sound, fury, etc.
This 1962 Bob Dylan song (adapted from a Joseph S. Newman poem) about Hezekiah Jones & his religious debate with the white man’s preacher is pretty fantastic. You should listen to it:
(I mean… actually you should listen to the entire “Gaslight Tapes” recording, but you gotta start somewhere.)
Now *this* is what a Real American looks like:
Damn, check out all this great press coverage for Janet’s awesome band & gallery & music school:
And as if that all that wasn’t exciting enough, they’re going to Mexico!
On the heels of this weekend’s post about efficiency, comes this intriguing article on the politics of fish farming:
If Vietnamese growers can be believed, tra may be the most efficient way on earth to make animal protein. It takes three acres of grazing land to grow a single 700-pound cow. That same land, flooded and turned over to channel catfish ponds will generate 25,000 pounds of catfish. But in Vietnam, those three acres will bring in up to 1 million pounds of tra (a relative of the catfish).
As it turns out, this stunning efficiency, much like the eggless cake mix, is *also* being stifled; in this case by the American catfish lobby, which has successfully introduced legislation to prevent these wonder-fish from being sold as “catfish.” (While simultaneously creating a new, market-tested designation for classy catfish: “Delicata!”)
As the article observes: “American consumers probably don’t care all that much about taxonomy. They do, however, care about brands.” Rarely have truer words been spoken.
This weekend finds me traveling to Chicago by way of Southwest Airlines, a carrier that is either loved or hated by many fliers for pretty much the same reason: ruthless efficiency. Every time I fly Southwest, and I see the way they’ve evolved & tuned their system to shave a few more minutes off the boarding or snack & drink distribution processes, I must confess I get a little geeky thrill. Recently they’ve started walking the aisles with a big boxful of snacks & allowing people to take “as much as they want” from the stash. (Previously, each passenger could accept or reject a “snack box” that contained one of each type of snack.) While on the one hand this would seem to be an uncharacteristically extravagant move for Southwest, I have a feeling it’s actually quite the opposite. Aside from the obvious reduction in packaging costs from eliminating the snack boxes, I can almost guarantee you that they’re going through less total snacks since instituting the new system. Based on an entirely unscientific survey of the people sitting next to me on a number of flights, I’ve noticed that I’m probably the only person who consumes *all* of the available snack types. Many people have a deep-seated distaste for peanut-butter & Ritz cracker sandwiches and/or Lorna Doone shortbread cookies it seems, and in the days of the snack box, a large number of these ended up in the trash, either partially consumed or totally untouched. Under the new system, unwanted snacks remain in the global box & can be held in inventory until some weirdo like me finally comes along and eats them all. Furthermore, some sense of common decency & peer pressure seems to keep everyone (again, except me) from grabbing 5 or 6 of the snacks that they *do* like. So on the whole, Southwest comes out ahead, while at the same time being able to give the impression of being more generous.
So anyway, I’m reading the in flight Spirit magazine, which is actually surprisingly non-shitty for an airline, and this month’s focus is on technology. And the thing that strikes me as being somewhat ironic about the cover story in this issue is that it’s all about how advances in the field of human-computer interaction (or “kind tech” as the article refers to it, but that’s a whole other story) are actually aimed at *reducing* the efficiency of various technologies, in order to make them more “cuddly” and “empowering for humans.” As a future cyborg, I find this pretty troubling. The argument is basically that people become discouraged when they learn that a machine or an algorithm can perform many of the same tasks as well as, or better than, a human. Therefore, interaction designers should create products which give their human operators a feeling of agency & involvement, even where this is not strictly necessary or even counter-productive. The following example is cited:
The idea is not entirely new. Even instant cake mixes in post–WWII America employed the philosophy. The very first ones needed no eggs. Just add water and shove the concoction into an oven. But researchers for General Mills discovered that household cooks missed the satisfaction of making something for their families. They wanted the convenience, but they also wanted baking a cake to feel more like baking. The answer: Require the addition of eggs. That allowed the cake mixes to make the cook feel helped, not replaced.
Jesus Christ, people! What are you, 4-year-olds with an EZ-Bake Oven? I actually came across some “no eggs required” cake mix a year or two ago in a camping store and I thought to myself, “What a brilliant concept!” I mean, I like the “idea” of “baking” as much as the next guy, but I’ll be damned if I’m maintaining a supply of fresh eggs in my refrigerator at all times, just so I can add them to an otherwise shelf-stable mix when I feel like having some cake. Anyway though, I guess I’m just strange in that respect. I mean, I really do love cooking & exploring new cuisines whenever possible, but for day-to-day nutritional maintenence, I could probably be quite happy eating “Bachelor Chow” out of a squeezy-tube. (And again, we’re not talking about a mouth-wateringly moist & delicious cake made from scratch & packed with scandalous amounts of sugar & butter here, because *that* is a beautiful thing!!! It’s the suggestion that cracking an egg into a mass-produced, preservative-laden cake-mix cake will somehow increase the “authenticity” of the experience that really grinds my gears.)
So the article goes on to talk about other such examples of “kind tech” (an email inbox that organizes itself! a social network to help shy people to introduce themselves to strangers!) before presenting another real-world example of people getting their feelings hurt by technology:
Take grocery store scanners. “These were about making a quick, efficient transaction,” Zimmerman says. “But it’s socially dehumanizing to the person working it. Now I am the thing that orients the bar code. I serve the machine, as opposed to the machine serving me.”
Dude, all I have to say to that is: “Get used to it.” It’s a machine’s world now, and we are all just living in it. Also, can somebody please send the memo about grocery store scanners being quick & efficient to all the people in front of me in the self-service checkout line at Lucky?
I was reading the California Voter’s Guide supplement on Proposition 1A which authorizes the sale of bonds to construct a high-speed train between SF & LA. The “pro” argument presented in the guide is pretty straightforward, it’s basically: “It will be awesome and reduce traffic, pollution, strengthen regional economies and etc. etc. etc., all without raising taxes!” (Since the project will be financed through the sale of government bonds). Sounds great, right! But then the “con” argument comes out with the typical anti-big-government scaremongering like “Your tax will go up! Communists will kidnap your children!” and etc. But what is really telling about the whole thing is the language that the “con” side uses to make their case, describing the project as a “boondoggle!” A BOONDOGGLE!!! Now if that’s not a message targeted directly at the, shall we say… “youth-challenged” residents of our state then I don’t know what is. (Looking at the etymology for the term it seems that it was coined by an American scoutmaster in the 1930s). Anyway, I hope the initiative passes. Maybe if we put a throw in a steam-whistle & and put a cow-catcher on the front of the train, people will feel more comfortable about it?
In other “get-your-dadgum-hands-off-my-hard-earned-money” related news, here’s a video of Obama discussing his tax plan with a plumbing business owner:
It’s just so disturbingly refreshing to see a presidential candidate engage in a detailed and nuanced discussion of real policy that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This is a test of the iPhone wordpress app. It’s so bad like a power glove! Or maybe more like typing with a pair of power gloves on… I guess if Strong Bad can do it then I ought to be able to figure it out!
In case you ever wanted to hear a hip-hop song called “Windows Media Player” with lyrics about zShare and MegaUpload with a Blogspot URL as the chorus, here you go:
Charles Hamilton - Windows Media Player
…and if you didn’t want to hear such a thing? Well have a good time back in 1958 then Ice-T, cause this shit is the FUTURE!
(via nation of thizzlam)
Not to be an elitist or anything, but…
Favorite quotes from the foxnews.com debate thread:
Uh, I wanted to post more, but the entire thread was pretty overrun with people just spamming 20 page blocks of “MCAINWON MCAINWON MCAINWON MCAINWON” text. I also kind of want to make a post on there and ask them if they know what “homonyms” are (I’m looking at *you* #5 & #6!) but I have a feeling that would just spark a debate on gay rights and we’d all die of irony.
Google Reader had a little survey with a “More comments” field at the bottom. Dunno if anybody is actually going to read it, but here’s what I wrote:
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