The other night Jon Stewart mentioned that if you commit murder, you’ve got a 48% chance of going to jail. Versus if you’re an Illinois Governor, you’ve got a 50% chance. (4 out of the last 8 Governors have ended up in the clink.)
Archive for December, 2008
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Published by December 19th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedHey, life isn’t just about agonizing over nuclear arsenals. That’s the majority of it, probably, but then there’s also Mick Jagger doing a Polka Dance!
(And here’s some additional comic relief — advertising-themed — from Patrick Scullin, the creator of the MickPolka video. You’ve got to love a piece that starts with the line, ”If you’re like me, you’re [...]
Beyond War: Now in Video
Published by December 18th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and General. ClosedYou’ve read the prose and heard the audio. Now watch the video, starring Ben of Ben & Jerry’s fame. This is very effective communication — it brings emotion to what deserves to be an emotional issue (the stockpile of nuclear weapons and the destructive power it holds). (Thanks to Matt V for the link.)
Beyond War: The audio version
Published by December 16th, 2008 in Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedIn the book, we tell a story about a group called “Beyond War,” which tried to mobilize public opinion against the nuclear arms race. As part of their anti-nukes presentations, they’d do a demonstration that involved dropping BBs in a bucket. (See full passage below for context.) Now you can hear what it sounds like [...]
J.C. Penney: If you make your wife mad, buy your way out.
Published by December 15th, 2008 in Concreteness, Emotion, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedI know this “Doghouse” campaign is supposed to be funny, in that Bud-Light Man-Humor kind of way, but it’s hard to escape the ickiness of the core message: When you do something really bad that makes your wife furious at you, buy her a diamond and it’s all good.
Nor does this interpretation involve a deep-feminist critique of [...]
Sam Leith rejects the idea that the story needs to be reconceived for our “modern era.”
Changing technologies have affected the means by which stories are told. You can follow the story of a person’s life pointillistically through a Twitter feed or voyeuristically through a webcam.
You can read a self-contained novel; one with an alternate ending; [...]
What it’s like to be an alcoholic
Published by December 9th, 2008 in Concreteness, General and Simplicity. ClosedAfter 16 years without a drink, Jim Atkinson confesses that the urge is still strong at holiday times. How can an alcoholic describe to a non-alcoholic what it’s like to crave that drink? Atkinson uses analogies:
There’s something in the alone-in-the-crowdness of the holiday party circuit, the forced pleasantries and laughter, the charge to be friendly [...]
I loved this story sent in by Lila M and got her permission to post it here.
My six year old son, who just started first grade, was having a bit of trouble with math – his teacher had given out a set of (rather complicated, in my opinion) problems, where the kids had to figure [...]
The “health halo”
Published by December 5th, 2008 in Credibility, General and Unexpectedness. ClosedDo healthy-sounding terms such as “organic” or “trans-fat-free” seduce us into eating more than we would otherwise? (I.e., do we feel virtuous eating our “trans-fat-free” french fries and conclude that we’ve earned a cookie?) John Tierney has a great piece exploring the phenomenon. From the article:
Experiments showed that putting a “low fat” label on food caused everyone, [...]
David Pogue on the new Blackberry
Published by December 5th, 2008 in Concreteness and General. ClosedPut yourself in the shoes of a technology product reviewer. You’ve got to praise or savage or critique the features of a product that, in all likelihood, your readers have never seen or held. Bad reviewers stay at 10,000 feet, describing a product in abstract terms, raving about its “elegant design” or slamming its ”counter-intuitive interface.” Good reviewers, like Pogue, make [...]
