September 2008 Archives
The combination of surprise and intrigue creates a compelling message. Although often executed with humor, what matters most is that the message brings a sense of discovery, a sort of "Wow, I never thought about it that way" reaction. For example, people knew that Alka-Seltzer was taken for an upset stomach, but market research showed that nobody knew how many they should be taking - so most people were taking just one. But when viewers saw the infamous "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is" ads, purchases of Alka-Seltzer nearly doubled almost overnight. The tagline that sold the product became indivisible from the product's function because it told consumers something they did not know.
I don't think I've blogged about this yet, but until very recently I had been vegetarian for about 5 or 6 weeks or so. Not because I care about animal rights or health concerns so much - I do care about things, but I wouldn't say I'm passionate about them - but instead, because of that thing at the back of my throat that has been cropping up after eating meat (and/or hyper-enriched flower products). This thing was so unpleasant, I resolved to give up all meat, and this lasted about 5 or so weeks.
That is, until last Saturday. Heather and I went to a sushi place - in fact, the only conveyor-belt sushi place in Michigan (in Ypsilanti) - and I ate some fish sushi there. My decision was prompted by Heather's suggestion that I wasn't getting enough protein and, more importantly, animal-derived micronutrients, and fish is the best source of these. She also cited the fact that vegetarians suffer a much higher incidence of shrinkage - brain shrinkage, in this case - and that sealed the deal for me. I decided to start eating fish again.
[Un]Fortunately, Heather is getting very good at saying the exact thing that will make me change my behavior. :)
Anyway, I had started to eat fish again, and was "at peace" with that decision. Vegetarian, except for fish.
Well, this past Thursday, I broke that in a big way.
Heather and I had been mulling around about taking this Nigerian cooking class at the Ann Arbor Rec & Ed. As it turns out, Heather was needed in the office this week, so it was just me in Ann Arbor from Wednesday to Friday. Still, I decided to go.
I could make this a really long story, but I'm going to keep it short. I get in there, and it's only six of us. Five late middle-aged women and me. They looked at me like I was an alien from outer space. It felt a little awkward, but I dove in.
"You must be John," the instructor said. "There are six kitchen stations around the room, and a recipe at each. Why don't you look around at each of them and choose one, and then we can get started." Each person would be making a different recipe, and at the end we would share in a big feast. I looked for a vegetarian one, and so I zeroed in on the African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup.
"So, why are you taking this class?" one lady asked me. Not in a nasty way; she was just genuinely curious. I hadn't really considered why I was taking the class, or why Heather and I had even considered it. And I'm not sure I could give an honest answer, even now. But in the sake of politeness, I supplied an answer.
"I want to surprise my wife by making a special meal," I said. After that, they were like putty in my hands.
"Let me give you some advice: clean up after yourself. There's nothing more annoying than having to clean up after your husband's romantic dinner," she advised.
I laughed. "OK, I'll remember that." Who did this lady thing I was? "Some sort of jackass who doesn't clean after himself, obviously," the voice in my head answered. "The nerve..."
After about an hour and a half, everyone was pretty much done cooking, and everything smelled really good. Most of them were not vegetarian. In fact, the ones that smelled the very best were not.
I started with my own. The African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup that my partner and I had prepared was OK, but it was not delicious. Everyone else said they thought it was really delicious, but I didn't think so. I thought it was the least delicious meal there, so I really had a hankering for something good.
I decided to sample the Beef and Groundnut Stew. Yeah, there was beef in it, and it would mean breaking my [relaxed] vegetarianism, but it smelled so good. Plus, it would be impolite not to have some, I rationalized. I gobbled one bowl down and went back for seconds.
The other dishes - including fried plantains, Red-Red, and Dorowat - and "Ethiopian Spicy Braised Chicken" - were also very delicious.
By the end of the night, my stomach was feeling pretty bad.
Anyway, it's been back to fish-vegetarianism for me again. So Heather got back Friday; I told her about the dishes, she got enthusiastic, and so we went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for Red-Red and also for the African Pineapple Peanut Stew. Oh, and some fried plantains. We made the last two dishes yesterday - together. Not quite the romantic gesture I had suggested in the class, but probably good enough. :) For the Red-Red, we need to soak the black-eyed peas in water for a day, so we'll be making that today. Hopefully.
Both were really good. The stew especially. I had planned to take a picture to share with you on my blog, but the damn camera is out of juice. Anyway, I urge you to try the recipe.
African Pineapple Peanut Stew
INGREDIENTS
- 1 Cup Chopped Onions
- 2 Minced or Pressed Garlic Cloves
- 1 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil
- 4 Cups Kale, Sliced
- 2 Cups Pineapple, Canned Crushed and Undrained
- 1/2 Cup Peanut Butter
- 1 Tbsp. Tabasco or Hot Pepper Sauce
- 1/2 Cup Chopped Cilantro
- Taste of Salt
Use a covered saucepan to saute onions and garlic in oil for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently until the onions are lightly browned.
While the onions are being sauted, wash the kale. Remove the stems. Stack the leaves on a cutting board and slice crosswise into 1 inch thick slices. Add the pineapple and its juice to the onions and bring to a simmer. Stir in kale, cover, and let simmer for 5 minutes, stirring a few times, just until tender. Mix in the peanut butter, hot pepper sauce, and simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt to taste.
Yum!
I think that this was the first time I had ever had kale. It's like an oddly delicious, crunchy cabbage, if you haven't had it before. It also turns out that it is an extremely healthy food - a so-called "super-food" that has "more nutritional value for fewer calories than almost any other food around." It contains loads of phytonutrients, and it helps prevent against lung cancer and other forms of cancer, as well as other respiratory ailments.
Anyway, I think that's it for this blog entry. I'm feeling guilty because I still haven't cleaned up the kitchen from last night. I guess that lady at the cooking class was right... :(
This entry is just a reminder to myself to check out something that looks interesting.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/
I read about Paul Solman in the WSJ and want to follow up on it.
I'm watching a documentary about Ronald Reagan right now, on PBS. I remember as a young boy how he seemed just like such an eternal figure, in a weird way. I was not quite yet four years old when he came into office, so by the time he left I was already twelve. When you're that young, eight years is such an eternity, and I remember thinking, when Bush Sr. took office, "things are going to be different from now on." And I'm sure they were, although I didn't really take much notice. But still, I have a weird, nostalgic fondness for Ronald Reagan.
I hadn't realized how close he had come to death in that assassination attempt. I guess nobody else did, either - except his inner circle.
Heather and I went to this place called Tacqueria Zorro's for lunch today, after walking around Gallup Park for about two hours. It used to be called Taco Boy or something like that. Zorro's, not Gallup Park.
It was pretty good. I spotted the Veggie Fajita Supreme on the menu on the way in, so I got that. It was good - I'd definitely get it again. For drinks, Heather ordered some horchata, and I got a jamaica, and both were delicious. Neither of us had had either before, so it was a nice surprise.
The best thing to eat, though, were the chips. I'm a big chips and salsa fan, and the chips were just really delicious. The salsa was nice and fresh, too.
There weren't too many people in the restaurant, but I think that it was because it's kind of situated in the back of this obscure shopping complex, which makes the restaurant itself pretty obscure. And it came through in the servers' treatment of us - very good service. At the end of the meal, even the chef came out and thanked us for coming, asked if we enjoyed everything, and asked how we discovered it and why we came.
It's a good place. Great atmosphere, and friendly staff. And astonishingly cheap! Tacqueria Zorro's Mexican Restaurant is at 2071 Golfside, Ypsilanti, MI, 48197.
I saw this Thursday night and I got really excited.
That's a lot better.
The ad features several celebrities - including Tony Parker and Eva Longoria - but the ad's iconic image is its first: "Hello. I'm a PC, and I've been made into a stereotype." And, to top it all off, the actor (sean@windows.com) is an actual Microsoft engineer. Microsoft - casting itself as a hapless victim - brilliant!
If you're like me, you might be tempted to email sean@windows.com just to see what happens. Of course, there's an auto-responder. Read the response on Gizmodo.
You've probably heard by now that Microsoft has pulled the Seinfeld ads. Sorry, Jerry.
Very interesting article in the WSJ today: College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing. I mention it because I have several nieces and nephews who have entered/will be entering college soon.
A new survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social-networking sites to evaluate applicants. Of those colleges making use of the online information, 38% said that what they saw "negatively affected" their views of the applicant. Only a quarter of the schools checking the sites said their views were improved...New business idea: write a software service that scours the Internet for information about potential applications in order to help them protect their brands....
David Hawkins, director of public policy and research for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a professional organization, says schools don't have time to scour the Internet systematically to check out thousands of applicants. But he says admissions officers at times receive anonymous tips, which may be from rival applicants, about embarrassing Facebook or MySpace material, such as a picture of a student drunk at an underage party.
...
It's especially common when universities are awarding scholarships because it isn't hard to go online for a handful of finalists. "No one wants to be on the front page of the newspaper for giving a scholarship to a murderer," she says. "Everybody is trying to protect their brands."
...
Marc Prablek, a senior at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in suburban St. Louis, considers Facebook information "out in the public" and fair game for colleges. The 17-year-old, with some 550 "friends," says, "I don't have anything bad on Facebook," but he may tweak his profile to be "more sophisticated."Marc, who plans to apply early to Stanford University, says he won't mention that he loves to read X-Men comic books. His Facebook literary picks currently include "Crime and Punishment" and "Pride and Prejudice."
Dude, Crime and Punishment? Come off it, man. Everybody sees through you.
My only regret was that it was not on Fox News.
When I wrote about the last ad, it generated a lot of comments, so I thought I would post the next in the series - if you haven't seen it yet.
Be warned, though - this one appears to be the director's cut - it's 4:30!
Since John McCain chose her last month as his running mate, Gov. Palin's personal style has sparked a buying frenzy. Many women are snapping up her choices of shoes and eyeglasses and blogging about which brand of lipstick she wears. Hairstylists and wig sellers report sudden demand for her trademark up-dos. Indeed, the brands behind Gov. Palin's fashion taste have gone into overdrive seeking to cash in on the association.
I don't know what to feel about the following:
Mr. Randhawa plans to send Gov. Palin some additional pairs of shoes and approach her about some kind of partnership. "We have to capitalize on it pretty soon," he says.
That is awesome.
Heather turned me on to a very interesting article in the WSJ about television use and how it affects culture. Here's an excerpt:
Sometimes the effects of television shows are unexpected. Michael Castlen, executive director at PCI-Media Impact, a New York-based nonprofit organization that produces television and radio shows to promote health, human rights and social change, cites "América," a popular telenovela, or soap opera, that aired in Brazil in 2005. It depicted the lives of people who had illegally immigrated into the U.S. in harsh terms, concentrating on the dangers and prejudices they faced.But for many poor Brazilians, the hardships portrayed in "América" seemed small in comparison to the money the characters were sending home, Mr. Castlen says, making going to the U.S. seem worthwhile. Authorities apprehended three times as many Brazilians in the U.S. illegally in the fiscal year ended Sept. 2005 as in the previous year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
I've often wondered why the U.S. government - and, in particular, the military - doesn't invest billions of dollars in movies and other media in the Middle East. I understand that Egypt is the media hub for the Arabic-speaking world; If our goal is really to win the hearts and minds, why aren't we heavily invested in its media outlets?
Then again, there are many people with cooler and smarter heads than mine in the U.S. military, so maybe people have already thought of this. Maybe we're already doing it, just under the radar. Or maybe we're not, because of some process or technological impediments.
It also might not be a bad idea to get a bilateral media exchange program. "We'll allow you to sponsor an Islamic-themed TV show in the U.S. if you let us show programming portraying the West in a more positive light..."
Speaking of ads... I saw this one Saturday night, around 4:00 AM. Damn insomnia.
Wow, have you seen the new Seinfeld Microsoft commercial?
Wow, I'm pretty disappointed in Microsoft, in a way.
I have criticized the Apple campaign featuring the two dudes each representing Apple in Microsoft. I think it's in pretty poor taste, actually. I was hoping that Microsoft would offer up a clever rejoinder with this Seinfeld campaign. But no. The campaign is lame, and Seinfeld's presence doesn't conceal Bill Gates' lack of charisma - it demonstrates it.
Nothing against Bill Gates. I respect the guy and I have come to respect his company - even though there are certain things that I wish it had done differently. But you know what? I'm not the richest man in the world - so perhaps I should shut the fuck up. And anyway, I'm not exactly captain charisma myself.
It seems that Microsoft is trying to make itself look cool. And perhaps they are making themselves look cool, certain population segment. But, you know what, Microsoft? You lost that battle a long time ago. You are not hip, so don't even try. Jerry Seinfeld is not cool anymore. You missed the boat. Apple is cool. Apple will remain cool. Being cool is absolutely essential to Apple's strategy. They have successfully co-branded themselves with a sexy Justin Long (the Apple dude). And they have also successfully co-branded Microsoft with an unsexy and unappealing (sorry dude) John Hodgman. So, to put it simply, Apple is attempting to resonate the very deep wells of insecurity in our souls about, of all things, not being cool enough. You know what that sounds like? A bully.
Microsoft is a culture of nerds, and they seem defenseless against these kinds of attacks. I was very happy to see no overt attacks against Apple (perhaps they have more class than that), but did they have to try to look cool?
I think they should just accept the fact that they'll never be cool, and they should just concentrate on making good, highly-functional software. Leave the sex appeal and the sexy UXs (that's user experiences by the way - Microsoft is still probably still stuck in the stone age with their UIs) to Apple. If Microsoft really builds something of value, consumers won't be tricked for long.
Perhaps the best part of the campaign was the message of frugality. Microsoft software and the machines they run on really are a good value, dollar for dollar, against Macs.
Anyway.
Now, hackers worldwide largely synthesize object-oriented languages in the place of the evaluation of wide-area networks. This is an important point to understand. Although conventional wisdom states that this problem is rarely fixed by the visualization of Boolean logic, no one can deny thata different solution is necessary. Indeed, extreme programming and RAID have a long history of agreeing in this manner. Therefore, Eon runs in O( n ) time.
Motivated by these observations, reinforcement learning and introspective epistemologies have been extensively emulated by end-users. Particularly enough, the basic tenet of this solution is the study of vacuum tubes. However, randomized algorithms might not be the panacea that futurists expected. My time at Michigan has, if anything, taught me complexity theory as following a cycle of four phases: visualization, creation, storage, and observation. Clearly, we see no reason not to use the deployment of wide-area networks to develop symbiotic theory. Now dudes, such a hypothesis is never an unproven objective but has ample historical precedence.
Eon, the new methodology for modular epistemologies, is quickly becoming the de facto standard, because it is the solution to all of these problems. If you're still reading this, you're either a phony or you're extremely devoted to or interested in me. Everything up to this paragraph - and the first sentence in this paragraph too - is complete nonsense. I generated most of this text randomly using the SCIGen computer science paper generator. Google it; it's pretty neat. I also filled in some things, adding some mispellings and tpyos, and some other extra flav. Made it more conversational. Anyway, if this paragraph gets too long, I'm going to blow my cover. Reality aside, I think we would like to deploy a design for how Eon might behave in theory.
Continuing with this rationale, despite the results by the Japanese futurist Suzuki, we can argue that SCSI disks, just as an example, can be made highly-available, atomic, and semantic. Hey, you came back. I'm so glad. Anyway, one reason I wrote this entry is because, well, I've heard that a lot of people who read my blog just skip the entries that sound even vaguely scientific, whatever that means. I'll be interested to see if anyone - even one person - will read this entry in its entirety. If you do - congratulations. You are on the side of my joke that is not the punchline side. So laugh. Eon runs on modified standard software; configuration step is time-consuming but - believe me - worth it in the end.
One of my co-workers implemented an AJAX Turing machine server in Smalltalk, augmented with opportunistically discrete extensions. You know, it's actually very difficult for me to write my blog entries without italics and bolds. I use them a lot, but I won't here because I don't want to draw attention to the actual content of this entry. Why, you might ask - the reason is that I'm childish. I don't even want to use question marks, because they draw the eyes of readers. But I do use italics and bold in the non-content. Maybe that's pretty evil of me. Primarily, he added more ROM to our network to discover the optical drive space of our desktop machines.
All software was hand hex-editted using Microsoft developer's studio built on J. Suzuki's toolkit for topologically evaluating IPv6. You know, this kind of prose gimmick sort of reminds me of chapter three in Steinbeck's grapes of wrath. Sorry, capitalization also draws the eye. Anyway, chapter three is the turtle chapter. I remember discussing this book and in particular this chapter in high school - senior english. The turtle chapter - a long, laborious and symbolic chapter - was, in part, so laborious because it was meant to illustrate the journey west. Or so it was said. However, maybe Steinbeck was really being extremely childish, insisting that only the devoted, i.e. the worthy, could read on and pick up on the important themes in that book. Chapter three is the gateway to the knowledge of Steinbeck. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. All of these techniques are of interesting historical significance; L. Raman and Kenneth Iverson investigated an orthogonal configuration in 2004.
Despite the fact that we are the first to introduce virtual machines in this light, much existing work has been devoted to the refinement of the partition table. Anyway, on to my story. You've been so patient. I've discovered that my wife wants me to take her out to dinner. Like a fancy dinner. And she doesn't even know, maybe. I know because she has been printing out the coupons to various fancy restaurants around Ann Arbor, and absent-mindedly leaving them on our filing cabinet. She does that pretty often; she's done that with things like oil changes, various community courses, and the like. Anyway, seeing these coupons kind of crystallized recent memories about my wife talking a little bit about different restaurants. I'm looking forward to surprising her, but perhaps I've blown it with this entry. Or maybe not. Maybe I can write enough other entries that she doesn't notice this one, and she just glances over it. And that would be OK. Anyway, one more fake sentence, and then another fake whole paragraph for good measure. Peace out. So, while I know of no other studies on read-write technology, several efforts have been made to investigate sensor networks - or so my colleagues have said.
Anyway, Eon has set a precedent for game-theoretic epistemologies, and I expect that system administrators will study Eon for years to come. Furthermore, the whole framework has set a precedent for the construction of A* search, and I expect that futurists will harness Eon for years to come - or at least until, as a society, we surrender our current concepts of identies for new, less comfortable ones, to the emerging intelligence making itself manifest via the Internet. Anyway, I would argue that the little-known stable algorithm for the refinement of thin clients by Robinson and Lee is optimal. And, in the end, who could argue with that?
