Ed Batista

At Strybing Arboretum

I saw a hawk catch a snake today at Strybing Arboretum.  The hawk first settled into a tall pine with its prize, but hectoring blue jay forced it out into another tree, where it struggled with the unwieldy meal.  More shots in my SF album.

B-52s Playing "Rock Lobster"

A Word to the IvyWise

I'm not a parent, and my nieces and nephews aren't yet in high school, so I'm pretty much out of the loop with regard to what it takes to get into a competitive college these days.  Thus my surprise at learning about the "admissions packaging" industry, represented by such groups as IvyWise, whose services start with the "Nursery School Package" and range all the way through grad school.

I fully support the idea that experienced professionals can help a kid explore and understand their interests and abilities, so that the admission process isn't simply about getting into the "best" school but about getting into the school and starting down the life path that's best-suited to that particular kid.

But the recent plagiarism furor surrounding young author Kaavya Viswanathan, an IvyWise client who's now a sophomore at Harvard, suggests that "admissions packaging" can go beyond helping a kid understand herself better in order to present herself more effectively to an Admissions Committee.  These services don't just "package" people--they invent them.  There can be a kernel of truth in these exercises--Viswanathan was actually interested in writing, and ultimately a book was written (although apparently by committee)--but taken to extremes, they're fundamentally phony and inauthentic.

OK, so why does a childless guy like me care?  I'm never going to be an IvyWise client.  I care because this isn't just about getting into college or one kid's plagiarism.  It's about the fact that we are now marketing ourselves more self-consciously and at ever-younger ages, and because marketing--and packaging in particular--can have such a powerful impact, we owe it to our authentic selves and to the audiences we're seeking to reach to do so responsibly.

Malcolm Gladwell described Louis Cheskin's concept of "sensation transference" in Blink,

[M]ost of us don't make a distinction--on an unconscious level--between the package and the product.  The product is the package and the product combined.

Sleazy marketers and flim-flam artists of all stripes have abused this process so thoroughly over the years that it sounds shady, a type of trickery.  But nevertheless it works--as Gladwell reports, marketers have demonstrated that ice cream tastes better if it comes in a cylindrical container instead of a rectangular one, brandy tastes better if it comes in a decanter instead of a wine bottle, and margarine tastes better if it's colored yellow instead of white.

It's one thing to rely on superior packaging to transform food; it's another to use the same process to transform ourselves.  I'm not railing against the practice--it's here to stay, and I'm sure it can be of real value when applied appropriately.  But there's a line that separates a more effective presentation of our authentic self from the creation of an inauthentic self intended to make a more favorable impression than our authentic self ever could.  And if we cross that line, and grab whatever brass ring we thought would elude our authentic self, what have we won?  And at what cost?

tag: kaavya viswanathan louis cheskin malcolm gladwell

Bill Buford on Butchery

In the May 1st New Yorker, Bill Buford goes to Italy, satiates his bloodlust, realizes that kitsch can be beautiful, returns to New York, and butchers a 200 lb. pig on his kitchen table.

(And if it's true, I'm particularly impressed by the fact that he transported the dead pig home from the market slung over the handlebars of his Vespa with his wife riding pillion.  No mean feat, to be sure.)

My favorite pork chop recipe, adapted from Cook's Illustrated, after the jump.

Apocalypse Right Now

Some days you feel like Brando, some days you feel like Martin Sheen.

Muir Beach to Tennessee Valley, GGNRA Coast Trail

The Country Girl

I'm not sure where I first heard of The Country Girl, but I wish I could remember and give credit where it's due.  It made a lot of noise back in 1954--Oscars for Grace Kelly and for director George Seaton's screenplay (based on Clifford Odets' 1950 play), and nominations for Bing Crosby, Seaton's direction, and Best Picture, as well as art direction and cinematography--but you rarely hear of it today.

Crosby's a washed-up, hard-drinking actor, Kelly is his long-suffering wife, and the outstanding William Holden is a bigshot Broadway director who gives Crosby one last chance at redemption and falls in love with Kelly in the process.  The plot takes some mildly surprising twists, but it's fairly heavy-handed--it's Odets, what'd ya expect?  And if this is nomination-worthy cinematography, then the Fifties were pretty lean years, visually speaking.

But the principals truly deliver the goods.  Crosby is so neglected these days it's a mortal sin.  Everyone from Sinatra to Satchmo to Elvis has had a revival, but Crosby--who was bigger in his day than any of them--remains woefully underappreciated.  And although I'm primarily a fan of his singing, he's probably the best singing actor ever, and this is one of his best roles.  Kelly's stiff, ornamental style usually leaves me less than enthralled, but I really fell for her here.  And William Holden!  I've never seen "Sunset Blvd." or "Stalag 17," and it's flicks like this that remind me what an ignorant fool I am.

tags: the country girl bing crosby grace kelly william holden clifford odets george seaton

Tyler Cowen on New Orleans

Kudos to Slate for Tyler Cowen's outstanding series of "Dispatches" on New Orleans.  Cowen, an econ prof at George Mason and co-author at Marginal Revolution, provides some refreshingly candid analysis of the city's post-Katrina challenges.  From Tuesday's piece:

Since so many homes were destroyed, the natural inclination is to build safer or perhaps impregnable structures. But that is the wrong response. No one should or will rebuild or insure expensive homes on vulnerable ground...

Instead, the city should help create cheap housing by reducing legal restrictions on building quality, building safety, and required insurance... Once the current ruined structures are razed, governmental authorities should make it possible for entrepreneurs to put up less-expensive buildings. Many of these will be serviceable, but not all will be pretty. We could call them structures with expected lives of less than 50 years. Or we could call them shacks.

What is the advantage of turning wrecked wards into shantytowns? The choice is between cheap real estate or abandonment. The land will not sustain high-rent, high-quality real estate... If various levels of government try to mandate higher values than the land will support, the private sector will simply withdraw its participation, leaving nothing behind.

...Reducing building restrictions so developers can put up cheap housing quickly is probably the best way to jump-start recovery. For starters, cheap housing might be one means of inducing migrants—many of them Latino immigrants—who have come to the city for temporary construction jobs to stay. And as low-cost laborers settle in the city, they'll boost economic activity and pay taxes, thereby attracting corporations, service suppliers, and entrepreneurial small businesses. It would be fitting if New Orleans were rebuilt, both physically and culturally, by Latin and Caribbean immigrants. After all, the city has long been influenced by Hispanic and Caribbean settlers...

From Wednesday's entry:

The city has so far been ambivalent about the influx of new [Latino] workers. But New Orleans should embrace its new residents, since Latinos will drive the city's structural and cultural renewal and help New Orleans claim a future for itself...

In October, Mayor Ray Nagin asked, "How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?" The answer: Do not rebuild.

And from today:

In the realm of higher education, the cultural renewal of New Orleans is well under way. Unlike the city itself, New Orleans' universities are almost back to normal, with some creative adjustment...

So why have the universities done so much better than the city as a whole? First, the universities were never wracked by extreme corruption and bad governance. They have continued to pursue success and avoided getting snarled up in questions about who is really in charge. New Orleans must deal with politically divided federal, state, and local governments, but the universities have clear administrative chains of command, starting with their boards and presidents.

The more definite lines of accountability and authority lead to clearer priorities. The universities are focusing on what economists call their comparative advantages—the things they do better than other institutions...

The city, by contrast, has no sense of what must go and no vision of success. No leaders have articulated a vision for the city that balances the myriad competing local interests. The buck stops nowhere and many officials and citizens seem to wait for Washington to solve every problem. For any specific difficulty, the mayor blames Michael Brown, who blames Secretary Chertoff, who blames Gov. Blanco, who blames President Bush. Nobody is held accountable for failure to lead or failure to enforce the law and protect property rights. And as in any patronage system, a suggestion to cut failing programs is usually dead on arrival. The city sees spending money and delivering contracts to constituents (read: interest groups) as an end in itself....

Cowen's vision is both encouraging and depressing; the former because he proposes some innovative but concrete steps the city could take to revitalize itself, and the latter because his portrayal of the city's governing culture suggests that it's unlikely that such measures will actually be implemented.

Sigh.

Point Lobos

Amy and I spent last weekend at Carmel, a long-overdue getaway that we nearly canceled.  Thankfully we didn't, and we spent most of Saturday at Point Lobos, a spectacular state park just a few miles to the south.  It's a stunning place, rich with California's natural weirdness.  Above, the "Old Veteran" cypress, clinging to a nearly sheer cliff that drops into a narrow cove.  Below, cormorants atop a haystack, studiously ignoring each other.  There are a few more snapshots in my Miscellaneous photo album.

What's Your Audio Brand?

When there are too many books and blogs to read, too many movies to see, and--most importantly--too much music to listen to, a question of fundamental importance is "How do I find the good stuff--the writing and video and music--the content--that's going to be relevant and interesting to me?"  A lot of smart people are grappling with this problem, and at least a few of them work at Muzak.  And don't think "elevator music" when you hear that name--that's so 20th century.  Think "audio branding."

As David Owen's article in the April 10th issue of The New Yorker makes clear, Muzak is doing some very advanced thinking about matching people--and companies, for that matter--with relevant content:

Last March, at a trade show in Las Vegas, Muzak demonstrated audio branding on a large scale. The company’s simple rectangular booth had a decorative theme for each of the show’s three days: a red rose, a Martini, and an eight ball from a pool table. Dana McKelvey had designed a soundtrack for each day that was meant to evoke the theme musically. While the songs played—Etta James and Diana Krall for the rose, Frank Sinatra and dZihan & Kamien for the Martini, Blondie and Wilson Pickett for the eight ball—audio architects interviewed visitors, and used their answers to come up with a “personal audio imaging profile” for each one; later, back in Fort Mill, the audio architects used those profiles to create personalized CDs.

I went through the same imaging process during my visit to Fort Mill. Steven Pilker, a twenty-five-year-old audio architect—he had worked in a record store while in school at U.N.C. Charlotte and, when he graduated, was offered a job by a Muzak executive who had been a regular customer—asked me seven or eight questions, none of which had anything to do with music. (“When you’re not working, what do you like to do?” “If you could choose an actor / actress to star in your biographical movie, who would it be and why?”) A couple of weeks later, he sent me a six-song program, which contained nothing connected to what I think of as my main musical phenotype (“classic rock”); in fact, five of the six tracks were by artists I’d never heard of. Yet I liked all six very much, and later bought CDs by two of them (Sufjan Stevens and Jamie Lidell). Pilker’s selections aren’t definitive, of course; another audio architect surely could have had another take on my “brand.” But I was struck that Pilker, after spending very little time with me, had created an appealing musical program that was based on his sense of who I was, rather than on any direct examination of the music I actually listened to if left on my own.

This is really one of the promises of attention: Aggregating our interests and preferences and applying the right algorithms to that data in such a way that we can find the good stuff (and avoid the crap) on the basis of what we pay attention to (and what we ignore).  And it's not just (or even primarily) about efficiency--it's about discovery, it's about broadening our horizons, it's about a richer life.

(By the way, if you like the Owens piece, check out Barbara Hagenbaugh's USA Today article, which covered much the same ground 18 months ago.  I do believe Owens owes Hagenbaugh a debt of gratitude, to say the least.)