From Annals Of Drinking in The New Yorker, which explores the cultural and medical aspects of hangover causes and cures, comes this fun bit

[T]he Egyptians say they are “still drunk,” the Japanese “two days drunk,” the Chinese “drunk overnight.” The Swedes get “smacked from behind.” But it is in languages that describe the effects rather than the cause that we begin to see real poetic power. Salvadorans wake up “made of rubber,” the French with a “wooden mouth” or a “hair ache.” The Germans and the Dutch say they have a “tomcat,” presumably wailing. The Poles, reportedly, experience a “howling of kittens.” My favorites are the Danes, who get “carpenters in the forehead.” In keeping with the saying about the Eskimos’ nine words for snow, the Ukrainians have several words for hangover. And, in keeping with the Jews-don’t-drink rule, Hebrew didn’t even have one word until recently. Then the experts at the Academy of the Hebrew Language, in Tel Aviv, decided that such a term was needed, so they made one up: hamarmoret, derived from the word for fermentation.

Tags: alcohol, booze, drinking, drunk, drunkenness, global, hangover, headache, language

From Arizona Adds Digit to License Plates to Keep Up With Growth

The increase in motor vehicles has exhausted the 10.6 million or so combinations of characters on the state’s six-digit plates, said Cydney DeModica, a spokeswoman for the state’s motor vehicle division.

So Arizona is joining New York, California and other more populous states in adding a seventh digit. The extra digit allows for 106.48 million possible combinations — three letters followed by four numbers — which should accommodate a growing population through 2040.

2040 doesn’t seem that far off when it comes to making sweeping changes to infrastructure. Do they know what they might do after that? Or do popular growth (or motor vehicle ownership) predictions not hold valid beyond 30 years? Seems like a perfect problem for long term thinking, the absence of which created technology challenges such as the Y2K bug.

Of course a key difference here is that the Y2K bug failed to address a definite event (the year 2000 would eventually be reached, at a predictable time in the future), whereas the growth in Arizona cars may follow a trend but it’s far from definite as changes in weather patterns and oil prices could conceivably change the trend dramatically by 2040.

Tags: 2040, arizona, az, cars, change, combinations, digits, dmv, growth, letters, license plate, numbers, planning, population, registration, trend, uncertainty, vehicles

I’m so fed up with market research gimmicks that claim to produce an objective provable truth about what’s in someone’s mind. It really runs counter to notions of empathy, listening, and understanding that I feel so passionately about.

It was with some pleasure, therefore, to see the typically exuberant Wired run a story explaining that while lie detecting may be on the horizon,

My journey through the land of functional neuroimaging has helped me to understand how spectacularly meaningless these images are likely to be.

Most neuromarketers are using these scans as a way of sprinkling glitter over their products, so that customers will be persuaded that the pictures are giving them a deeper understanding of their mind. In fact, imaging technologies are still in their infancy. And while overenthusiastic practitioners may try to leapfrog over the science, real progress, which will take decades, will be made by patient and methodical researchers, not by entrepreneurs looking to make a buck.

Tags: brain, hype, market research, neuro, neuroimaging, objectivity, scam, scan, wired

• Muslim Girl Magazine
  Enlighten. Celebrate. Inspire.
• Queendom Hijabs, where hijabs are designed with your daily activities in mind.
  We cater to the active woman, the one who plays sports, hits the gym, goes to school, holds her job, all while still looking modest and stylish. The focus is on function. We want each hijab to move with you without having to re-adjust and restyle.
• Technological determinism isn’t so groovy anymore
  I’ve posted a great New Yorker book review excerpt at Core77
• Dirty Marketing Campaigns – Dan and Chip Heath in Fast Company
  How advertising manufactures “stigmas” – i.e., social norms. They make a shallow and incomplete comparison with real “community standards” – but who’s to say which ones are real and which ones are manufactured? Not the view of culture I recommend.

Budweiser and Clamato. A combination that is either familiar (depending on your ethnicity or experiences) or horrifying (ditto). Seems to have been around for about a year in various test markets.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: alcohol, beer, Bud, Budweiser, can, clamato, drink, observational ephemera, targeted

Great DVD design for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. Film highly recommended.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: baseball, DVD, film, hank greenberg, movie, netflix, observational ephemera

Cupid’s Span, under repair. I think cartoonist Don Martin would have liked this.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: arrow, art, big, bow, Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen, cupid, don martin, embarcadero, giant, large, observational ephemera, public art, repair, San Francisco, scaffolding, scale, sculpture, span

Rob Walker had another great piece, Can a Dead Brand Live Again? in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine. He profiles River West Brands, a firm that resurrects and reinvigorates inactive brands, similar to The Himmel Group that I mentioned here recently.

Walker also describes

the Licensing International Expo, an annual event at which the owners of cultural properties — TV shows, movies, cartoon characters — meet with makers of things and try to negotiate deals granting them a paid license to use the properties to add meaning and market value to whatever things they make. It is a good place to contemplate the business potential of “the brand” in free-floating form, unmoored to any product or company that may have actually created it. A surprising number of the symbols represented at the expo held last summer in New York were simply brand logos. Spam, for instance, had its own booth. IMC Licensing was there on behalf of its clients Oreo, Altoids, Dole and Oscar Mayer. At one point I encountered a person dressed up as a can of Lysol, which is represented by the Licensing Company.

In 2004 I ran a discussion panel at the Licensing International Expo. You can check out the FreshMeat column where I related my impressions of the event here, and see tons of photos are here.

The image in the banner above!

Tags: brands, licensing, rob walker, trade show

The Cheerios Play Book. A line-extension designed just for the fist-in-mouth set.

See my previous screed on food companies teaching children to play with, rather than eat, their products.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: branding, cereal, cheerios, children, food, observational ephemera, play, User Research Interviewing

• Lagniappe
  A small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase (a term more commonly heard in southern parts of the US, as well as Puerto Rico and other places).
• Stalag fiction
  A short-lived genre of Israeli Nazi-themed exploitation fiction from early 60s. Purported to be translated by concentration camps prisoners. Highly pornographic Popular among adolescent boys, often the children of concentration camp survivors.

Candidate Carole Migden’s booth outside San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

An ironing board? Is this inadvertent feminist/anti-feminist symbolism for a female candidate? Or a show of gumption and make-do spirit? Or really poor planning? Could be interpreted a few different ways (and I’m sure my list isn’t exhaustive).

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: campaign, carole migden, election, ironing board, observational ephemera, politician, politics

Coming soon! New improved pitcher.

A trailer for juice packaging? I went to their website to find some more info (just for the purposes of this post) but I couldn’t find anything.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: coming attraction, juice, observational ephemera, oj, orange juice, packaging, promotion, redesign, trailer

Pet medicine packaging. Childproof bottles are certainly not chew proof.

Non-safety cap option.

See all observational ephemera.

Tags: animals, bottle, cap, ephemera, icons, medication, medicine, meds, observational ephemera, packaging, pets, red, safety

Sign posted by concerned citizens or business owners in downtown Half Moon Bay, CA.

See all observational ephemera

Tags: beware, birds, danger, half moon bay, nest, observational ephemera, sign, warning