Paperman is Disney's Oscar-nominated animated short. Enjoy.
If You Don’t Smile You Might Be Dead Inside
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Words Are Important
Have you seen the latest Volkswagen commercial? If not take a look:
As you can see it's basically a funny take on the whole laid-back/chill island thing that most of the world associates with Jamaica. No problem right? Wrong. Apparently some people think that it's racist:
The controversy got its start on CNN yesterday when Jamaican-born Christopher John Farley of the Wall Street Journal said: "Although I love you featuring Jimmy Cliff in the ad, a terrific Jamaican performance, the Jamaican accent did sort of strike me as Jar Jar Binks-ish." The New York Times's Charles Blow had a more intense reaction, saying the accent was "like blackface with voices." The commercial was discussed this morning on the Today show and their "ad expert" Barbara Lippert, the editor-at-large of MediaPost.com, said "this is so racist."
It's probably not surprising that someone would take offense to the ad – What doesn't offend someone these days? – but that last statement in particular is just ridiculous. How is it racist? Jamaicans aren't a race, they're a culture. As is pointed out later in the post linked above, there are plenty of white Jamaicans. If this ad is racist then so are all of the Lucky Charms ads that play on Irish accents, Leprechauns and all of our cultural preconceptions about Ireland. And the Swedish Bikini team? Don't even go there.
While it may seem like splitting hairs to call out critics for saying the VW ad is racist when at most it's a cultural charicature, there's really an important point to be made. Calling something racist when it isn't distracts us from the truly racist acts that occur every day. Folks like Barbara Lippert, whether they mean to or not, are acting like our society's Chicken Littles, screaming racism so often that no one will pay attention when the real thing happens.
£110, 200 Years and 20 Million Copies
Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice was published 2oo years ago – January 28, 1813 to be exact. As we learn from this Letters of Note post, Austen sold it for £110, which converted for inflation is roughly the same as selling it for £75,000 (there are various ways to calculate inflation and this one uses average earnings). Since then over 20 million copies of the book have been sold, which works out to roughly 100,000 copies a year. That's a serious return on investment.
Class Participation is Overrated
For those who hated "class participation" in school and didn't understand why tests couldn't be 100% of their grade, this story in the Wall Street Journal is wonderful news:
David Lando plans to start working toward a diploma from the University of Wisconsin this fall, but he doesn't intend to set foot on campus or even take a single online course offered by the school's well-regarded faculty.
Instead, he will sit through hours of testing at his home computer in Milwaukee under a new program that promises to award a bachelor's degree based on knowledge—not just class time or credits…
Wisconsin officials tout the UW Flexible Option as the first to offer multiple, competency-based bachelor's degrees from a public university system. Officials encourage students to complete their education independently through online courses, which have grown in popularity through efforts by companies such as Coursera, edX and Udacity.
No classroom time is required under the Wisconsin program except for clinical or practicum work for certain degrees.
The VHS Generation
A blast from the past for those of us old enough to remember analog technology.
Heart Cover of Stairway to Heaven + Kennedy Center = Awesome
Who'd have thought that Heart – with John Bonham's son Jason on the drums – doing a cover of Stairway to Heaven at the Kennedy Center Honors would result in such awesomeness? Check out the reaction of the guys as they watch the performance. Very cool.
Guns Don’t Kill People, etc.
Guns may not kill people, but they sure make it easier for people to kill other people. After watching this video it's also painfully obvious that guns make it awfully easy for people to shoot themselves, even if they're really smart.
Reading, Writing, ‘Rithmetic…and Coding
Last week I sent my mom a link to the registration page for TEDxWakeForestU (she's a Wake Forest alumnus) and she and I were discussing it during a visit this past weekend. Others in our group asked what TEDx was, so I tried to describe the TED concept and the TEDx extension of it, but really failed quite miserably. That's one reason I was ecstatic to stumble across this video from TEDxBeaconStreet; it provides a great example of the TEDx format that I can send my mom so she can share it. The other reason is that the presentation is about the intersection of technology and education – something my mom's passionate about and thus I'm guaranteed she'll find the presentation fascinating.
Hopefully you will too:
Important Beer Info: Beware the Light
If you've been drinking beer long enough you've encountered skunked beer at some point. So how does a beer get skunked? First thing you need to know is that the professionals don't call it skunked, they call it lightstruck.That's important to know because it ends up that the popular wisdom that letting a beer get hot will cause it to get skunked, er, lightstruck is incorrect:
What those researchers found is that there are two distinct pathways to getting skunky-smelling compounds in your beer. The two main actors is this tale of woe: hop alpha acids and light. Not heat. Not oxygen. Light…
All beers that have been bittered with hops can suffer skunking: As an experiment, get a draft beer poured into a clear glass and then let it sit in the sun for 10 minutes or so. Compare that beer to one fresh from the tap. You should definitely detect some skunk in the lightstruck beer. With clear, green or blue bottles, the glass doesn't filter out the ultraviolet and blue wavelengths that start the skunking reaction. Brown bottles are much better at keeping those wavelengths out of your beer…
In the end, if you want to avoid the skunk entirely, just buy a beer that has been packaged in a keg, cask or can. Those beers can (and do) develop bad flavors, but you'll never get one that has been skunked.
Duly noted.
Who Owns Your Friends?
Here's an interesting tidbit from JimRomenesko.com about a reporter who had built a following on her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and what happened when the new owner of her station put in place a social media policy:
At this juncture, I am retaining ownership of my existingFacebook and Twitter pages. Therefore, the company has started new social media accounts in my name for me to use during work hours when I am covering stories. The company has administrative control over these accounts.
It would be easy to think this kind of thing only applies to businesses with "talents" like news organizations, theaters, etc., but that would be wrong. As social media in its varying forms becomes ingrained in the way we do business, the question of who "owns" friends/followers will be as fundamental as who "owns" a salesperson's contact list. Many companies avoid this problem by having only one official company Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn page, etc. so there's no question about who "owns" those followers, but for those companies that decide to allow their employees to develop distinct social media presences as company representatives this is a vital consideration.
You might wonder why any company would allow an employee to develop a distinct social media presence. After all, you'd think that would distract from the company's core social media property. That's a valid concern, but when you stop to consider what you pay people to do in the "real world" – attend industry conferences, develop sales channels, develop relationships with the trade media, etc. – why wouldn't you want them to do the same things via social media? If you're willing to embrace the messiness and chaos that this brings to your social media portfolio then you're likely to generate plenty of business through these efforts, but you also better be ready to protect your business by making it clear who "owns" those channels and the related followers/fans/friends.
Befuddled 