comment »

Level 2

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Posted in Art, Crazy Writings | No Comments »

The Age Of Meta Is Here.

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Now that Google’s Side wiki and ShiftSpace Beta have been released, the web is soon to be fresh with data form everyone.

Just imagine browsing the web and all your friends and strangers, left notes, links and additional information on the web pages you visit. Well imagine no more, just download these Firefox plug ins and you will be able to do these things and more. This is one step towards the semantic web, but there is definitely a lot of work to be done, like figuring out how to connect a T3 connection directly to a persons brain.

Posted in Crazy Writings, The Web | No Comments »

Apparently I’m a Bigillionare!

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

I have been getting a lot of emails about people leaving me lots of money in their will and people in foreign countries who want to invest in my company and things like that.
These are all so fake an ridiculous that they are kind of funny. I really hope people are not falling for these scams. At leas there are people out there like Adam Harvey making art out of all these junk emails.

Anyway here are some:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Letter Of Notification!!!

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engr.Juriaan Krugger. I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter were returned undelivered.
I wish to notify you that late Engr. Juriaan Krugger made you a beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Thirty Million, One Hundred Thousand Dollars (USD$30, 100.000.00) to you in the Codicil and last testament to his WILL.

This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you good.

Engr. Juriaan Krugger until his death was a member of the Helicopter Society and the Institute of Electronic & Electrical Engineers. Please if I reach you as I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job.
You are advice to contact me with my personal email:——————–

Await your prompt response.

Yours in Service,
BARRISTER ANDREAW FRASER ESQ.
PRINCIPAL PARTNERS: Barrister Aidan Walsh.Esq Markus
Wolfgang, Mr. John Marvey Esq., Mr. Jerry Smith Esq.

More:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

Dearest One,

My name is Mrs.Maria Elena Fernandez nationality of Philippine. I am married to late Mr. Cardinas Pascal Fernandez who worked with Philippine Embassy here in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year October 2007. We were married for twenty years with a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for four days.

When my late husband was alive we deposited the sum of $9Million with one of the good banks here in Cote d’Ivoire, presently, this money is still with the bank and my doctor told me that I would not last for the next three months due to my cancer problem, as I was diagnosed of Chronic cancer about two years now.

As I have known my condition. I am not looking for anything else but for someone with the fear of God. Who will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct here in, I want a person that will use this fund to orphanages, Widows, unable men, HIV/AIDS services, etc.

I took this decision because I have a child that will inherit this money but my son can not carry out this work only because I and my late husband decide to use some of the money to work for charity and the rest for my son education.

As soon as I receive your response I shall give you the contact of the bank. I will also issue you a letter of authority that will empower you as the new beneficiary of this fund. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated here, expecting to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,
Mrs.Maria Elena Fernandez.

Here is an other one :
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

- FROM MISS EVELYN DOUKORO. Dearest One, It’s my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I intend to establish in your country. I am Miss Evelyn Doukoro the only Child of Mr. and Mrs. Doukoro Isaac., Though I have not met with you before but I believe one has to risk confiding in someone to succeed sometimes in life. So please I apologise for any inconvenience to you. There is this huge amount of Eight Million Five Hundred Thousand U.S dollars ($8,500,000.00) which my late father deposited in one of the private Security Companies here in Abidjan , Ivory Coast before he was assassinated by unknown persons. Now I have decided to invest this money in your country or anywhere safe enough outside Africa for security and political reasons. I want you to assist/help me claim and transfer this fund to your country for investment purposes on the following areas of my interest below, or any of your choices. (1). Telecommunication (2). Five star hotel. (3) Estate management. If you can be of assistance to me I will like you to tell me what you will take from the total fund after you have completely transferred the funds to your safe account over there. I await your soonest response. Thank you and God bless you. Sincerely yours, Miss Evelyn Doukoro……..

Posted in Crazy Writings | No Comments »

« Older Entries