"Candy ads these days tend to rely on surreal, absurdist humor. There's the Starburst ad in which a guy communes with a llama and the Skittles ad that shows a man with a prehensile beard. Cadbury actually owns another confectionary brand that uses nonsensical, dude-focused advertising: Check out the Stride gum spot in which a team of lederhosen-clad dancers assaults a young man in a parking garage."
Link to a cultural and marketing analysis on the new Hall's Ad
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
7 People Who Should Have Won the Nobel Prize - But Didn't
The list includes Ghandi and Vaclav Havel.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Listen to your favorite sitcom and movie quotes
Just search a character from your favorite TV show to listen to audio of your favorite quotes.
http://www.entertonement.com/
http://www.entertonement.com/
Friday, September 11, 2009
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Joe Biden read this poem today during a September 11th memorial service
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Teen Caste Systems in 80's film and now
This is why I love cultural criticism.
Any article that can show how teen culture has changed by comparing the social structure of The Breakfast Club to the structure of Mean Girls gets an A+ in my book.
"Mean Girls, too, offered an absurd litany of cliques—listed at one point by a supporting character as, “ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, Varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks.” "
Any article that can show how teen culture has changed by comparing the social structure of The Breakfast Club to the structure of Mean Girls gets an A+ in my book.
"Mean Girls, too, offered an absurd litany of cliques—listed at one point by a supporting character as, “ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, Varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don't eat anything, desperate wannabes, burnouts, sexually active band geeks.” "
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Complex Procedure = More Money for Doctors
The more specialized and difficult a medical procedure, the more Medicare money the medical office receives.
The following article argues that this creates incentives for specialist medical offices to recommend difficult procedures in order to receive more money from Medicare.
But more money for a specialist means less money for a primary care physician.
Read More
The following article argues that this creates incentives for specialist medical offices to recommend difficult procedures in order to receive more money from Medicare.
But more money for a specialist means less money for a primary care physician.
Read More
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Watch Videos in a Magazine
CBS is inserting 40 minutes worth of footage onto a single page of a magazine using "video-in-print" technology.
"Last year, the cover of October's Esquire magazine splashed blazes of electronic ink. Using the same technology as Amazon.com's Kindle, panels on the cover and an ad inside from Ford Motor flashed with messages and an illusion of a car on the road.
CBS has been especially active. In 2007, it placed ads with lickable mojito-flavored strips in Rolling Stone to promote a show about a family with a rum-and-sugar business. In 2005, it embedded People magazine with singing sound chips to promote an Elvis Presley miniseries." -The Wall Street Journal
"Last year, the cover of October's Esquire magazine splashed blazes of electronic ink. Using the same technology as Amazon.com's Kindle, panels on the cover and an ad inside from Ford Motor flashed with messages and an illusion of a car on the road.
CBS has been especially active. In 2007, it placed ads with lickable mojito-flavored strips in Rolling Stone to promote a show about a family with a rum-and-sugar business. In 2005, it embedded People magazine with singing sound chips to promote an Elvis Presley miniseries." -The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Heroes and Villains: Wicked and it's Postmodern Undertones (No Spoilers)
Hyperlink Cinema - films where the characters or action reside in separate stories, but a connection or influence between those disparate stories is slowly revealed to the audience
Hyperlink movies like Crash, Babel, and Amores Perros allow the audience to witness life through the eyes of multiple characters. Some films make it very difficult to determine who the heroes and villains are. They demand us to understand human beings not as one-dimensional protagonists or antagonists but rather as people who sometimes make the right and wrong choices.
I think drama is at its best when the audience is not sure who to sympathize with more. An example that I found difficult to take sides on is in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air when Will’s deadbeat father comes back to visit. Will’s deadbeat dad offers to take him along on a road trip but his Uncle Phil is super against it, worrying that Will’s father will leave him hanging again.
Will wants to develop his lost relationship with his father again and sees Uncle Phil as too protective. And Uncle Phil, presuming that Will’s father will do more harm than good, doesn’t want Will to get hurt again. In this confrontation the audience may very well sympathize with both characters and it is not until the end when the two find out that Will’s dad has left him for the second time that we move to Uncle Phil’s side (in what is one of the best endings in the Bel Air series).
For me, a bad example of drama would be the movie The Break Up, where it is really easy to take sides between Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston depending on which one is being more of a jerk at the moment.
Good villains sometimes have a perverse logic to them which makes it difficult to take an opposing stance. The Joker's argument is that society is inherently unstable with those in power taking abuse of it. The Saw and Se7ven villains want individuals to appreciate their lives and do away with sin. Nero from Star Trek feels that Spock let Nero's planet get destroyed and wants Spock to feel the same pain.
Audiences don't agree with the actions these villains take though the critique that these villains pose is justifiable. In a twisted way, the reason why these villains are good characters is because somewhere deep down in ourselves, we identify with them.
Wicked makes it easier to identify with the Wicked Witch of the West by giving us her account. It creates a new back story for the Witch that treats her as a human-like character with logical reasons for doing the "Wicked" things she does.
People have found ways to put a spin on news since the beginning of time. Alexander the Great made sure to spread around the tale of how he “untied” the famous Gordian Knot by slicing through it with his sword, using the incident to legitimize his rise to power. The story here was more popular than the substance. Any able-bodied swordsman could have sliced the knot with a sword.
Our conscious understanding of the image being more powerful than the underlying substance has seen most of its development in the past century. Be it Nazi Propaganda, Corporate Advertisements, or the government of Iran blaming BBC reporters for inciting the recent election riots, there are competing frameworks of truth. The level of “truthiness” (thanks Colbert) is relative to the culture and context of which that truth is expressed.
In Wicked, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz tells the Wicked Witch about the different modes of truth. I forget exactly what he said but at one point he mentioned how a crusader to one person may be an invader to another. Even himself, the powerful, loud, all-seeing wizard of oz (the image) is nothing but a tiny, lonely, old man (the substance).
The citizens of Munchkinland are left in the dark about many of the events going on behind the scenes. They hate the Wicked Witch of the West and never get to hear her account of the story. In a way, as viewers of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we were the citizens of Munchkinland at one point until we learn the "truth" by watching Wicked.
The Dark Knight shares this postmodern theme in which a hateful figure, Batman, is really the hero.
I guess my conclusion is that I like how a lot of new stories imply that the world is not one-dimensional. That there isn’t always a “good guy” and a “bad guy” and even when there are, they may be the opposite of what we judge them to be.
If these stories can teach us one thing, it would be to look deeper into the context of those around us and to not judge right away. They don't want people to become empathetic to the villains of our world but rather to have them take the time to understand the situations and contexts a little better before passing judgment. They ask us to be watchful of the Spin that our own everyday Heroes may throw out there and to take the time to understand the opposing arguments and sides as well.
Hyperlink movies like Crash, Babel, and Amores Perros allow the audience to witness life through the eyes of multiple characters. Some films make it very difficult to determine who the heroes and villains are. They demand us to understand human beings not as one-dimensional protagonists or antagonists but rather as people who sometimes make the right and wrong choices.
I think drama is at its best when the audience is not sure who to sympathize with more. An example that I found difficult to take sides on is in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air when Will’s deadbeat father comes back to visit. Will’s deadbeat dad offers to take him along on a road trip but his Uncle Phil is super against it, worrying that Will’s father will leave him hanging again.
Will wants to develop his lost relationship with his father again and sees Uncle Phil as too protective. And Uncle Phil, presuming that Will’s father will do more harm than good, doesn’t want Will to get hurt again. In this confrontation the audience may very well sympathize with both characters and it is not until the end when the two find out that Will’s dad has left him for the second time that we move to Uncle Phil’s side (in what is one of the best endings in the Bel Air series).
For me, a bad example of drama would be the movie The Break Up, where it is really easy to take sides between Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston depending on which one is being more of a jerk at the moment.
Good villains sometimes have a perverse logic to them which makes it difficult to take an opposing stance. The Joker's argument is that society is inherently unstable with those in power taking abuse of it. The Saw and Se7ven villains want individuals to appreciate their lives and do away with sin. Nero from Star Trek feels that Spock let Nero's planet get destroyed and wants Spock to feel the same pain.
Audiences don't agree with the actions these villains take though the critique that these villains pose is justifiable. In a twisted way, the reason why these villains are good characters is because somewhere deep down in ourselves, we identify with them.
Wicked makes it easier to identify with the Wicked Witch of the West by giving us her account. It creates a new back story for the Witch that treats her as a human-like character with logical reasons for doing the "Wicked" things she does.
People have found ways to put a spin on news since the beginning of time. Alexander the Great made sure to spread around the tale of how he “untied” the famous Gordian Knot by slicing through it with his sword, using the incident to legitimize his rise to power. The story here was more popular than the substance. Any able-bodied swordsman could have sliced the knot with a sword.
Our conscious understanding of the image being more powerful than the underlying substance has seen most of its development in the past century. Be it Nazi Propaganda, Corporate Advertisements, or the government of Iran blaming BBC reporters for inciting the recent election riots, there are competing frameworks of truth. The level of “truthiness” (thanks Colbert) is relative to the culture and context of which that truth is expressed.
In Wicked, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz tells the Wicked Witch about the different modes of truth. I forget exactly what he said but at one point he mentioned how a crusader to one person may be an invader to another. Even himself, the powerful, loud, all-seeing wizard of oz (the image) is nothing but a tiny, lonely, old man (the substance).
The citizens of Munchkinland are left in the dark about many of the events going on behind the scenes. They hate the Wicked Witch of the West and never get to hear her account of the story. In a way, as viewers of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we were the citizens of Munchkinland at one point until we learn the "truth" by watching Wicked.
The Dark Knight shares this postmodern theme in which a hateful figure, Batman, is really the hero.
I guess my conclusion is that I like how a lot of new stories imply that the world is not one-dimensional. That there isn’t always a “good guy” and a “bad guy” and even when there are, they may be the opposite of what we judge them to be.
If these stories can teach us one thing, it would be to look deeper into the context of those around us and to not judge right away. They don't want people to become empathetic to the villains of our world but rather to have them take the time to understand the situations and contexts a little better before passing judgment. They ask us to be watchful of the Spin that our own everyday Heroes may throw out there and to take the time to understand the opposing arguments and sides as well.
Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson (excerpt)
"Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
-Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
-Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson
Monday, August 10, 2009
Congress Buying Private Jets after Scolding CEO's for using them
Brad Sherman, a representative of California, was attacking CEO's a few months back on using private jets to travel to the capitol hill testimony. He recently voted on purchasing private jets for congress under the defense budget.
Hypocrisy aside, a CEO's time is so valuable, that the economic cost of using a private jet to conveniently time visits and meetings may return more profit on potential deals through those visits. If the jet costs a few million but helped speed up a few billion dollars in deals, it may be worth it.
Also, I don't like Paul Krugman's character nor his opinions. Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. He frequently uses harsh terms when debating other economists like Mankiw. A bit too O'Reilly-like for me. I'd take Mankiw over Krugman any day.
Hypocrisy aside, a CEO's time is so valuable, that the economic cost of using a private jet to conveniently time visits and meetings may return more profit on potential deals through those visits. If the jet costs a few million but helped speed up a few billion dollars in deals, it may be worth it.
Also, I don't like Paul Krugman's character nor his opinions. Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. He frequently uses harsh terms when debating other economists like Mankiw. A bit too O'Reilly-like for me. I'd take Mankiw over Krugman any day.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Starbucks Industrializing Manual Labor
It sounds a lot more fun when workers are tested on how fast they can assemble a Mr. Potato Head.
Friday, July 31, 2009
"I finished watching youtube. I just watch TV now."
almost got hit in the head with a home run last night. why don't they ever name teams after food? like the st. louis bagels. or the philly cheese steaks. or the new york pizzas. or the san francisco riceroni's. the los angeles donuts. the texas cornflakes. the miami salads.
Quote of the night: "I finished watching youtube. I just watch TV now." - Kevin Tam
Hanging out with youtube/sitcom/movie junkies is like watching your favorite videos with your friends while traveling. Reenacting scenes, retelling jokes, and such. I think that's all we talked about all night. Interesting video referencing moments:
a bird getting hit with a ball being pitched 90+ mph
a fan ruining the cubs world series game by catching a home run over the fence
native tribesmen doing jackass stunts like bungee as rites of passage except they actually hit the ground. leading to a whole bunch of jackass parody jokes.
conan o brien
arrested development
malcolm in the middle
joe schmoe
i haven't even seen half of the videos they mentioned but it was fun enough talking about it to make me want to watch it.
I started a google calendar to record all my fun outings. I've gone out and had a good time doing something out of the ordinary for a good couple weeks and keeping the streak alive! I don't wanna go back to davis.
AND i finally watched star trek and loved it. great movie. i felt fear, i got goosebumps, and felt my heart break just a little. it was an experience.
Quote of the night: "I finished watching youtube. I just watch TV now." - Kevin Tam
Hanging out with youtube/sitcom/movie junkies is like watching your favorite videos with your friends while traveling. Reenacting scenes, retelling jokes, and such. I think that's all we talked about all night. Interesting video referencing moments:
a bird getting hit with a ball being pitched 90+ mph
a fan ruining the cubs world series game by catching a home run over the fence
native tribesmen doing jackass stunts like bungee as rites of passage except they actually hit the ground. leading to a whole bunch of jackass parody jokes.
conan o brien
arrested development
malcolm in the middle
joe schmoe
i haven't even seen half of the videos they mentioned but it was fun enough talking about it to make me want to watch it.
I started a google calendar to record all my fun outings. I've gone out and had a good time doing something out of the ordinary for a good couple weeks and keeping the streak alive! I don't wanna go back to davis.
AND i finally watched star trek and loved it. great movie. i felt fear, i got goosebumps, and felt my heart break just a little. it was an experience.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Why does congress get so much vacation?
Congress gets a recess to do whatever they want. They could go back to their congressional districts and take the pulse of the community, go abroad, or chill out.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
China's New Arabic TV Station
Having an Arabic TV Station is apparently the macrocosmic country equivalent to buying the latest Jordans
A great foreign policy article on the tactical U.S. relationship with China. Functionalists vs Strategists
A great foreign policy article on the tactical U.S. relationship with China. Functionalists vs Strategists
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Potential Iranian Supreme Leader Succession
Not the leader Iran wants but an extremely small step in the right direction.
"To most people, Shahroudi's years at the Judiciary are highly anomalous," a prominent legal scholar told The Nation. "On the one hand, hundreds of journalists and political activists have been arrested and abused under his watch without access to legal counsel, members of Parliament have been prosecuted, people have been forced to make false confessions and many other such deplorable instances. On the other hand, he has been the first head of the Judiciary to institute a moratorium on stoning and some other inhuman forms of punishment, he has decriminalized certain offenses and he has proposed amendments to the family law in favor of women."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Why Toxic Assets Are So Hard To Clean Up
Here's a great article explaining toxic assets and how incessant securitization caused a lot of the current economic problems we have.
Securitization is basically transfering risk / reward into a product.
For example, if someone borrowed $100,000 and has to pay 6% interest on it from a bank. A bank might want to turn that into a security and sell it to someone like you or me who would pay something like $110,000 to receive the 6% interest and the whole loan back.
Banks do this to raise capital and make other loans that they may securitize.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Pay to bid. Swoopo.com - the new eBay
How do you buy a $1,349 Macbook Pro for $35.86?
Swoopo asks you to pay 60 cents everytime you bid on an auction. With each bid the auction gets extended.
It took 3,585 bids to get up to $35.86. Swoopo made $2,151, more than enough to cover the cost of the MacBook Pro.
Read more here
Welcome
I'm bored at work so I'm starting a new blog.
Coincidentally, today is the 1-year anniversary of my last blog
I think its because I've gone through the same phase of being at home, away from school, for almost 4 weeks with not much to do.
The gotivation (corny name, I know) blog was made for 2 main reasons:
1. To motivate myself to learn about new and interesting things
2. To share what I've learned in a brief and entertaining way
Each post was limited to 150-words. This is before I ever heard of twitter. The reason for it was because I love reading, but I hate extra details or personal writing styles that don't have relevance to what I'm interested in.
I think learning should be done in layers. So for this blog, I have a new approach:
Layer 1: I'll be posting headlines on my new twitter.
Layer 2: Interested? You can read a short description and response here.
Layer 3: Really interested? I'll have a website source for you to read more.
But I'm not going to keep this blog as strict. I'll have more fun with it and make it more personal. With quotes, pictures, opinions, videos.
I'd love to have some input and hear your opinions. Holla.
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