Month: August 2008

Thanks for the feedback. If you missed it, here’s the original concept for a campaign video contest. An idea: we’ll also open the contest to positive, effective ads for the candidate you support that you feel the pros aren’t creative or smart or ballsy enough to run. Out-Schmidting Steve Schmidt is great; but so would be outdoing positive messages for either man. I didn’t suggest this at first because I felt there were enough of these out there, but it strikes me that many are lame (especially those gauzy Obama ones) and letting the amateurs get in on the act could only be a plus. Maybe the really good ads – substantive ones, especially – could even shift the atmosphere a little. The contest as is is a little too cynical.

And we’ll run the contest for a while and post the best – positive and negative – as we go along. These things are labor intensive. But maybe it’s time for a well-trafficked blog to help send a raft of new ads into the viral ether. I should add that ads for Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are fine as well. I’m sure a few of you could do a nice little take-down of Ralph in 30 seconds.

Some pretty interesting evolutionary research:

Their hypothesis is that in places where disease is rampant, it behoves groups not to mix with one another more than is strictly necessary, in order to reduce the risk of contagion. They therefore predict that patterns of behaviour which promote group exclusivity will be stronger in disease-ridden areas. Since religious differences are certainly in that category, they specifically predict that the number of different religions in a place will vary with the disease load. Which is, as they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the case.

Proving the point involved collating a lot of previous research.

Even defining what constitutes a religion is fraught with difficulty. But using accepted definitions of uniqueness, exclusivity, autonomy and superiority to other religions they calculated that the average number of religions per country is 31. The range, though, is enormous—from 3 to 643. Côte d’Ivoire, for example, has 76 while Norway has 13, and Brazil has 159 while Canada has 15. They then did the same thing for the number of parasitic diseases found in each country. The average here was 200, with a range from 178 to 248.

Obviously, some of the differences between countries are caused by differences in their areas and populations. But these can be accounted for statistically. When they have been, the correlation between the number of religions in a place and how disease-ridden it is looks impressive. There is less than one chance in 10,000 that it has come about accidentally.

Ambers’ take:

Right now, the type of voter who’s paying attention is primed to support John McCain. After the conventions, when younger voters typically tune in — and by younger here, I mean, under 55 or so — then Obama’s margins will widen because these folks are his folks.

A new multi-national organization, OneGeology, is pooling resources and research from over 100 countries to provide a new, dynamic state-of-the-art map of the world composed of rocks alone. The maps are very, very pretty.

A new site; a new meme. Neo-soul?

Eww:

First time customer KaNin Reese, 32, described the tingling sensation created by the toothless fish: "It kind of feels like your foot’s asleep," she said.

A Craigslist classic from London:

20-30 henchmen needed for moderately-sized supervillain organisation with large expansion potential (fortresses built into geological structures, corruption of government officials, possible genesis of ‘nemesis’ vigilante). Electrical theme…

Desired (but not necessarily required) in applicants:

-interesting deformations/obsessions/powers(?) giving rise to interesting nicknames (e.g. Claws, Pyro, Buzzsaw, and similar)
-unwavering loyalty
-being a corruptible government official
-ability to work as part of a close-knit team (unless interesting obsession is of the ‘lone wolf’ variety)
-grudge against any well-known vigilante
-flexible moral code.

Either guy Ritchie is casting his next movie or Dick Cheney is anticipating private sector work.

(Hat tip: Wired.)

Introducing the battery-powered plane.

Some readers are enthusiastic:

My outloud words were "Ah he is fucking fantastic"!   GREAT IDEA.

Others less so:

I’m unclear how encouraging viral ads to go negative "pre-empts" the professionals from using the same ideas.  Surely you are giving them those ideas, and how to execute them, as a gift. 

The idea of a competition seems to me to be based on a fallacy; the mass audience and the audience for home-made political ads on YouTube are just not the same.  Now, you may be thinking: this isn’t about the mass audience.  It’s the pundit class that I want to influence here; surely it’s worth tiring them of negative ads ahead of time? I would suggest that bombarding the Net audience with negative ads will only accustom them to constant negativity, so they’re no longer offended when the pros do it.  So there’ll be fewer protests and less fallout for the perpetrators.  The lingering feeling some of us have that such ads are wrong is about all we have to oppose them with, since negativity can be so successful. Do we really want to erode that feeling?

Another writes:

I understand your concept, but it’s a lot like trying to take the power out of offensive words like "queer" and "nigger" by having people repeat them over and over in everyday conversation.

That might work eventually but it takes years to accomplish. You propose we flood the netwaves with the equivalent of "queer" and "nigger" in a short 6 weeks and hope it has a positive effect. I don’t think so. It will only muddy the already murky waters, and I think the net effect (no pun intended) is that some of the more odious ones produced will get passed around the internet and be misunderestimated by a lot of voters who don’t have the ability to separate fact from fiction.

I see the risks. But let’s say we find a brilliant ad that uses the race card against Obama. If and when the McCain campaign copies that, we can better show how these things are done and demystify and defuse the impact. I think of it as a form of vaccination against the disease. The same would hold for an anti-McCain ad that subtly uses the age issue. The ads would be subject to discussion and debate on the blog as we post them. More important, it’s empowering. We are too much in fear of these things. More daylight, more ownership and their impact can be dulled, even subverted.

That’s the idea, anyway. No idea if it will work. It will take effort to do it, more than most people with jobs and families and lives have. But nothing ventured … I’ll keep you posted on the responses.