nmb

Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” in Wired Magazine makes for a great read; it takes a stab at explaining a whole host of pop-culture phenomena by linking them together under a seemingly counterintuitive proposition: people’s tastes are not reined in by scarcity.

Put more simply, in a physical world—the one defined by movie theaters, book stores, and music stores, etc.—retailers are constrained by the need to carry material that can earn its keep, i.e., be snapped up in sufficient numbers by a local audience.

Generic Example: Say you’ve got a movie. Say there are 2 million people who want to see that movie. Say the density of this particular demographic is 5 people per square mile. Your movie ain’t gonna fly.

Anderson calls this “the tyranny of physical space,” saying “an audience too thinly spread is the same as no audience at all.”

Now when you start talking online distribution, this tyranny is turned upside-down. Probably the clearest example is Rhapsody, an online music subscription service:

Not only is every one of Rhapsody’s top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

This is the Long Tail. ¹

Anderson’s exploration of the long tail and its implications for, e.g., online music subscription is interesting; but even if you care little or nothing about online music or what-have-you, you may want to stick around long enough to entertain his thoughts on hits vs. sales and the aforementioned tyranny, both of which generate some interesting (if not necessarily surprising) brain-fodder.

Like this, which I’ll leave you with to close:

[A]s egalitarian as Wal-Mart may seem, it is actually extraordinarily elitist. Wal-Mart must sell at least 100,000 copies of a CD to cover its retail overhead and make a sufficient profit; less than 1 percent of CDs do that kind of volume. What about the 60,000 people who would like to buy the latest Fountains of Wayne or Crystal Method album, or any other nonmainstream fare? They have to go somewhere else.

Notes:
¹ Though another good example is Amazon, half of which sales are from books outside the top 130,000 titles.

(Wired: “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson [October 2004])

Carve political pumpkins.

Printer-friendly patterns of John Kerry and George Bush at FabulousFoods.com.

(via This Modern World)

Last night¹, Turner Classic Movies kicked off a monthlong series called “Party Politics and the Movies,” in which senators are invited to choose and introduce their favorite films. John Edwards was the inaugural guest, and his selection was almost shockingly bold: Dr. Strangelove. … Edwards was bashful about drawing parallels, but host Ben Mankiewicz finally baited the hook for him: “Is there any message you would like President Bush or Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to get from this movie?” Edwards’ answer, delivered in his usual courtly drawl, was a quiet little knife in the president’s ribs: “Human beings are fallible. They make mistakes … That’s why it’s so important to have somebody at the top of the civilian government who understands what’s happening and has good sound judgment.”

Next Thursday night, John McCain will introduce another Kubrick film, Paths of Glory… one of the most virulently antiwar movies of all time.

(Slate: “How John Edwards learned to stop worrying and love Dr. Strangelove,” by Dana Stevens [October 8, 2004])

Note:
¹ Actually, October 7th.

In related (but unrelated) news, [1] Barbie fell off the list of favored Christmas wish toys in Britain, while [2] yet another artist twists Barbie’s image to her own will.

All the gory details:

1. “The Barbie doll has for the first time failed to appear on the list of toys expected to top British children’s Christmas lists, retailers revealed today.

   “Younger rivals, such as the Bratz series and Dora the Explorer, have usurped the 45-year-old doll, which is manufactured by the US company Mattel, on the UK Toy Retailers Association’s top 10.”

   (Guardian: “Barbie: the doll of Christmas past” [October 6, 2004])

2. “There’s a cross-dressing male doll with long hot pink hair and a tight miniskirt. A “Jailbait Barbie” stands behind bars, wearing a pink and white striped uniform and an identification number. An eight-legged black widow doll crawls up a spider web, with Ken wrapped in her webbing.

   …

   “In a scenario that has its parallel in real life, Baker finds down-on-their-luck Barbies–at thrift stores and from friends–then introduces them to a world of sex, drugs and violence.

   “‘I always loved Barbie,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what led me to this. Barbie was too clean and she needed to be in the real world, so I put her in my world.’”

   (AP: “N.C. woman sells naughty Barbie dolls” [October 4, 2004])

(FYI, this is “More Barbie” because a previous post here at nmb covered another perversion of the Barbie image, “Food Chain Barbie”)

Police in the battleground state of Pennsylvania are looking for a man who robbed a bank Thursday night wearing a George W. Bush mask.

(TSG: “Man Robs Bank Wearing George W. Bush Mask” [October 18, 2004])

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a bull moose hanging by its antlers from an electrical power line in the middle of the Alaska wilderness.

This is one of those truly bizarre stories that seems absolutely hilarious until you actually think about it, at which point it turns morbid and sad. (Check out the article for a surprising amount of detail regarding the moose and its unfortunate accident.)

“It’s just an unbelievable story,” said Gabriel Marian, president of City Electric Inc., the contractor erecting the power line to the mine. “The only unfortunate part is we had to shoot the moose.

“It would be more of a feel-good story if we had let it down and it ran off,” he lamented.

(Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: “Wired Moose,” by Tim Mowry [October 17, 2004])

This is very, very curious:

“We found neural activity that frankly surprised us,” says Michael Weliky, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “Adult ferrets had neural patterns in their visual cortex that correlated very well with images they viewed, but that correlation didn’t exist at all in very young ferrets, suggesting the very basis of comprehending vision may be a very different task for young brains versus old brains.”

A second surprise was in store for Weliky. Placing the ferrets in a darkened room revealed that older ferrets’ brains were still humming along at 80 percent as if they were processing visual information. Since this activity was absent in the youngsters, Weliky and his colleagues were left to wonder: What is the visual cortex so busy processing when there’s no image to process?

…

This suggests that though the young ferrets are taking in and processing visual stimuli, they’re not processing the stimuli in a way that reflects reality.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for the part where brain professor Michael Weliky has a screening of “The Matrix” for the ferrets.

(University of Rochester: “Under the Surface, the Brain Seethes With Undiscovered Activity” [October 6, 2004])

The old Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Infocom game is now jazzed up with graphics (graphics!) in a li’l flash thingamabob, courtesy of the BBC.

(For the uninitiated, the original Infocom game [and also the new Flash version] was basically a digital choose-your-own-adventure version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book. I actually remember having the Infocom game. I don’t remember ever making it out of the bedroom alive, which essentially means that I managed to get crushed by the bulldozers–or possibly obliterated by the Vogons–every single time. I never really put that much effort into it, but I also never figured out what you could or could not do. The idea was that you typed complete sentences into the computer, and it understood exactly what you meant; my experience was that the computer could never understand what I was telling it to do. I may have been too young, too stupid, or quite possibly both. You might have better luck.)

(via BoingBoing)

“This little website exists to spread some happiness all over the planet by sharing sounds. Most of these sounds are far from the mainstream, so you might just find something your ears have never experienced!”

Gatorama in Palmdale [FL] sells more than 15,000 pounds of alligator meat a year.

The famed roadside attraction is one of Florida’s original gator farms. Owners Allen and Patty Register not only sell raw gator meat, they also have a restaurant serving gator ribs and other specialties.

… Just in case visitors forget where they are, there’s a sign at Gatorama warning: “No swimming or sunbathing. Violators may be eaten.”

(AP: “Gator meat tastes more like pork than chicken” [September 27, 2004])

Maybe it will happen, and maybe it won’t—but the point is, the very prospect of a White Noise movie is fantastic, if not a little daunting.

It’s one of those cases where you hope they don’t mess up (they being the director, screenwriters, actors, etc., etc.) , but where you also don’t quite know how they can’t, the original work being so grandly, inimitably magnificent in its own right.

In short: What is would-be director Barry Sonnenfeld^* thinking?

But you gotta have hope, I suppose.

Note:
^*: director of The Addams Family, Wild Wild West; cinematographer for Blood Simple, Throw Momma from the Train, & Big; producer for Out of Sight & The Ladykillers, etc.

(Movie Insider/Release: “Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’ Next for Barry Sonnenfeld” [July 30, 2004]; see also the IMDB page for White Noise (2005))

Those talking M&M’s candy characters cleaned up, with 22 percent of more than 600,000 votes cast…

The AFLAC Duck — whose quack renders the insurance company’s name — finished second with 14 percent. Mr. Peanut pulled in 10 percent. The Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger rounded out the Top 5, earning single-digit returns.

(CSM: “Madison Avenue crowns America’s ad icons,” by Clayton Collins [September 22, 2004])

Were this lobster not made of industrial-strength plastic, metal alloys and a nickel metal hydride battery, Dr. Ayers … seemed frustrated enough to drop [it] into a boiling pot of water and serve it up for dinner.

Mr. Snakebot complains it’s hard to get funding these days. A maker of robotic flies—who happens professor at the University of California—laments the difficulty of making these robots: these flies, geckoes, fish. And the RoboLobster? Don’t get me started.

What is the world coming to. Six-legged robots “inspired” by cockroaches have their own websites. So does CMU’s snakerobot. And Berkley’s MechoGecko.

Read of these things, so that you might be forewarned.

(It’s not necessarily what you’d call an inspired article, but it has its moments.)

(NYT: “They’re Robots? Those Beasts!” by Scott Kirsner [September 17, 2004])

GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.

BUSH: I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have made that decision. And I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I’ll stand by those decisions, because I think they’re right.

BUSH: That’s really what you’re — when they ask about the mistakes, that’s what they’re talking about. They’re trying to say, “Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?” And the answer is, “Absolutely not.” It was the right decision.

The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today, because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program. And the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

We knew he hated us. We knew he’d been — invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.

On the tax cut, it’s a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.

Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on national TV. (emphasis added)

It’s actually a pretty straightforward question: name 3 mistakes you’ve made, and tell us how you’ve tried to fix them.

Never mind strategy, or political technique, or the subtleties of debate: if Bush truly thought he didn’t make any mistakes, his answer should have been fairly straightforward: “I don’t believe I’ve made any mistakes.”

He then could have gone on to defend what other people view as mistakes, and then explain why they weren’t mistakes, thus defending his original point (I haven’t made any mistakes).

Curiously, that’s not what he says.

Instead of actually coming out and stating that he hasn’t made any mistakes, he addresses the question implicitly. Or vaguely. Or something.

The point is, the person asking the question requested three mistakes.

Bush offered three items.

Since he didn’t state from the get-go that he hasn’t made any mistakes, one reasonable conclusion to draw is that he has made mistakes, and knows it, in one way or another.

Taking this at face value—which, admittedly, is a stretch (bear with me)—there are three things Bush mentions, and defends. He offers three things, and the question asked for three mistakes.

Is it too much to presume that the three things he offers (Afghanistan, Iraq, taxes) were in fact three mistakes he’s made?

Just a thought.

(hat tip to Orcinus for the debate snippet; the whole segment is available at MSNBC)

Slate asked a variety of prominent American novelists, ranging from Edwidge Danticat to John Updike, for a frank response to the following question: Which presidential candidate are you voting for, and why? Thirty-one novelists participated, with four for Bush, 24 for Kerry, and three in a category of their own.

Dan Chaon, Amy Tan, John Updike, Jonathan Safran Foer, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Orson Scott Card, Diane Johnson, Jonathan Franzen, Judith Guest, Edwidge Danticat, Chang-Rae Lee, Jane Smiley, Lorrie Moore, Robert Ferrigno, Jennifer Egan, Russell Banks, Daniel Handler, Roger L. Simon, George Saunders, Jodi Picoult, A.M. Homes, Thomas Mallon, Gary Shteyngart, Jim Lewis, Vendela Vida, David Amsden, Elizabeth Hardwick, Nicole Krauss, Richard Dooling and Thomas Beller weigh in.

A few of the choicest morsels (in my opinion):

“I’ll vote for John Kerry. His election won’t reverse our nation’s rush to establish a fascist plutocracy, it’s too late for that.” (Russell Banks)

“Richard Nixon, because I found him so fascinating the first time around I’d be curious to see what he could do from the beyond…?” (A.M. Homes)

“Mark me on the Bush side of the ledger, a lonely side for this survey, I’m certain. Most novelists live in their imagination, which is a fine place to be until the bad guys come knock knock knocking. … Kerry will dance the Albright two-step with Kim Jong-il, consult with Sandy Berger’s socks, and kowtow to the U.N. apparatchiks who have done such a fine job of protecting the Cambodians, Rwandans, and the Sudanese. No thanks. No contest.” (Robert Ferrigno)

“Are there really any novelists voting for Bush?” (Lorrie Moore)

(Slate: “Roll Call” [October 11, 2004])

Sri Lanka is trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of its “national handball team” while on tour in Germany, but it is no easy task — the Indian Ocean island doesn’t have one.

The 23-strong “team” managed to dupe the German Embassy in Colombo into issuing visas for a month-long tour beginning on September 8, acting German Ambassador Heidi Jung said on Thursday.

…

“There is no handball federation in Sri Lanka… We don’t even have a single club,” said Hemasiri Fernando, president of Sri Lanka’s Olympic Association.

(Reuters: “Mystery as ‘Handball Team’ Vanishes” [local version] [September 16, 2004])

That’s right, fashion models rapelling down the world’s tallest skyscraper.

Not down the entire building, mind you; but 154ft is still 154ft, and much more vertical than your typical catwalk.

(Also: not that you were going to argue against the building technically being the world’s tallest or not, but supposing for the moment that you were, there’s this:

A global architectural group on Friday declared the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan’s capital the world’s tallest building.

I thought you should know.)

(Reuters: “Models Use Tallest Skyscraper for Vertical Catwalk” [local version] [September 24, 2004]; CBC/CP: “Architects name Taipei 101 skyscraper the world’s tallest building” [October 10, 2004])

Not that you’re ever going to be on the O’Reilly Factor (which as everyone who’s anyone knows, you simply call The Factor), but if you are, you’d better read up first. Seriously. Jack Shafer has a few good tips.

(Slate: “How To Beat Bill O’Reilly: Kill him with kindness,” by Jack Shafer [September 23, 2004])

I’m not nearly as fanatical about Fafblog as any number of other folks are, but the following piece, “drivin with Donald,” is pure gold. Better, even. I’m quoting it in its entirety because, well, it’s that good. (Also because it’s related to the previous post here regarding a real-life Rumsfeldian incident, albeit without Rumsfeld’s involvement.)

Though I should also take care to note that, even supposing you do read the whole thing here [which, let’s be honest, you shouldn’t], a trip to Fafblog is wholly warranted on account of the most excellent “picture” that accompanies the grade-A documentary writing.

Anyway, here it is:

Donald Rumsfeld is no perfectionist.So we’re ridin on down the road in our Cross Country Journey of Inner Discovery and Of Course the American Dream when Donald Rumsfeld hits a moose.

“Maybe we should stop an get a tow truck,” says me.
“Gosh, that seems pretty excessive,” says Donald Rumsfeld. “I mean, was a moose hit? Yes. Do the antlers sticking through the windshield make driving trickier? You bet. But should we just turn around and quit because the road got a little bumpy? I’d say no.”

One thing about Donald Rumsfeld that you have to give him credit for is he always cuts through the crap to tell it like it is in his no-nonsense style. I am reminded of this when we hit the second moose.

“Moose happen,” says Donald Rumsfeld. “There are moose, and we’ll hit ‘em. That’s the way it goes. We’ve lost two tires and the brakes. That’s life. I’m drunk, legally blind and have been charged with eight counts of vehicular manslaughter in the last three years. Gotta deal with it. Nothing’s perfect.”
“If you think about it the more moose get hit by us, the fewer moose there are to get hit by us!” says me.
“I like the way you think,” says Donald Rumsfeld.

Donald grabs a beer an misses a pedestrian. Hooray! One of the moose is still alive an kicks at the engine. “Bad moose,” says me. “No beer until you stop.” Donald Rumsfeld throws an open bottle a Coors at the back seat to put out the fire.

“Are parts of the car on fire? Sure. Would we like them not to be? Of course. Have I gone insane from three decades of snorting military-grade rubber cement? Quite possibly. Do we need everything to be perfect for us to go out on the road? Well, that’s absurd,” says Donald Rumsfeld.
“That’s very true,” says me. “We cannot make the perfect the enemy of the terrible.”

The bridge up ahead is either out or doesn’t exist. But if we waited for everything to be perfect before we did stuff well then we’d never get anythin done! Forward, onward, downward, Donald Rumsfeld!

(via Alas, a Blog)

Really, it could have happened to anybody.

A 20-ton piece of road machinery mowed down a fence and a couple of trees on property belonging to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (news - bio) after the brakes apparently slipped and the machine rolled away.

“It was a freak accident,” said Michael Trujillo, director of public works for Taos County.

(AP: “20-Ton Machine Mows Down Rumsfeld’s Fence” [August 20, 2004])

Continue Reading »