An article in the December 24 San Francisco Chronicle by Ellen
Askin, writing for Fairchild Publications, made an interesting point. Her
thesis, if such we can call it, is that the dotcom revolution failed, and
that the casual nature of the revolution was part of the reason for its
failure, especially as symbolized by its clothing.
Well, certainly, a fashion sense governed by whatever free tee-shirts we gathered from a
software convention in 1998 is a doomed fashion sense.
I thought the dotcom phenomenon was just another trend myself, but if it is
in fact a failed revolution, I'm very pleased to have lived through it
without injury to myself, friends, or family, none of whom had much to do
with the darn thing in the first place. Further, I claim that this failure
is not necessarily the result of casual workwear, but certainly casual
workware is and should be a casualty of that failure. Gap's stock has
plummeted. GQ is crossing its fingers.
Ms. Askin asks, "Could this be the
return of the elegant man? The type reminiscent of silver movie actors, the
likes of Cary Grant and Gary Cooper?" Okay, sure, why not? Wilkes Bashford
is also holding its breath. Supposedly, "... five years ago french-cuff
shirts accounted for barely 2 per cent of his business, that segment is now
up to 15 percent." In other words, we are getting back to where we once
belonged. Neckties, blazers, the well-cut suit.
So much for virtual reality.
Well, I take that back. Virtual reality is great, just as long as it's
backed up by the virtual reality of a public appearance. Speaking
personally, I know it's all bull, but if it means the end of Banana
Republic, diet sodas, and b 2 b scalable solutions, well, by golly, I'm
behind you one hundred per cent. Unless money is involved of course. I gotta
go.
(hear the realaudio version)
This January, according to the Associated Press, a survey out
of North Carolina State University revealed that twelve science textbooks,
used by 85 per cent of American Children, are riddled with errors, over 500
pages of them, "ranging from maps depicting the equator passing through the
southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a
silicon crystal."
The physics professor who led the two year survey said
that none of the 12 textbooks was acceptable, accuracy-wise. One of the
books even got Newton's first law of physics wrong. The publishers, of
course, say most of these errors are, uh, typos, that's it, typos. Now, my
memory of science classes doesn't involve textbooks, but mimeographed
handouts with ink so blurred you couldn't read them. Also: failing to
memorize the periodic table of elements, making hydrogen bark, dissecting
night crawlers, and watching freshman girls faint from formaldehyde fumes.
So, I'm probably not the best person to form an opinion about the scientific
literacy of today's youth. I'm probably alarmed, but I'm not sure. I did
look up Newton's first law of physics, which can be paraphrased: "An object
at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in
motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an
unbalanced force." So if I'm watching teevee, I'll probably stay in the
lounger unless the phone rings. And if I'm doing chores around the house,
I'll probably keep doing them, unless there's something good on television.
You physicists out there can tell me if I've got that wrong.
Well, this law,
it seems to me, can be applied to the textbook controversy itself. These
textbooks are wrong, that is, at rest, and will stay wrong until acted upon
by an outside force, that is a study financed by the David and Lucille
Packard Foundation. Or you could say, as an alternative hypothesis, that the
textbooks are in motion, that is, being edited and compiled, and their
inaccuracy is a factor of that motion until brought to grinding halt, again,
by a study financed by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. It all
depends on where you're standing, which perfectly illustrates Einstein's
Theory of Relativity, not to mention the Uncertainty Principle. What am I
trying to say? Anything and everything can be a learning experience.
Besides, any textbook that calls Linda Ronstadt a silicon crystal offers a
unique perspective that could possibly prepare youngsters for a life of
uncertainty and surrealism. Is that so wrong? I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
You know, back when I was a tad, still in short pants, knee
high to a williwaw, green behind the ears, callow, troubled, and eager, I
was about to graduate from high school. The assistant principal called me
into his office and asked me if I wouldn't think about cutting my hair
before the graduation ceremony. Remember, what was considered hippie-esque
back then is considered pretty short today-- my hair was just long enough to
lightly caress the tips of my ears. Drove the girls wild, I tell you. Well,
not.
The assistant principal's argument, if I recall correctly, involved the
extreme embarrassment I would cause family and friends if I were to appear
in public on a solemn occasion with my hair sprouting out of my head like
sprouts from an albino radish. I'm paraphrasing. "The choice is yours,"
anyway, is what he told me. I thanked him, chose not to cut my hair, and
graduation took place without further incident. I was reminded of this bland
incident from my otherwise eventful youth, when I read an AP wire story in
January about the Taliban, Afghanistan's fundamentalist Moslem ruling body,
jailing a couple dozen barbers for giving young Afghani men haircuts in the
style of Leonardo DiCaprio's from TITANIC.
A few things struck me about this
story-- first, it seemed almost too bad to be true, some kind of CIA
misinformation item planted in the media to make us urge our congresspeople
to vote for more anti-missile missiles before these religious lunatics start
snatching hair stylists from our very shores. Second, I found myself
believing it. It seems right that TITANIC would just now be showing up in
Afghani theatres, if there are such things any more in Afghanistan. Anything
that remotely smacks of secular fun, including shaving, carry severe
penalties in Afghanistan, I'm given to understand. The young men of Kabul
call the hairstyle the "Titanic," of course, and the style is banned because
the long bangs interfere with bowing and prayer-saying.
See, speaking as an
American, I can understand taking issue with the Titanic do strictly on a
personal grooming level. But I'd tackle the problem the way my assistant
principal did, with a kind of passive-aggressive guilt-tripping
semi-confrontation. Don't you think that haircut looks a little silly? What
if your mullah or father were to see you at the jihad looking like that?
When you're firing your American made semi-automatic weapons into the air
and ululating, you want to look your best, don't you? I don't know if this
approach would work, frankly, after all, we are very different cultures, but
if it does, we could use it to limit comb-overs, those little pony tails
worn by art directors, and of course the mullet, which despite our every
effort, still pops up in concert venues more times than is healthy. What we
shouldn't do, whether we're radical Moslem extremists, or just authority
figures totally lacking in any real authority, is flog barbers in the public
square. I mean, really, isn't that blaming the victim? I think so. I gotta
go.
(hear the realaudio version)
I've been informed that a rumor has been storming across the
Internet, as rumors are wont to do, for the past few months, regarding an
astonishing new technology that might change the world as we know it. A
journalist, it was alleged by inside.com, was paid 250,000 dollars for the
rights to a book about this fabulous technology, by the Harvard Business
School Press, without even asking him to reveal in advance what in fact this
fabulous technology was. Code-named "Ginger" or simply "It," this thingie is
the brainchild of a fellow named Dean Kamen, a respected inventor out New
Hampshire Way.
Those privy to whatever it is that It is, including Steve
Jobs and Jeff Bezos have officially, again it's alleged, bestowed the
virtual badge of awesomeness upon this whatever it is, hinting that VC maven
John Doerr has already put millions into it. It will be available in 2002,
and will not cost more than 2 grand. So what is it already? Oh no, we can't
just come out and tell you, can we? We signed NDAs. 3Com founder Bob
Metcalfe, however, has seen "it." Not only was he not struck blind, he
claimed, "It is bigger than the Internet and almost as big as cold fusion
would have been." Well, that's not much of a claim, really. After all, with
dotcoms dropping like flies, the Internet is shrinking at an alarming rate.
As for saying that "it" could be almost as big as cold fusion would have
been, well what does that mean? Cold fusion fizzled, didn't it? This is like
saying that if perpetual motion machines existed, "it" might be equivalent.
And if frogs had wings, hell had ice water, and President Bush a mandate, we
could all retire and live on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
The point is, all
of this talk about Ginger, to my tin ear, sounded like one of those
hoax/rumor combos that make the Internet such a special place. But it turns
out this thingie does exist. A reporter from the Boston Globe, one Gareth
Cook, not content with rumors, chat room blather, and pontifications from
the cyber-elite, did some actual old-fashioned legwork, and found some
actual patents in the actual patent office for actual inventions by Dean
Kamen and colleagues. One is for a motor scooter. Not exactly a paradigm
shift, in my humble opinion. Another, however, is for a smaller version of a
Stirling engine. The Stirling engine was invented in 1816 by a Scottish
minister named Robert Stirling. It's a very efficient engine, so they say,
and a small cheap version could reduce pollution, fuel bills, and start a
new industrial revolution. Well, okay. That's probably amazing. But still--
a fuel-efficient scooter? But frankly I was hoping more for something along
the lines of a rocket belt, invisibility ray, or anti-gravity car. Once
again, the future just ain't what it used to be. I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
Salon.com ran a story in January about the firing style of
various downsizing dotcoms. At one, employees were given half an hour to
clear their things under the eye of security guards. At another, employees
didn't even know the ax was coming until they read about it in Inside.com.
At another, a list of people about to be fired was e-mailed to the CEO
through his personal assistant, whose name happened to be on the list, so
the assistant forwarded the e-mail to the others on the list to let them
know. At New York Times Digital, staffers read that they were getting canned
in, uh, the New York Times. At another dotcom, after the fired dotcommers
gathered at a bar, the dotcom's CFO and CEO who had just let them go showed
up, in an effort to cheer them up, I guess.
Salon.com, no stranger to
donwsizing itself, did not include itself, in its pantheon of fallen gods.
In contrast to their other dotcom brethren and sistren I suspect they'd be a
little more passive-aggressive in their approach. But who knows? In the wake
of this article, a slew of letters appeared in Salon.com, none of them
sympathetic to the plight of the fired dotcommers in the least. One related
the horror story of how HE got fired from a technology start-up, and
concluded with "Dot-com? Sounds like paradise to me." Another claimed that
all the "layoff stories in the media are written from the perspective of the
MBA and content-providing crowd. What about the programers?... we make the
stuff... get no press, while the suits hog the headlines." To which I could
only respond, oh, shut up. Another said he'd had enough of "kids who come
out of college... and think they can make an easy cool million plus while
the rest of us... labor at our stupid jobs." Another woman demanded that the
fired docommers "stop whining!"
Well, having quit a dotcom, just weeks
before the ax fell, I sympathize with the dotcommers. On the other hand,
I've always felt that to buy into the whole dotcom hysteria as it was going
down, was pure idiocy, even though I bought into it myself for a month or
two, and was myself therefore an idiot. The swaggering, the calculated
casual look of it all, the lattes, the faux eco-consciousness, the bald
ambition wearing the hippie wig, the damn foosball tables-- all that stuff
around the dotcom world gave me the creeping willies.
Still, there are worse
things in the world than a bunch of out of shape young people in gimme tee
shirts trying to think up ways to make money on the Internet. Why is
everybody so gleeful about their downfall? It's not like they're slackers,
after all. All they do is work. Maybe that's the trouble. We don't have
slackers any more. The New Economy seems to have died the death of a dog as
well. What's left? The New New Economy. It used to be, up yours jack, I got
mine. Now it's up yours jack, I don't have it, why should you? What we have
is slack, tons of it, a surplus of slack, slack to burn, slack for
everybody-- but nobody's about to cut anybody any of it. I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
I noticed a rather odd phenomenon on television during the
months of January and February, a series of commercials for entirely
unrelated products-- fast food chicken, vodka, and two different brands of
automobiles--all involving people interacting with bears. In one, one person
urges his friend to fight a bear, while he stands to one side eating chicken
nuggets, in another a guy pours honey on his friend so the bear will attack
him, leaving him free to drink vodka with beautiful women by a river, in a
third, a guy takes a picture of himself holding a bear cub, forcing him and
his friend to drive away from the forest really fast before the mother bear
catches up with them, and in yet another, a bunch of guys bravely chase
bears away from their campsite, because the car they drive has made them
really really manly. What does it all mean?
Well, it probably means I was
paying too much attention to television during January and February. Other
than, it beats me. I can see the appeal of puppy dogs and kitty cats. They
make you feel warm and fuzzy, and receptive to the idea of buying toilet
paper. I can see the appeal of sex. Stupid pouty women in bikinis always
instill an almost irresistible desire within me to run out and purchase six
cans of overly sweet bland American beer. But why should the image of a
fierce untamed beast, one that could take my head off my shoulders with one
lazy swipe of a paw, make me want to consume fast food, drink alcohol, or
buy a car? And the vodka commercial, what is the message there? One guy
cheerfully sends his friend to an almost certain death by mauling just so he
can have the babes and liquor to himself.
What, are they pitching this ad to
the psychopathic demographic? And how did all these different ad campaigns
come up with the same idea at the same time? Just a bizarre coincidence? Or
was it the result of fierce competition? Did the chicken nugget people say,
"I've seen the vodka storyboards. They're going with the bear. We've gotta
go bear too, or nugget sales will plummet! Plummet!" Could it some kind of
subliminal message-- don't be afraid of the bear market. If not, why a bear?
Why not wolverines? A rabid pit bull. A ravenous weasel. A rampaging team of
enraged elephants. I know. A pit full of spitting cobras. Killer bees! A
stream swarming with piranha. Attacked by hundreds of vicious piranha, one
guy puts his friend in front of him, so the friend gets stripped to the bone
in seconds, as the guy smirks nonchalantly eating a microwave burrito. Man,
if that doesn't make microwave burritos jump out of the freezer, I don't
know advertising. A Chihuahua. A talking Chihuahua! Selling tacos! Oh,
wait.... Never mind... I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
Trypanosomiasis, or "sleeping sickness," is one of the worst
bugs you can catch in the history of the world. I know, sleeping sickness
sounds kind of pleasant, doesn't it? When you get it, you have to lie down
and take a nap. Huh uh. Sleeping sickness is caused by a parasite carried by
the tsetse fly. More than 66 million men women and children in sub-Saharan
Africa have it.
In a benign form, it causes chronic infection and exhaustion
that last for years. If you catch the more insidious bug, however, symptoms
include anemia, cardiovascular and endocrine disorders, abortion, edema and
kidney disorders. Then your nervous system falls apart, causing insanity,
usually characterized by alternating bouts of lethargy and aggression,
insomnia alternating with an inability to keep your eyes open, all followed
eventually by the "sleep" of the sleeping sickness, a deep coma, from which
you do not wake up. In a nutshell, you get real sick, go crazy, and die.
Well good news. Now there's a cure! Eflornithine has proven to be so
miraculous a cure, it's been called the "resurrection drug." What's strange
about it is that eflornithine has been around for a while. But it hasn't
received much attention until recently, when it was featured in a six page
advertising supplement in the January issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. It
seems that eflornithine also suppresses hair growth, and is the secret
ingredient in Vaniq facial cream, sold by prescription, which helps women
get rid of unwanted facial hair.
According to the New York Times, the copy
for that Cosmo ad reads, "If the mustache that prevents you from getting
close is yours (not his), it may be time for a beauty about-face. Millions
of women like yourself battle unwanted facial hair." There was no ad in
Cosmo that read, "If a destroyed nervous system is preventing you from
getting close to others, it may be time for you to shuck those inappropriate
behaviors. Millions of Africans like yourself battle unwanted symptoms of
torpor and aggression." That's because sub-Saharan Africans don't read
Cosmo, as a rule.
Well, Doctors Without Borders have shamed the big drug
companies. Bristol Meyers, Dow, Akorn Manufacturing, and Aventis will donate
60,000 doses of the miracle drug to sleeping sickness sufferers in June. Big
of them, don't you think? Still, it gives us all cause for hope. Maybe
there's an eyeliner out there that stops the Ebola virus in its tracks, an
anti-perspirant that counteracts amoebic dysentery, an aftershave that can
also feed the starving. You never know. I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
A British phenomenon has recently come to our shores, at least
to San Francisco. It began in London, where hundreds of people would line up
at a movie theatre to do to The Sound Of Music what once was done to Rocky
Horror Picture Show-- that is, arrive in costume, as a nun, a Nazi, in
lederhosen, as a doe, a deer, a female deer, a drop of golden sun, or even a
brown paper package, wrapped up in string, and then sing along with the
songs, talk back to the screen, and in general have your sugar and make fun
of it at the same time.
My local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, it
being a slow news day, recently devoted not one but five articles to this
phenomenon, including reactions from various stars, a protest over high
ticket prices-- it costs 22.50 to see the show, which is a lot of money, in
my opinion, to pay for the privilege of sneering at a movie you can rent for
three bucks, and sneer at in the privacy of your home. But another article
in the same cluster of unnecessary features really made me sit up on the
couch. Its headline read, "'Music' DVD Trivializes Nazi Role in Austria."
Really? Aaron Breitbart, a researcher with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in
Los Angeles was quoted in the article, "If the only knowledge person ever
gets about Nazi Germany and Nazi Austria is THE SOUND OF MUSIC, then a
terrible disservice has been done." Sure hard to argue with that.
We probably shouldn't look to Hogan's Heroes for insights into prisoner of war
camps, or to McHale's Navy for the truth about life on PT Boats either.
While we're on this subject, its harrowing D-Day landing scene aside, wasn't
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN pretty much like every other World War II movie made
back in the fifties? Tom Hanks WAS Jeff Chandler, near as I could tell. But
when it comes to SOUND OF MUSIC, well, is it really worth a critical
backlash? Haven't critics hated this movie from Day One, without bringing
Nazis into it? Christopher Plummer, Captain Von Trapp, even called the movie
THE SOUND OFMONEY. Can't we just call it icky, overlong, static, and creepy,
and try to forget it ever existed at all? That's what I plan to do. I urge
you to join me. I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
The New Economy rushes on, with a despair masked by an
enthusiasm that greatly resembles the manic phase of manic depression.
Despite the ongoing tanking of dotcoms everywhere, online companies are
still looking for ways to make advertising work for them. According to the
Silicon Ally Daily earlier this year, covering an E-Business Solutions
workshop, Tim Sanders, director of something called Yahoo ValueLab, "thinks
the idea that banner ads don't work is an oversimplification." According to
Mr. Sander's thesis, "focusing only on click-throughs is a mistake."
Further, "direct response has always been only a small piece of the larger
value-measurement pie." Sanders insisted that "Non-clickers spend more
across the board." Hm. Non clickers spend more cross the board. So if
somebody ignores a banner ad, you can predict his or her spending behavior
from that? And if I don't look at a billboard on the freeway, you can tell
what kind of beer I like?
Another participant in the conference, Eric
Walton, VP of marketing and business development at the ASP company, Exenet,
said, "I'm an enabler and I'm looking to bring you revenue streams. You want
to leverage the technology that's out there to a point where it is a
partner. Our core competency is developing new techniques to reach
customers." These new techniques had better include some old
fashioned-techniques as well, in my opinion, such as shouting, wheedling,
begging, and blackmail. Still, some of these conclusions may be right. Some
people may click on banner ads in the vain hope that they will go away. And
non-clickers may indeed be big spenders, or at least the time spent not
clicking may be spent shopping. But all of this talk of "core competency,"
and "partners" and "value measurement pie" and "leveraging the technology,"
well, this all sounds like the same meaningless marketing jargon that got
the dotcom economy into the mess it's in now.
Stuart Elliott, a New York
Times reporter, at another conference event, said that it's going to take a
long time for "the mainstream big Madison Avenue powerhouse agencies to get
interactive advertising and marketing." What's to get? Banner ads, spam,
make your site look like the jacket of a Nascar driver, so bloated with
logos and brand names you can't see the fabric any more. Oh, and make sure
your site is so full of buzzwords that you can't tell what it is exactly you
offer. And make doubly sure that the technology to get whatever it is you
offer doesn't work any way. Then ignore those problems, and instead give
power point demonstrations at sales conferences with pie charts about
marketshare projections. That's my advice. Hundreds have gone down in
flames, clutching their laser pointers and dry-erase markers and nicely
bound reports crammed with statistics. Why not join them? I gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
Gathering clues as to the origins and true nature of the
ongoing crisis, I looked to a familiar source, the source of much evil in
America today, acronyms and jargon. As a test, I picked the acronym ASP,
because it was an acronym referred to a lot at the dotcom I worked for, and
I never really found out what it stood for, or what it actually did. You can
do this too. Pick your acronym, and go to acronymfinder.com-- if it's still
in business that is.
So what does ASP stand for? Here's a sampling.
Application Service Provider, Abbreviated System Paper, Abstract Service
Primitive, Academy of Students of Pharmacy, Access Service Provider,
Accident Sequence Precursor, Accredited Security Parameter, Acquisition
Strategy Plan, Acquisition Systems Protection, Active Server Page,
Addressable Scan Port, Adjunct Service Point, Advanced Service Platform,
Advanced Signal Processor, Advanced Sterilization Products, Advanced
Strategic Penetrator, Advanced Strike Plot, Advanced Study Program, Advanced
System Planning, Aggregated Switch Procurement, Air Start Pressure, Airborne
Sensor Platform, Airborne Signal Processor, Aircraft Self Protection, All
Source Production, Alternative Service Provider, American Selling Price,
American Society for Plasticulture, American Society of Parasitologists,
American Society of Perfumers, Ammunition Supply Point, Analysis
Specification Package, Annual Service Practice, Anti Skip Protection, Anti
Syphon Pipe, Anti-Submarine Patrol, Apple System Profiler, AppleTalk Session
Protocol, Application Server Process, Application Service Protocols,
Application Solution Provider, Army Strategic Plan, Army Suggestion Program,
Army Supply Plant, Airborne Signal Processor, Arrival Sequencing Program,
Assignment Source Point, Associate Safety Professional, Associate Supervisor
Program, Association of Sales Professionals, Associations of Service
Providers, Shareware Professionals, Subspecialty Professors, Support
Professionals, Surfing Professionals, Attached Support Processor, Auger
Sputter Profiling, Augmented Sensory Perception, Authorized Service
Provider, Authorized Staffing Pattern, Automated Schedule Procedure,
Automated Small Purchase, Automatic Switch to Protection, Autonomous Strike
Platform, Auxiliary Service Processor, Average Selling Price, Aviation
Safety Program, Avionics Status Panel, Awareness during Sleep Paralysis, a
sleep disorder, and of course, the little snake that killed Cleopatra.
That
about covers it, but if you have further questions, don't hesitate to asp. I
gotta go.
(hear the realaudio version)
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