I’m soon to be a co-author on this blog.

Why are we supposed to suddenly care so much about the MTV Video Music Awards? It seems to be everywhere this week, appearing on blogs, ridiculous presence in the Yahoo! News Top Stories< and more, I’m sure. Amazing PR or something more specific?

In this article about protesters headed for NYC for the RNC next week, the Times offers this interesting description, “For Mr. Gibson, 24, a part-time college student who sometimes works as a test subject for pharmaceutical research, the trip had many unknowns.”

So, being a test subject is “work?” The Times is willing to put that as the man’s occupation? I’d describe panhandling as work before I’d describe “test subject” as work. I don’t know if that’s sloppiness or some kind of pro-slacker bias, or some too-subtle winking. Mostly, it’s just poor editing, IMHO.

This guy is a shining example of crappity-ass businesses like we seem to find here on the Coastside, where mediocrity is more than tolerable. His print ad mentions Golf Club Regripping and Internet Web Site Design. Nice combination? Anyway, check out the site – if you didn’t know what it was for, you would have no idea from the site, which was obviously done using some template in some program, with missing files, no explanation, errors, and just general rampant stupidity.

I was hoping to be charmed, based on the idiosyncratic notion of the print ad, but bleggh. Lame.

Update: the site has been redesigned to focus more clearly on golf stuff.

Thoughts on this post – it’s an interesting example of the limitations of globalism – we always hear stories about what happens when the West exports its culture outwards without understanding the local destination. Oh, you’ve got product names, colors, symbols etc. that somehow are offensive. Well, here’s the opposite, and it brings home a major truth – that elsewhere in the world – these toys are acceptable. This is an error of distribution, not of design.

The new boombox style HP Instant Cinema Digital Projector ep9010: front projection box with built-in DVD, 2.1 speakers (20W stereo speakers facing front and rear, plus 30W subwoofer) with every input and output imaginable…Available September 04 for around $2499.

I did some of the upfront strategic user research on first prototypes they developed for this. Neat to see it hit the market.

Tags: design, digital cinema, ethnography, hewlett packard, hp, projector, strategy, user research

Small toys showing an airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than 14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the country before being recalled.
more

“The classic band Queen, fronted by gay icon Freddie Mercury, has become the first rock act to receive an official seal of approval in ayatollah-strong Iran. Western music is strictly censored in the Islamic republic, where being gay is considered a crime.
Mercury, who died in 1991, was proud of his Iranian ancestry, and illegal bootleg albums and singles made Queen one of the most popular bands in Iran.

Anyone else have a binding error in their Aug 23 New Yorker magazine? I didn’t get all the pages, so no fiction for me this issue. Weird – haven’t seen that in a magazine that I can ever remember…

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book “On Death and Dying” and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book “On Death and Dying” and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

…sigh…

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book “On Death and Dying” and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

Isn’t there anything we can do?

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book “On Death and Dying” and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

Damn!

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who revolutionized the way the world looks at terminally ill patients with her book “On Death and Dying” and later as a pioneer for hospice care, has died. She was 78.

No way!

NPR had a bit today about the NEA report on reading that came out earlier this summer.

New York, N.Y. – Literary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature, according to a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) survey released today. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline – 28 percent – occurring in the youngest age groups.
…
Reading also affects lifestyle, the study shows. Literary readers are much more likely to be involved in cultural, sports and volunteer activities than are non-readers. For example, literary readers are nearly three times as likely to attend a performing arts event, almost four times as likely to visit an art museum, more than two-and-a-half times as likely to do volunteer or charity work, and over one-and-a-half times as likely to attend or participate in sports activities.

The way it was being spun on the radio was a little nervy – implying that people who read did more volunteer work BECAUSE they read – there’s nothing in their findings that offers any evidence of causality, but somehow it makes for good sound bites. Note that it wasn’t the NPR people who were making this claim but the poet dude that now heads the NEA who was being the doctor of spin.