Wednesday, October 26, 2011
One Google Books To Rule Them All?
by Maria Bustillos, The Awl
Hellzapoppin' in the world of intellectual property rights these days. Lawsuits, corporate flim-flamming, the claims of far-sighted academics and developers, furious authors and artists and the conflicting demands of a sprawling Internet culture have created a gargantuan, multi-directional tug-of-war that will inevitably affect what and how we will be able to read online in the future. Recent developments indicate, amazingly, that there are grounds for hope that the public will in time benefit from the results of this epic tussle.
In 2002, Google began scanning the world's 130 million or so books in preparation for the "secret 'books' project" that eventually became Google Books. In 2004, they began offering access to these scans, displaying the irritatingly-named "snippets" of books in their search results. And in no time at all, they were getting sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for copyright infringement. These lawsuits, plus two more that were filed subsequently against Google, resulted in a six-year rollercoaster ride that, like all good roller coasters, exhilarated, terrified and rattled all the participants, and ended by thumping their quaking bods to a halt, last March, in very nearly the same place from which they'd started out. But during that time the world had changed, and an altogether new way of bringing printed books into the digital commons had emerged. Enter the nonprofit alternative for bringing the world's books online for all readers: the newly-funded Digital Public Library of America.
Read more:
The Civil Wars
[ed. I don't think a cover song could be any more unrecognizable than this. I like this version better.]
How Symphonies Grew Strong Audiences By Killing The Myth Of The Average Consumer
by Adrian Slywotzky, Fast Company
Marketing managers for major orchestras had always assumed that convincing people to give the symphony a try was the key to gaining subscribers. "Get people through the doors!" was their mantra, assuming that the sheer beauty of the music would lure them back.
But when they actually studied the numbers, they discovered that getting new people wasn't the problem. They weren't passing the audition. Customer churn was killing these orchestras.
It turns out the secret to unlocking demand for classical music--as for most products--is discarding the Myth of the Average Customer. Designing a product offer to appeal to one archetypal customer is always wasteful--one size fits few, not all. Instead, demand creators have to constantly focus on demand variation, asking how customers differ from one another and how those differences impact demand. This process of "de-averaging" can be complex, but it offers huge opportunities.
In 2007, several orchestra managers joined forces to analyze their collective marketing challenge. A pro bono third-party study by Oliver Wyman (Audience Growth Initiative) found that on average, symphonies lost 55% of their customers each year; churn among first-time concert-goers was 91%! The study also confirmed that the solution to churn was to move beyond "averages" and to begin looking at the wide variations between starkly different customer groups.
The symphony audience was divided into a core audience, trialists (first-time concert-goers), non-committed (a few concerts a year), special occasion attendees, snackers (people who purchase small subscriptions for years), and high potentials (frequent attendees who haven't bought a subscription). In Boston, for example, members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) core audience represented just 26% of the customer base but bought 56% of the tickets. Trialists composed 37% of the base, but bought only 11% of the tickets. In monetary terms, core audience members had a 5-year value close to $5,000; trialists, just $199. With that data, the orchestras' new mission became more targeted. The goal wasn't broadly to reduce churn but to convert trialists into steady customers.
The symphonies compiled a list of 78 attributes of the classical music experience, from the architecture of the hall to the service at the bar to the availability of information on the Internet. Using online surveys and other techniques, the list was whittled down to 16 factors with the greatest impact on attendance.
Horns and strings! It turns out the quality of the orchestra, magnificence of the hall, and virtuosity of the conductor were not particularly important attributes. What was? Drum roll! It was...
Read more:
Image: Flickr user trp0
Care and Dignity
[ed. With the demise of the Community Living Assistance Services and Support program (Class Act) from the 2010 Health Care law, American families still face a daunting problem in caring for the elderly. Another issue involves the dignity of dying patients and their ability to influence how their final time (and suffering) is managed (below). These are two sides to the same coin - searching for solutions that better address the needs of the aging. Advances in medical technologies have extended our physical lives but may have also deepened the moral, emotional and economic uncertainties that surround prolonged care.]
by Paula Span, NY Times
Most fall weekends, you can find Randee Laikind buttonholing people at the Shelburne Falls Market in western Massachusetts, or wielding her clipboard on the town common in nearby Greenfield or Amherst.
“I try to be very polite,” she told me. “I say, ‘Would you consider signing this petition to put the Death With Dignity Act on the ballot, so Massachusetts citizens can vote on it?’”
Ms. Laikind, who’s 63 and no stranger to activism, has been a bit surprised by the response, or lack thereof. “I’ve never had anyone say no,” she said. “They don’t even ask me questions; they just say, ‘Where do I sign?’”
One Greenfield woman started crying. “She said, ‘If only this had been around last year when my father was dying.’” She added her signature, Ms. Laikind said. So did Ms. Laikind’s former internist, whom she ran into in a restaurant.
Since mid-September, a small cadre of similar volunteers has gathered about 70,000 voters’ signatures, aiming to make Massachusetts the fourth state where terminally ill patients may legally seek physicians’ help to end their lives. The organizers, who call their campaign Dignity 2012, need only 70,000 to put the question on the state ballot in November 2012, but to be sure they have enough to pass scrutiny, they’re aiming for 100,000. The signatures must be submitted by the end of November.
The proposed statute, closely modeled on an initiative that Washington State voters passed in 2008, would allow a patient who’s expected to die within six months to self-administer lethal medication.
It includes a long list of precautions and protections: a lot of physician counseling and information; two doctors verifying that the patient is mentally competent and acting voluntarily; a 15-day waiting period between a first and second request, and another 48 hours before the prescription can be filled. At least one of the two witnesses to the written request can’t be a relative or an heir. And of course, the patient can always change his or her mind.
“Thousands and thousands of people have personal experience that leads them to support this,” said Steve Crawford, a spokesman for Dignity 2012. “They understand that as advanced as our medical technology is, we can’t relieve everyone’s suffering. Those end-of-life decisions belong to the individual.” (...)
We don’t know how things will play out in Massachusetts more than a year from now. But we do know, from Oregon’s long experience and Washington’s shorter one, what happens after all the furor, the ads, the charges and countercharges when a so-called death-with-dignity law actually takes effect.
What happens is less than one might expect.
Read more:
by Paula Span, NY Times
Most fall weekends, you can find Randee Laikind buttonholing people at the Shelburne Falls Market in western Massachusetts, or wielding her clipboard on the town common in nearby Greenfield or Amherst.
“I try to be very polite,” she told me. “I say, ‘Would you consider signing this petition to put the Death With Dignity Act on the ballot, so Massachusetts citizens can vote on it?’”
Ms. Laikind, who’s 63 and no stranger to activism, has been a bit surprised by the response, or lack thereof. “I’ve never had anyone say no,” she said. “They don’t even ask me questions; they just say, ‘Where do I sign?’”
One Greenfield woman started crying. “She said, ‘If only this had been around last year when my father was dying.’” She added her signature, Ms. Laikind said. So did Ms. Laikind’s former internist, whom she ran into in a restaurant.
Since mid-September, a small cadre of similar volunteers has gathered about 70,000 voters’ signatures, aiming to make Massachusetts the fourth state where terminally ill patients may legally seek physicians’ help to end their lives. The organizers, who call their campaign Dignity 2012, need only 70,000 to put the question on the state ballot in November 2012, but to be sure they have enough to pass scrutiny, they’re aiming for 100,000. The signatures must be submitted by the end of November.
The proposed statute, closely modeled on an initiative that Washington State voters passed in 2008, would allow a patient who’s expected to die within six months to self-administer lethal medication.
It includes a long list of precautions and protections: a lot of physician counseling and information; two doctors verifying that the patient is mentally competent and acting voluntarily; a 15-day waiting period between a first and second request, and another 48 hours before the prescription can be filled. At least one of the two witnesses to the written request can’t be a relative or an heir. And of course, the patient can always change his or her mind.
“Thousands and thousands of people have personal experience that leads them to support this,” said Steve Crawford, a spokesman for Dignity 2012. “They understand that as advanced as our medical technology is, we can’t relieve everyone’s suffering. Those end-of-life decisions belong to the individual.” (...)
We don’t know how things will play out in Massachusetts more than a year from now. But we do know, from Oregon’s long experience and Washington’s shorter one, what happens after all the furor, the ads, the charges and countercharges when a so-called death-with-dignity law actually takes effect.
What happens is less than one might expect.
Read more:
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Knit a Sweater, Help a Penguin
[ed. This is cute and I can appreciate the sentiment, but I was at the Exxon Valdez command center and here's what birds need: Dawn dishwashing detergent, blow dryers, lots of towels, and, sometimes, forced feedings. By the time birds arrive they've usually consumed a considerable amount of oil just from excessive preening, their systems are in shock, no one waits around until they're 'warm'.]
A recent oil spill on New Zealand’s coast has left the environment and wildlife in shambles — including the local blue penguin population. While volunteers are working hard to rescue and clean the animals in the region, they require a little bit of crafty help: tiny sweaters, or penguin pajamas, for the rescued birds. These woolen sweaters keep oil-soaked birds warm until they’re well enough to be cleaned and prevent them from ingesting oil from their feathers.
Read more:
Fishy Business
by Brian Hartman, ABC News
A new investigation provides fresh evidence that restaurants and markets continue to dupe seafood lovers into paying top dollar for low-grade fish.
As part of a special “Fishy Business” series, the Boston Globe spent five months buying fish from dozens of establishments throughout Massachusetts and sending the samples off to a lab in Canada. DNA tests found 48 percent of the fish had been mislabeled as a more expensive type of fish.
Fish samples were gathered from 134 restaurants, grocery stores and seafood markets, and the results were staggering. Every one of 23 white tuna samples tested turned out to be something other than tuna. In most cases the fish labeled tuna was escolar, which the Globe said was “nicknamed the Ex-Lax of fish by some in the industry for the digestion problems it can cause.”
All but two of the 26 red snapper samples were another kind of fish, the Globe reported. That came as no surprise to Cape Cod fisherman Eric Hesse, who was quoted in the report.
“Mislabeling fish is at a ridiculous level,” said Hesse. “The dealers and restaurants have a vested interest in keeping the illusion going. Every time they can say they are selling fresh, local fish and get away with selling [Pacific] frozen, they don’t have to buy it from us. It kills us.”
The problem extends far beyond Boston and affects consumers nationwide. Earlier this year, ABC News correspondent Elisabeth Leamy reported that seafood may be mislabeled as often as 70 percent of the time.
“According to Food and Drug Administration port inspections,” Leamys said. “A third of seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabeled as one type when it’s actually something else, even something cheaper.” (...)
“American consumers would be outraged if they ordered roast beef and they got horse meat or God forbid, whale meat,” Michael Hirshfield, a chief scientist at Oceana, told Leamy. “They should be outraged if they order snapper and they get tilapia or some endangered species.”
Read more:
A new investigation provides fresh evidence that restaurants and markets continue to dupe seafood lovers into paying top dollar for low-grade fish.
As part of a special “Fishy Business” series, the Boston Globe spent five months buying fish from dozens of establishments throughout Massachusetts and sending the samples off to a lab in Canada. DNA tests found 48 percent of the fish had been mislabeled as a more expensive type of fish.Fish samples were gathered from 134 restaurants, grocery stores and seafood markets, and the results were staggering. Every one of 23 white tuna samples tested turned out to be something other than tuna. In most cases the fish labeled tuna was escolar, which the Globe said was “nicknamed the Ex-Lax of fish by some in the industry for the digestion problems it can cause.”
All but two of the 26 red snapper samples were another kind of fish, the Globe reported. That came as no surprise to Cape Cod fisherman Eric Hesse, who was quoted in the report.
“Mislabeling fish is at a ridiculous level,” said Hesse. “The dealers and restaurants have a vested interest in keeping the illusion going. Every time they can say they are selling fresh, local fish and get away with selling [Pacific] frozen, they don’t have to buy it from us. It kills us.”
The problem extends far beyond Boston and affects consumers nationwide. Earlier this year, ABC News correspondent Elisabeth Leamy reported that seafood may be mislabeled as often as 70 percent of the time.
“According to Food and Drug Administration port inspections,” Leamys said. “A third of seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabeled as one type when it’s actually something else, even something cheaper.” (...)
“American consumers would be outraged if they ordered roast beef and they got horse meat or God forbid, whale meat,” Michael Hirshfield, a chief scientist at Oceana, told Leamy. “They should be outraged if they order snapper and they get tilapia or some endangered species.”
Read more:
Inteview: Keith Richards
by Chris Heath, GQ
He sits on a sofa, sipping from a plastic cup, answering a few questions about the life—"I've led so many lives....Which life are you talking about?"—that has led him here.
What remains for you to achieve?
"I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records. That was the only real goal in my life, ever, but since that happened so quickly, like a laser beam...I think the next goal was not to become one-hit wonders. I mean, after that, no real goal, except to sort of keep on going. I mean, what does an entertainer do, basically? You get onstage and make other people feel happy. Make them feel good. Turn them on."
Is that the word you prefer? "Entertainer" more than "musician"?
"I wouldn't want to impress them with musicianship. I want them there because they want to be there and because they know that they're going to have a damn good time. I wouldn't take it any higher than that."
And what's the joy or fulfilment in achieving that?
"Well, you'd have to be there, pal. To know what it's like to be on a Stones stage with an audience. The exchange of energy that goes on. It's immeasurable. In fact they don't have meters to do it."
What does physically making music give to you?
"Well, it's better than drugs."
People may listen to that, coming from you.
"And the fact that I've written a lot of music on drugs doesn't negate that statement. I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere. I could break out of jail on that stuff and still be in jail. It's a freedom nobody can take from you."
Is there anything you still need to prove?
"To prove? I was innocent! Of everything!"
Richards likes to play guitar every single day. Maybe an hour or so. "Afternoons, evenings. Pick around, play some Robert Johnson blues, hopefully make an incredible beautiful mistake which will lead me into another area. I do it for me. You know, I'm a selfish son of a bitch. I do it because it turns me on." (As for the mornings...here's more than you wanted to know about how each bright new twenty-first-century-Keith-Richards day begins: "First we have the bowel movement. Cool, that's that out of the way. Seen a friend off to the coast. And then you see what's on the agenda....")
It's a routine (the guitar playing, not the other one) that was disrupted while he was working on his million-selling autobiography, Life. "I hardly played at all for two years," he says. After our conversation, he is due in the studio with drummer Steve Jordan, his partner in his sometime other band, the X-Pensive Winos. "I'm sort of basically recovering from the book, and this is my therapy at the moment," he explains. "In the process of doing it, my chops are coming back." So far, they've got six songs that may or may not turn into an album. "Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one—I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life." That chuckle. "I work the seamier side of life."
And, I note, it's been good to him.
He nods. A sly grin. "There's a lot of seam," he says.
He sits on a sofa, sipping from a plastic cup, answering a few questions about the life—"I've led so many lives....Which life are you talking about?"—that has led him here.
What remains for you to achieve?
"I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records. That was the only real goal in my life, ever, but since that happened so quickly, like a laser beam...I think the next goal was not to become one-hit wonders. I mean, after that, no real goal, except to sort of keep on going. I mean, what does an entertainer do, basically? You get onstage and make other people feel happy. Make them feel good. Turn them on."Is that the word you prefer? "Entertainer" more than "musician"?
"I wouldn't want to impress them with musicianship. I want them there because they want to be there and because they know that they're going to have a damn good time. I wouldn't take it any higher than that."
And what's the joy or fulfilment in achieving that?
"Well, you'd have to be there, pal. To know what it's like to be on a Stones stage with an audience. The exchange of energy that goes on. It's immeasurable. In fact they don't have meters to do it."
What does physically making music give to you?
"Well, it's better than drugs."
People may listen to that, coming from you.
"And the fact that I've written a lot of music on drugs doesn't negate that statement. I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere. I could break out of jail on that stuff and still be in jail. It's a freedom nobody can take from you."
Is there anything you still need to prove?
"To prove? I was innocent! Of everything!"
Richards likes to play guitar every single day. Maybe an hour or so. "Afternoons, evenings. Pick around, play some Robert Johnson blues, hopefully make an incredible beautiful mistake which will lead me into another area. I do it for me. You know, I'm a selfish son of a bitch. I do it because it turns me on." (As for the mornings...here's more than you wanted to know about how each bright new twenty-first-century-Keith-Richards day begins: "First we have the bowel movement. Cool, that's that out of the way. Seen a friend off to the coast. And then you see what's on the agenda....")
It's a routine (the guitar playing, not the other one) that was disrupted while he was working on his million-selling autobiography, Life. "I hardly played at all for two years," he says. After our conversation, he is due in the studio with drummer Steve Jordan, his partner in his sometime other band, the X-Pensive Winos. "I'm sort of basically recovering from the book, and this is my therapy at the moment," he explains. "In the process of doing it, my chops are coming back." So far, they've got six songs that may or may not turn into an album. "Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one—I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life." That chuckle. "I work the seamier side of life."
And, I note, it's been good to him.
He nods. A sly grin. "There's a lot of seam," he says.
The Complicated Psychology of Revenge
by Eric Jaffe, Observer
A few years ago a group of Swiss researchers scanned the brains of people who had been wronged during an economic exchange game. These people had trusted their partners to split a pot of money with them, only to find that the partners had chosen to keep the loot for themselves. The researchers then gave the people a chance to punish their greedy partners, and for a full minute, as the victims contemplated revenge, the activity in their brains was recorded. The decision caused a rush of neural activity in the caudate nucleus, an area of the brain known to process rewards (in previous work, the caudate has delighted in cocaine and nicotine use). The findings, published in a 2004 issue of Science, gave physiological confirmation to what the scorned have been saying for years: Revenge is sweet.
A thirst for vengeance is nothing if not timeless. It is as classic as Homer and Hamlet, and as contemporary as Don Corleone and Quentin Tarantino; as old as the eyes and teeth traded in the Bible, and as fresh as the raid that took the life of Osama bin Laden. But while the idea of revenge is no doubt delectable — the very phrase “just desserts” promises a treat — much of its sugar is confined to the coating. The actual execution of revenge carries a bitter cost of time, emotional and physical energy, and even lives. That minute before revenge is savory, as the authors of the Science study recognized; but what about the days and weeks that follow?
In the past few years, psychological scientists have discovered many ways in which the practice of revenge fails to fulfill its sweet expectations. Behavioral scientists have observed that instead of quenching hostility, revenge can prolong the unpleasantness of the original offense and that merely bringing harm upon an offender is not enough to satisfy a person’s vengeful spirit. They have also found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation, in part because one person’s moral equilibrium rarely aligns with another’s. The upshot of these insights is a better sense of why the pursuit of revenge has persisted through the ages, despite tasting a lot more sour than advertised.
Read more:
A few years ago a group of Swiss researchers scanned the brains of people who had been wronged during an economic exchange game. These people had trusted their partners to split a pot of money with them, only to find that the partners had chosen to keep the loot for themselves. The researchers then gave the people a chance to punish their greedy partners, and for a full minute, as the victims contemplated revenge, the activity in their brains was recorded. The decision caused a rush of neural activity in the caudate nucleus, an area of the brain known to process rewards (in previous work, the caudate has delighted in cocaine and nicotine use). The findings, published in a 2004 issue of Science, gave physiological confirmation to what the scorned have been saying for years: Revenge is sweet. A thirst for vengeance is nothing if not timeless. It is as classic as Homer and Hamlet, and as contemporary as Don Corleone and Quentin Tarantino; as old as the eyes and teeth traded in the Bible, and as fresh as the raid that took the life of Osama bin Laden. But while the idea of revenge is no doubt delectable — the very phrase “just desserts” promises a treat — much of its sugar is confined to the coating. The actual execution of revenge carries a bitter cost of time, emotional and physical energy, and even lives. That minute before revenge is savory, as the authors of the Science study recognized; but what about the days and weeks that follow?
In the past few years, psychological scientists have discovered many ways in which the practice of revenge fails to fulfill its sweet expectations. Behavioral scientists have observed that instead of quenching hostility, revenge can prolong the unpleasantness of the original offense and that merely bringing harm upon an offender is not enough to satisfy a person’s vengeful spirit. They have also found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation, in part because one person’s moral equilibrium rarely aligns with another’s. The upshot of these insights is a better sense of why the pursuit of revenge has persisted through the ages, despite tasting a lot more sour than advertised.
Read more:
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