Do NOT Deny Science!

Just watch this. Then share it.

Foul Play Giant

I've always had a bad taste in my mouth from the folks who gush over the work of Shepard Fairey. And now I'm snickering to myself that his legal counsel is abandoning him after it was revealed that he lied about which source he stole from / traced over for the Obama Hope poster.

Fairey represents a lot of what I don't like about the art world - arrogant double-standards. His work is entirely derivative if not outright stolen, which in itself is not offensive to me. There's nothing wrong with appropriation when proper attribution is given. Yet he continually passes himself off as original, and profits from creativity that simply wasn't his - without giving proper credit where it is clearly due. In fact, he outright lies about his sources. And Fairey is clearly lying for the sake of his own celebrity and profit, not for the sake of art.

I've always insisted that the work that put him on the map, Andre the Giant has a Posse and the resulting Obey work, were obviously inspired by John Carpenter's They Live - which starred a pro wrestler and featured subliminal outdoor advertising messages that read "obey" (among other Big Brotherly imperatives). Too many coincidences.

Given that it's now common practice to sue musicians for sampling even small portions of someone else's work without permission and/or payment, Fairey deserves to be held responsible for his actions. It's clear that his primary concern is being a celebrity; perhaps his ego prevents him from being honest about his work, his process and his tremendous debt to pop and fringe culture that preceded him and all of his sordid merchandising.

Fairey is complicit in the ugly corporatization of celebrity - at the expense of honesty, integrity and authenticity. It pains me that only the Obama poster is drawing this fact into the public discourse.

(Our) Life Inc.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

It is with some regret that I admit, I've had a galley copy of Douglas Rushkoff's new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back which I have been unable to devote enough attention. Between medical issues and my wedding, I just haven't had the time to sit and read much. Hopefully I can squeeze out a review before the book hits store shelves in just under two weeks (Sorry, Douglas, I really appreciate the advance copy and hope this doesn't negate my chances for advances of future publications). Everyone can read Chapter One here courtesy of BoingBoing, where Rushkoff has been guest blogger this week.

For the time being, I highly recommend Life Inc The Movie (above), which sets up the book's premise. In light of the current economic woes worldwide, I think it is crucial to examine the path that got us here: corporatism. You may be surprised to learn how it all began, and even more surprised to discover how much corporatism has become ingrained in the way we behave. Pre-order Life Inc. on Amazon.

UPDATE:
Great continuation of the conversation, with more excerpts from the book, here at BoingBoing: Everything's Open Source but Money.

Panic Or Something!

This one's a compare and contrast, my dear readers.

The article and essay below feel, to me, like they're making a lot of the same considerations. [Am I being too hasty, or is the impending "panic" essentially just a bad reaction to the realization that we've behaved like morons for far too long? Or is it a mixture of both?]

T.R.O.Y. claims, "I think a key ingredient is a sense of practical hope, a real feeling based in experience that what one is doing matters." I suspect Sterling might agree, since his writing seems to come from a similar sense of hope based on experience and "what matters". Read the pieces below and decide for yourself.

Bruce Sterling - "2009 Will Be A Year Of Panic"
[article]

-- vs --

T.R.O.Y. - "The Challenge Of Utopia"
[interview w/ link to .rtf]

Thoughts? (Post a comment.)

Polling Place Ponderings

While waiting in line to vote, I turned my attention to the things I can't wait to be end with the election season. Three things in particular have been grinding my nerves over the past few weeks...

Claiming "this is the most historic election" ever...
You're only proving that you don't understand what "historic" means when you make claims like this. Stop being such a magpie; everyone knows you're just chirping what heard that on the news (which is more interested keeping you in the audience than keeping you properly informed). Something is either "having importance in or influence on history" or not; there is no graduated scale in the making of history, only in the way it is interpreted afterward. Every Presidential Election is equally historic. Every Election Day makes history. Even if we thought it was uneventful, it would still be historic because it's influencing history, one way or another. If you want to consider the voter turn-out a historic thing, that's fine -- but every voter turn-out before this was historic, too. Historic lows, historic highs... they're all recorded as public record and therefore part of the fabric of history. But, what's so ground-breaking about a US Presidential Election that boils down to one candidate from each of the two controlling parties, both of a Judeo-Christian faith? The choice isn't much different than it's ever been. It's good that you're voting, but keep things in perspective.

Implying that your vote counts more than mine because you're going to Grant Park tonight.
My vote counts just as much as yours; it always has and always will. But I don't create more waste with stickers, pamphlets or buttons; I don't lie that my middle name is Hussein or "donate my status" on Facebook (Why do some of you think assuming a fake name convinces me to vote for Obama, anyway? It doesn't make you the voice of reason you think you are. In fact, giving a false name may violate Facebook's terms of use); I don't consider my choice of candidate a status symbol -- it is our civic duty to vote, plain and simple. It's good that you voted, but you're not any more unique for it. If you secured tickets to gain entry to a public park for a speech tonight, good for you. I will have a better view from the comfort of my living room, and I won't be making the downtown area impassable for the people who traverse it every day. You are free to stand outside and clap for a jumbo-tron if you want. Just don't count your chickens before they hatch -- a lot of us thought Gore won eight years ago, but that's not how it played out.

Thinking it's a good idea to create election-themed advertising campaigns.
I work in advertising, and have been sick to my stomach with the inane "election" themes that have been pitched since before this time last year. Thankfully, not many made it to the public - but a lot of them did. Realize this is part of the reason people hate advertising: when you take something serious and belittle it to sell automobiles or donuts, you make us all look like idiots. You make people feel fatigued by the time election day comes, and dillute the power of real voting as though it were as inconsequential as picking the right soft drink in the supermarket, or as trivial as selecting the winner of a game show. I am happy it will be another four years before bad advertisers belittle our civic duties again, even though I know I have peers who will revisit those inane themes again and again and again.

Three Words To Retire

I imagine this will be a recurring post theme for me (though I'm sure there are other folks out there making similar efforts). Let's start with three words that need to be retired from the English language: diva, luxury and maverick.

Diva
A diva is an operatic prima donna. A diva is not the latest tramp to butcher R&B, soul or hip-hop conventions. Much of the blame for this forced retirement falls on VH1. Don't ever refer to a musician as a diva when she has just one or two releases to her name. In fact, don't refer to anyone as a diva -- odds are she's probably just an ordinary bitch.

Luxury
Luxury is a word, like diva, that carries very little of its original meaning in the ways it is most commonly used now. Chocolate is not a luxury; you can get it at any corner store or vending machine. Two small bedrooms and one bath do not add up to a luxury condominium, especially when there's no parking space included (let alone a chauffeur). To never again encounter any such abuse of the word "luxury" would, ironically, be very luxurious for me.

Maverick
I don't need to remind anyone of who's butchering this one, but it's clear the culprits are not the best-read people in the news today. A maverick is a lone, independent dissenter -- NOT the candidate nominated by the incumbent party, nor his Alaskan twit sidekick (who is, coincidentally, more likely to shoot a true maverick from a helicopter than ever embody the term herself).

Got a word on the verge of retirement? Let's send it away early! Leave your suggestions in the comments and we'll go from there.

An Open Letter to James Meeks

Hey, James.

I'm referring to you as neither "senator" nor "reverend" today, because you're not living up to either title. You're not even living up to your last name. Instead, you are high on your own fumes with the most ill-conceived boycott ever.

Let's get a few things straight. All schools need more funding. All teachers are underpaid. These are issues not unique to your district, not by a long-shot. Funding is uneven, yes. So is the median household income; if your district puts less in, it will get less out. It's that simple.

Still, in your ever-so-finite wisdom, you have encouraged skipping school as a means to improve the education system. Let me clarify. You have publicly encouraged and arranged for thousands* of Chicago children to miss the first four days of school this year. You actually think that these kids are going to just camp out in the lobbies of corporate offices, and "hold" class there? Those kids won't get past building security -- which, incidentally is the best job they could ever hope to get if they follow your lead.

You spent a lot of money on bus rentals. That money could have been donated to schools that need funding more than they need a ride to a publicity stunt. Your behavior not only insults the teachers and students you purport to be helping, but you also make a mockery of the professional environment for which all those kids truly do need a better education. It's clear you have not considered the consequences of your actions. You have exploited your self-righteous religious affiliations for a publicity stunt predicated on ignorance, yet you offer no intelligent solutions or shred of common sense. I imagine you're the type to recommend praying that one wins the lottery rather than finding an honest day's work.

Are you such an ineffective senator that you need to make pawns of students, teachers, parents and Chicagoans' places of business? Even the kids you've implicated in this crack-pot scheme can see through it:

One New Trier student described the boycott as "a big publicity stunt."

"They are trying to make it racial," said New Trier senior, Andrew Scherer, 17. "It's a better media story." [Source]

Racial and religious make for sensationalism, but not a better story. The only supporters of today's boycott are churches -- churches that should be donating to schools instead of wasting money on go-nowhere publicity stunts. I seriously doubt you exhausted that option, James. I think instead that you relish the potential for this stunt to be racially charged, even though it's really just about your school district getting exactly what it pays for. Here's what you were quoted saying two days ago:

“I want the whole nation to look at Illinois. I want the whole nation to ask, ‘Why is Illinois racist?’ I want them to ask, ‘Why is Illinois treating low-income students like that?’”

James, come on. Why are you racist? I find it obscenely insulting that you equate racism with low-income students. I come from a low-income family. Welfare, food stamps, free school lunch programs, church-donated groceries and Christmas presents... I've been there. One lasting life lesson I learned is that money doesn't know what color my skin is, and it never will. Another lasting lesson: the world doesn't owe you anything. I genuinely feel sorry for the kids who don't know any better, being led down this path by a divisive panderer like yourself. You've already admitted openly that you will lie about the number of students you see today.

What a great example you set! The spectacle of your actions is more important to you than the substance of your actions. But you can't even get that right...

* One bus arrived with four people on it. Four. Is this the kind of inefficiency and waste you want to teach kids? Hope so, 'cause you just did.

Keep the preaching of ignorance confined to your precious mega-church, James. The rest of Chicago will do better without this self-righteous, racially-charged divisiveness in the classroom, in the state senate and in the media.

Now, please, just shut up and get back to class.

Will Smith is no Alan Arkin

If I may humbly venture into Booze Movies territory for a moment...



I am entirely uninterested in seeing Hancock, but I can't help but pick up the gist of this film from recent mentions it's gotten online. Will Smith plays a washed-up drunkard of a superhero. The IMDB entry for this film shows one comment that ponders, "Hancock has the kind of premise that you wonder why it took so long for someone to put it on the big screen."

No need to wonder; it hasn't taken that long. We've already seen this premise in big-screen format. And I'm not making the weak comparison to Last Action Hero that some folks are making. Twenty-five years ago, it was a film called The Return of Captain Invincible, starring Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee. Did I mention it's part musical, too?

Check it out. You can own the DVD for the same amount it'll cost for just one ticket to see Will Smith's latest vehicle in a theater. Neither one is a great movie, but imagine how informed you'll sound when you can bust Hancock for ripping off an Alan Arkin movie from a quarter-century ago.

It's Still Just Bud, Folks

Advertising Age this week published an article speculating that Anheuser-Busch's impending buyout by Belgian-owned, Brazilian-operated InBev would tarnish Budweiser's patriotic brand position. While Budweiser may lose the right to mix heavy-handed US patriotism into its brew of marketing, advertising and sponsorships (would this be such a bad thing, anyway?), the presence of foreign interests is nothing new to this brand. For example...

• To this day, A-B pays a Czech brewery in exchange for rights to use the Budweiser name in the US. Paying royalties to a Czech brewery for your name isn't exactly what you'd expect of this allegedly "great American brand."
• Clydesdales are another legacy in A-B branding and marketing. That's a Scottish breed of horse, for those of you keeping score. Again, not exactly Americana in origin.
• Beer is not an American invention. In fact, its origins are traced to Egypt and Iran. The word "beer" is derived from the German "bier". American beer is the Johnny-come-lately in the history of the drink.

Of the Bud drinkers I know, everyone buys Bud for two reasons: price and proximity. As long as A-B provides the same cheap, available-everywhere swill that those folks enjoy (no offense, it's just not my ale of choice), who's going to care what the parent company is? The average Bud drinker isn't concerned with these things.

Would you stop drinking your favorite beer if the parent company - and nothing else beside perhaps the amount of patriotism in its advertising - changed?

Know When You're Living

Welcome to another installment in my periodic posts about wordplay.

Today, I'll briefly discuss a phrase I've heard used four times in the past three weeks, and each time used incorrectly. The phrase?

Turn-of-the-century

Folks, that was just over seven years ago. The century turned when our calendars moved from 2000 to 2001. If you want to refer to the turn of the century, you must be more specific.

Please, know what year you're living in. Don't say "turn of the century" unless you mean to harken that period when we worried about the Y2K bug. Try "turn of the Twentieth Century" to refer to the late 1800's and early 1900's.

You're welcome.

Half-Assed Regulations Ultimately Don't Save Us

I've been balking for months at the ridiculous television ads for the Smoke-Free Illinois Act (formerly the Illinois Clean Indoor Air Act) that promise "air free of cancer-causing toxins" when the only difference in the air is a lack of cigarette smoke. There are still other toxins in the air, and plenty of other ways to get cancer other than from those airborne toxins. Cancer aside, think of all the other irritants polluting our indoor air: wearers of too much cologne, bearers of body odor (ranging from homeless dude to indie rocker in severity), and pet owners who transmit pet dander (allergens) on their skin, hair and clothing. Is our legislature sincerely trying to improve air quality, or just pretending to save people from their beloved vices? Take a guess.

In Illinois, 71.82% of us believe that smoking a pack or more a day poses a significant health risk. Only 38.75% of us believe there is a significant risk in the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks, once or twice a week. Roughly .2% of deaths in Illinois are caused by cancer. But 45% of traffic fatalities are alcohol-related. Why haven't we outlawed alcohol from public places? Or automobiles? We need to be saved from booze and cars more than we need to be saved from cancer or cigarettes.

Today I'm snickering at New York City's new menu labeling regulations, which claim to help guide consumers to healthier choices - by displaying only caloric information. What about fat, sodium and cholesterol? Sure, 20% of New Yorkers are obese, but 25.3% of them have high blood pressure and 34.9% of them have high cholesterol. If health were the true priority, the labeling wouldn't begin and end with calories alone.

And since when is it the restaurant's job to teach the ignorant masses how to eat properly? Why aren't grocery stores tasked with educating us more? Wait, what about schools - they're supposed to have educated us already, right? Oh, and our parents... we learn our eating habits from our parents more than anyone else. You need a license to drive a car and you have to be 21 to purchase alcohol, but any dumb-ass can have kids and instill unhealthy habits in them.

Why do we feel the need to demonize a fashionable bad guy instead of address the real problems in their entirety? Why does legislature feel the need to save us from ourselves only when convenient? And why do I think that one of my blog readers is going to have the answers to these questions?

Today is just one of those days, I guess.
UPDATE: DC Lies has the answer.

Help Yourself

I'd like to point to three links you may or may not have noticed in the right-hand column. I find myself checking these out of curiosity at first, then reading further because I've found useful, practical advice on how to better get one's proverbial shit together.

• 43 Folders - "Merlin Mann's family of websites about stuff like personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better."
• Dumb Little Man - "...tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane."
• Lifehacker - seems self-explanatory enough to me. Part of the Gawker Media empire.
• Ririan Project - "learn practical ideas to make important changes in your life, both big and small, so you can get your life on track and start living up to your true potential."

Enjoy. Let me know if I missed any good ones. I'm sure there are more out there.

Takin' Care of Business (Time)

Life events have kept me from blogging much lately. Starting about two weeks ago, my cell phone died. Two days later, my 4-year-old iPod died. The day after that, the PC on which I produce music shit the bed. All of this might've sent me out to a ledge if it weren't for some other, more positive happenings.

Like this: my lovely girlfriend Maria and I got engaged. No date yet, but a nice ring on her finger if I don't say so myself. Statistically, I'm on my way to living longer than my bachelor friends. Coincidentally, that buys me more time to finish my ongoing music projects like INSTILLE, FIGORA and others who have yet to be named.

Oh, yeah, and we've fallen hard for Flight Of The Conchords.

Forgetting To Remember

NYT's Forgetting May Be Part of the Process of Remembering cites a report in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Basically, maintaining cognitive control demands that we forget things, much in the same respect it demands that we remember certain other things. Two sides of the same coin, when you think about it. Or, as the report phrases it:

"Remembering often requires the selection of goal-relevant memories in the face of competition from irrelevant memories."

So, in order to remember to get your proverbial shit together, you may inadvertently force yourself to forget some irrelevant trivia (or perhaps things you know you can look up anyway). I know that ever since I read that Einstein never bothered to remember anything he could look up, I've tried to give myself permission to let easily retrieved information fall out of my head to make room for other ideas and processes. For example, I don't remember your phone number any more because I know my phone remembers it for me.

Does this happen to you? Are you aware of any similar process in your own memory selection?

Prozac Turns 20, Still Not Good For You

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Prozac, the first drug I was oh-so-wrongly prescribed. I'm no doctor, but believe me when I say the long-term effects are still being determined. I have yet to meet anyone who was on the drug before I was, for what it's worth.

I was twelve or thirteen at the time, one of the first people under age 18 to be prescribed the "miracle" drug. By a lazy physician, urged by a parent who couldn't cope with the mood swings of a pubescent me. I was too young to be on an antidepressant. I didn't have a serotonin imbalance, so Prozac didn't do anything for me - unless you count about nine months of side effects with no improvement in mood. In fact, things got progressively worse.

That same physician later tried to get my mom to pay for a drug test he ran on me during one check-up when I was in a decent mood - as if he couldn't believe that such a mood was possible without chemical inducement. (There were chemicals at work, but they were hormones awakened by a make-out session with a girl the day before.) That's the last time I saw that doctor, but others followed in his unsure footsteps and continued to prescribe dangerous substances without concern for their long-term effects.

Of course, I was better off consuming the relatively useless Prozac than I was on the medication that followed, a form of Lithium that led to other, more severe mood and medical issues - including unpredictable toxicity in the bloodstream and, for me, DOZENS of kidney stones. Plus a whole lot of excruciating pain that came with those stones, complications from other medications, and so on.

Moral of my story: Prozac is neither a status symbol nor a magic bullet for "bad" thoughts. Don't give antidepressants to kids who are just going through puberty; you could seriously screw up their bodies in ways you can't imagine.

To commemorate the anniversary, I felt the need to relate my experience with the drug before I showed you to this: Guardian Unlimited's Anna Moore gives us "20 things you need to know about the most widely used antidepressant in the world.

[via BoingBoing, via MindHacks]

PULL YOUR LID BACK

Try it. I did, and it really helped.

It finally got me to the realization that this blog has had an identity crisis. Until just now, I couldn't decide if it was about business or pleasure. Ironically, the content of a presentation I've given a few times at work suggested that I not write about work on my personal blog. All this really means: you'll notice a continued shift in tone at PYLB.

Well, it also means the "persuasion industry" topics, minus snarkism, will be migrating to the blog effort underway at work.

Welcome to Pull Your Lid Back.
[Image via hackcanada]

Judge of Character

When I was in high school, my mom routinely told me I was not a good judge of character. Why, I'm not sure. One friend of mine had a tattoo. I tended to get along with older kids, too, which made the mom nervous. My mom didn't care for the then-alternative and sometimes gothic or punk dress worn by several of my acquaintances at the time. High school is a time for experimenting with clothes and haircuts, which makes them terrible indications of character. Their haircuts weren't what made them friends.

But as for their character, this is what made them friends. My mom knew virtually none of them personally, and only assumed what their respective characters were. Her insistance that she could judge these people by their clothes or haircuts signaled to me that maybe she wasn't such a good judge of character herself. And maybe she was afraid that I'd inherit that lack of judgment from her.

In the long-run, she (perhaps inadvertently) instilled in me the challenge to be a good judge of character, if only (at first) to prove her wrong.

I thought about the days when the mom would scold me about being a good judge of character today, when I read GearBits' "Is President Bush A Good Judge Of Character?" Read it. You already know the answer, but it's validating to have all the evidence in front of you. And I'd like to point out that, if there's a bigger conclusion to reach, it's that America is a terrible judge of character for electing this imbecile into office.

If only Mom had seen that the act of questioning the majority's herd mentality was an indication that I was a better judge of character than I got credit for, it might not have been such a big deal to have goth, punk, skater and stoner friends in high school.

Remember to get your mom something for Mother's Day.

Pseudonymity Reconsidered

I've been reconsidering some of my pseudonyms lately. And wondering how far pseudonymity will take you when you would prefer that your efforts were all related, connected and coherent.

The primary moniker I use for producing music, Instigator, has proven too ubiquitous. I adopted it eight years ago and am the oldest listing for artists named "Instigator", for the record. The bigger point is that I think I've outgrown it. I argue with myself about whether Instigator was supposed to do anything but get my solo production efforts underway. Things have been instigated well enough (the ambitious "Used Materials" album, and the fruitful Noise Throng label). It's time for the name, like the creative product itself, to move beyond the beginning-stage mentality.

This is what I did with INSTILLE, a name derived from the portmanteau of Instigator and Distille.

But getting my musical monikers in order inevitably leaves me reconsidering my PYLBUG moniker, too. A misspelling of pillbug, inspired by a dream about an abundance of insects and pills as interchangeable objects, it's been my handle for extra-curricular productions since 1995. Sometimes, however, I find myself wary of the connotations "pylbug" brings.

I am not, for the record, a pill-head any more than I am an insect aficionado. [Though I'm definitely much closer to the latter.] The reasoning by which I arrived at "pylbug" doesn't always hold up now, nearly 13 years later. Many of my extra-curricular efforts now seem inspired by different things, and this makes me feel like they should go by a different name. I'm considering a revised strategy to naming my projects; a refined point-of-view. Something like that.

All of that is for me to figure out. But, here's the question for my readers: where does your pseudonym come from, and did you plan any longevity into it? Maybe this question is more for bands, bloggers, content producers in general... people with a product that needs a brand name, if you will. What thought, if any, did you put into the act of picking your favorite pseudonym?

That is, if you can reveal the secrets behind your screen names.

Stigmergy vs. Synergy

I learned a new word today, thanks to Jason Kottke and Wikipedia: stigmergy.

After reading the definition, it occurred to me that stigmergy is potentially the Web 2.0 equivalent of "synergy" - a term notoriously mis-used and abused by account directors and strategists everywhere. Synergy is not always good - it is a compounding of effects from two or more discrete influences. Think of the side-effects of cold medicine... take two or more kinds and the resultant synergy could prove fatal.

Since "synergy" has practically lost its meaning through mis-use (much in the same way "impact" is mis-used as a positive term - usually as the non-word "impactful"), I think "stigmergy" has promise. It affords a more realistic, organic approach to defining the nature a given relationship. That is, until chumps with poor language and communication skills butcher the term into meaninglessness.

The God Delusion

I thought it appropriate to follow that last post with a quick shout-out for Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion. Pre-order it now, so you don't forget about it before the October 2006 release date.

For more info, here's a Salon interview with Dawkins from last year, about how all of America's god-mongering is pushing the country back into the Middle Ages. If you want more, here's another article in which Dawkins claims religion amounts to child abuse. Given the vast amounts of misinformation, false hope and resignation to not understand the world that religion gives us, I have to agree that it's extremely unhealthy when taught as divine truth instead of moral fiction.