September, 2012 - From The Morgue

Nazi Space Buddha Iron Man Linky

If your regular news sources haven’t mentioned the Nazi Space Buddha Iron Man yet, you need better news sources, because NAZI SPACE BUDDHA IRON MAN.

Bill Bailey Docteur Qui. How have I never seen this before? via Andrew Loughnan > Michael Upton.

Reddit user attempts to ignite mass mockery of a Sikh woman. Incredibly, it ends happily for all. (via Calum Dow)

Design floorplans of TV apartments (via Gem Wilder)

When Kate Beaton says to check out a collection of vintage E.H. Shepard illustrations, it is wise to attend.

Tube map of the human body

I’d heard about this but have never seen pics before: how to hide an entire aeroplane factory (via Making Light; Sam, I’m sure this’ll be old news to you!)

A short behind-the-scenes thing on that upcoming Les Mis film. All the singing is done on-camera, no pre-record + miming! The technical challenges involved in pulling this off on such a complex production are mind-boggling, but man, the difference will tell.

Social psychology lessons from Gangnam Style

This excerpt from Ben Goldacre’s new book lays bare how pharma fraud operates through the academic system – by cherry-picking results of course.

Index of music used in NZ television commercials (via my aunt Margaret)

Today is Lunchbox day. Child poverty in NZ has been in the news lately and current affairs TV show Campbell Live has been pushing hard on this issue for a long time now. It’s become impossible to deny we have a problem. The solutions to the problem are political, but as Campbell Live has argued, they are also complex and will take a long time to work through. Meanwhile there are kids hungry right now. So they have instituted Lunchbox Day – taking donations to give Kiwi kids some food at school. In NZ, text “lunch” to 8595 to make a $3 donation. It’s deeply upsetting that there is a need for this, but Campbell Live are keeping the pressure on the bigger aspects of the problem. This is a good thing to do. Help if you can.

Charles Babbage would have killed on Twitter.

An analysis of PIN numbers. How easy is your PIN to guess? (via Making Light)

Hugh Dingwall found this great Delia Derbyshire collection

And finally, this video which has had 23 million views over the last two years, because this is what humans like to look at apparently.

BAT: Why they do it

I think I’ve cracked it.

A few days ago I made a lengthy post about how the British American Tobacco “agree disagree” marketing campaign made no sense to me at all, at all, at all. Since then BAT has launched a third phase of the campaign, which is even weirder and less likely to be convincing and what the hell what the hell didgeridoo noise what the hell.

And as I thought about that and tried, again, to work out what on earth the advertising company & BAT think they’re doing, suddenly I came up with an explanation that makes sense to me. It might not be the truth, but at least it puts a comprehensible motive behind this apparently nonsensical marketing.

Here goes: they’re trying to rebrand the tobacco industry.

The advertisements to the mass NZ public, the petition, the Twitter stream, the stunted website – none of these are trying to convince people of the merits of the plain packaging case. That’s what the campaign claims to be about, but it just ain’t true. They know the NZ public isn’t going to take up pitchforks and demand plain packaging be tossed aside. A campaign to actually get the public behind you looks more like the one they ran in Australia, where it was all about your tax dollars being misspent and your neighbourhoods falling into ruin.

Nope. The purpose here is bigger. Consider the detail of this campaign:

the name, “agree disagree” which suggests a willingness to engage and consider
the upfront admission that smoking is harmful (this must be the largest sum of money ever spent by a tobacco company to frontload the message that smoking is bad for you)
the technical nature of the arguments raised (IP ownership, international trade implications, legislative comparability between NZ and Australia)
the “sophisticated” tone taken – the word “CREATE” which is firmly the symbolic territory of the liberal arts; the wine industry, or more pointedly, bottles of wine which is still the drink of the social elite
the overall tone of restraint in voiceover, writing, general messaging – consider also the negative space where a more screechy, nasty campaign might be
the sheer size of the campaign, which suggests that this is an issue that genuinely matters to them

Look at what comes through: we are considered, honest, clever, sophisticated, restrained, sincere.
Or: we are not your daddy’s tobacco industry.

They’re trying to position themselves as reasonable actors. This is the *exact opposite* of what they were doing in Australia, which was hitting very hard all the notes that would push for public outrage without worrying about how it made them look. That didn’t work.

So, where’s the value in this kind of rebranding? If they do it right, it will make a difference to their lobbying environment. The broad push will hit a lot of people, and they’ll forget the technical detail of what’s up but they will remember this: “it sounds to me like those tobacco companies are actually being pretty sensible”. The decisionmakers and politicians will get this message from the community, as well as being caught up in the saturation marketing themselves.

That means, when a BAT rep makes a phone call to a business lobby group and tries to get them to carry water on their behalf, the person on the other end is more likely to agree.

It means when Campbell Live has a face-to-face on the issue between a Green MP and a BAT rep, the public give the tobacco person a better hearing and response.

And it means, when a BAT representative stands up at Select Committee to talk through why this is a bad idea, the people on the committee are better disposed to listen.

All of this counts. All of this makes a difference. It gives them a better shot at keeping plain packaging out of NZ, and that’s the big prize. That’s why they’re doing this.

I like this explanation. It brings all the weirdness into a single line that pushes hard towards the only result that matters to BAT. It justifies the amount of money spent and explains why none of the elements do what they claim to be doing.

There’s one sticking point: as I’ve noted, the three technical arguments made are actually not very convincing at all. How does that help them? Well, it doesn’t help them, but it also doesn’t invalidate this explanation. You see, the reason the arguments seem meritless is because *the arguments are meritless*. They don’t have stronger ones to call on. It’s a bluff, but not the obvious kind (“these are great arguments, honest!”). No, the bluff is to argue in the style of a considered, sensible person, so people conclude you actually are a considered, sensible person.

BAT are taking a gamble, and if I’m reading it right then it is indeed smart and perhaps it’s their only shot left. With that all said: I still don’t think it’s going to work. I think plain packaging is going to happen here. Our society turned against smoking years ago, and this is just another way to show that.

(That petition I was puzzled about is still hard to read, but I’d guess it’s for two purposes, private lobbying and message refinement. In meetings they can say “We sent people out to talk to ordinary folks. They got X many signatures in only Y days, and told us A, B and C. Obviously there’s no appetite for this change.” At the same time, they can improve the way they talk about the issues based on feedback from their people on the ground.)

Verified Linky

Reverse verification: the process where someone tries to introduce doubt around established facts. This basically functions as a cheat code for our media systems. As Jay Rosen says at the link, verification is what the media should be doing, but they get caught up in reporting what people are saying – untangling these has proved hard. Maybe sharing this “reverse verification” idea around will be a small further step toward change.

“First off, let me just say there was a very heated NZ vs. Australia rivalry on the Cabin set. Apparently, Australia is a prison colony filled with castoffs and criminals, and New Zealand is a glorious land of Hobbit-filled imagination and wonder.
Or, at least, that’s what Anna Hutchison tells me. Suck it, Hemsworth.” – Drew Goddard, in a lengthy Q&A about Cabin in the Woods. (via David Ritchie esq.)

Now this is how you tear a highly-regarded restaurant to pieces in a review. The NYT gives one star to famed Manhattan eatery Le Cirque. (via Mark Cubey. Gator, obviously you’ve gotta click on this one.)

That “crying fire in a crowded theatre” thing – its legal history in free speech cases exhaustively examined. Way too dense for me to do more than skim, but lawyer types and free speech nerds will be fascinated with the detail too. Upshot: stop referring to it goddammit.

Amazing project you can join: help the transcription of documents from the 1920s excavation of the ancient city of Ur.

Y’all seen xkcd’s “click and drag“, right? It is amazing (but also hella frustrating to interface with after a while). Here’s an easier, zoomable version – but is this the complete picture? I don’t know.)

More about the culture and codes of behaviour among magicians, this time through the example of Teller and someone “stealing” his trick. (Gob: “Illusion, Michael!”) I never get tired of this stuff. The article is longer than it needs to be, a writer trying to give the article weight enough to be an anchor feature I guess, but is full of amazing details. (via Theremina)

Fan-made Star Wars space battle anime. Groovy as heck.

The definitive Watchmen 3

Fold your own Flight of the Conchords

There is a Magic: The Gathering puppet musical. This is a thing that exists. (via Liam Frost)

Guy playing Skyrim just decides to add all the mods he can find at once. The game becomes very weird indeed.

The YikeBike – NZ innovation, a super-light transport option?
And a cardboard bike (both via d3vo)

And if I never linked this before, I should have – some research about how our ancestors slept, and how the 8-hour sleep session is quite unusual really (also via d3vo)

Characters on the TV show Community watch a Doctor Who echo called “Inspector Spacetime”. Now there is a webseries echo of Inspector Spacetime called “Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveller Who…”, written by and starring the guy who plays Inspector Spacetime on Inspector Spacetime. Follow all that? Good. Clicky then.

If the phrase “the problem of Susan” means anything to you, you really need to read this very short story. (Narnia fanfic, via Making Light.)

The accidental history of the @ symbol. I always thought it was derived from “ea” for “each”. (via Mrs Meows)

And finally, also via Mrs Meows, gaze into the abyss that is Lindsay Nohands.

Big Tobacco: why you do this?

I’ve mentioned previously the Agree/Disagree campaign that has been running prominently in NZ media for the last month. It has been hard to miss, with many television spots in prime time every day, full page ads in newspapers, and radio placements too. The spend is enormous. The initial stated amount of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” is, a month later, clearly revealed as something of an understatement. (The equivalent campaign in Oz spent $4.5 million.)

The campaign, by British American Tobacco, is in opposition to government moves towards mandatory plain packaging of cigarettes. It argues that plain packaging is bad because it impinges on corporate right to use the brands they have carefully developed; and it hurts us on international trade, making us vulnerable to legal challenges for example. They also state that plain packaging just won’t make a difference. (That last point appears to be quite wrong; the science is developing towards a clear signal that plain packaging reduces smoking rates.)

The website itself is quite small and uninteresting (and a close match to the Aussie version). It has a statement of the argument, and reproduces their print, TV and radio ads. That’s it. Missing: any call to action, at all. Anyone who responds to these ads and actually visits the site will find a few bullet points and nothing else of interest.

After a month of this with no end in sight, the mystery of what BAT are trying to achieve remains unsolved. Why are they spending so much money, time, and brand capital on this campaign? As another blogger has put it, what is the point of all this?

It isn’t to persuade the public to accept their argument. This is unconvincing on two levels. First, it just isn’t going to work. Public support is never going to muster behind support for tobacco marketing (and branding is marketing, make no mistake on that) or the details of international trade. (If you want to get the massed public behind you, you need a better hook than this. Compare the recent Australia “nanny state” campaign.) Second, even if you do persaude the public – so what? How does that get you what you want? This matter isn’t going to referendum. Are you hoping all your new supporters spontaneously decide to lobby government on your behalf? That’s a ridiculous notion.

In fact, this whole campaign is so poorly conceived that it’s actively turning smokers against BAT.

So you have the deeply weird spectacle of an enormous, expensive public persuasion campaign that is not actually interested in persuading the public.

A further wrinkle has appeared since: BAT have hired a small team of people to go around NZ gathering signatures and discussing the plain packaging issue. They were out in Wgtn recently and a few of my friends were approached to sign a petition against plain packaging. What petition is this? Your guess is as good as mine. But a small team being flown around the country for a month aren’t going to get enough names to make much of an impact on anything. If the petition mattered, it would be online as well, wouldn’t it? So add to the weirdness above: a petition that has no interest in actually collecting signatures.

Clearly something isn’t what it seems here.

What else is at work? Chris Trotter suggests the spend isn’t aimed at the public directly, but at editors and columnists who are influenced by the dollars coming their way. That could be part of the mix, because getting editors and columnists on-side is certainly a way to influence political action in NZ. I find the notion that this is the core purpose of the exercise hugely unconvincing. (“Here’s the plan: we spend loadsamoney advertising our argument, and hope some influential columnists decide that’s a good reason to take up our cause, know what I mean?” “But can’t we just get pretty much the same result by taking out a few small ads and sending a personalised letter to the columnists who are inclined to support our point?”)

Look again at their core argument. IP issues? International trade concerns? These issues are not addressed with public marketing campaigns. They are pursued through direct lobbying to government, submissions to select committee, and corridor conversations with influential people.

And yet a big national campaign is what we have. What are they up to?

Here’s another explanation: BAT have gone mad. No, seriously. They are so terrified by the ongoing shift in public opinion that will destroy their business sooner rather than later that they are running around like headless chooks, not talking to each other, throwing any random thing they can at the wall and hoping to somehow connect with a hidden reset switch. It’s a satisfying mental image, but probably unwise to give it any credence…

Okay, looking at what they’re actually doing isn’t giving me any clear picture. How about starting from the other end – what should we expect them to be doing? Obviously, this is important to BAT and other tobacco companies. They are, presumably, terrified of a public-health domino effect. Australia has fallen, and we are primed to go next. Other smoking changes swept the world with great rapidity, e.g. smokefree restaurants and bars. They have to fight this one here, before it gets out of hand. They don’t have many options in how to fight, really. They can directly pressure decisionmakers (which is how things have traditionally been done) and they can try and keep public opinion on side so there is no appetite for change. Can this gigantic mess of a campaign really be their best shot at public opinion?

Comparing agree/disagree to BAT’s Aussie campaign is interesting. The framing is completely different. It’s all: “Will plain packaging cost the taxpayers billions? Will it make tobacco cheaper? Where’s the proof?” Here, incredibly, the ads all front up with “we accept smoking is harmful” and talk about fairness and debate on technical issues. It’s a fascinating switch-up by BAT and/or BAT’s creative agency G2 Sydney (who I presume did the Aussie version too). Some possible reasons: the Aussie version really, really didn’t work; the temperature of the NZ market was so different they felt a completely different angle was needed; they’re trying out a new strategy that might cross borders more effectively; they’ve adjusted their behind-the-scenes lobbying approach and wanted their public strategy to align with that; some new manager came into a senior role and wanted to stamp his authority on things by making a change. All of these are unedifying, and impossible to test or verify based on what we can see from the outside.

So where does all this leave us? I wish I knew. I’m no closer to understanding what on earth BAT think they’re doing. One thing is certain: this public campaign is not the whole iceberg. There will be a whole huge pile of hidden work going on – lobbying politicians will just be the start of it. (Keith Ng covered some BAT lobbying action last year.) And if this enormous public campaign is just to support that, just to provide a few anecdotes and the thin impression of public support to give lobbyists just that bit of extra edge on influencing policymakers? If that’s the case, be very afraid, because that suggests the war chest big tobacco has to call upon is much, much bigger than I would like.

One other thing. I would not be surprised if the online discussion around this issue was being infiltrated by paid fake commenters pushing the BAT line. The “discuss this!” line is being pushed hard (although, notably, not on the campaign’s own forum) and buying some sock puppets is a cheap way to get some real push on your messaging. It’d be nice if sysadmins at media sites kept an eye out for this, although it ain’t hard to make it pretty much invisible.

Insights from readers most welcome, because I am mystified by this whole thing.

Helicopter Catan Linky

Via mrsmeows, here’s a 9-minute doco on a man in a wheelchair building a helicopter out of junk. It’s quite lovely.

Via gbaker, here’s a 9-minute doco on a group of friends playing Settlers of Catan when IT ALL GOES WRONG. It’s actually a dramatic recreation of the event – using the actual people – mixed in with talking heads. Neat stuff.

Jean Grae kills. Kill Screen. Flow deadly as hell plus your true classic arcade sounds. As the lady says, Rappity Rap.

Miniature pigeon camera! Pics of & from the pigeon photographers! (via Mike Upton)

If Star Wars was an 80s school flick (via Fraser P)

Dude, you got Daddy Skills (via lots of folk)

6 degrees of Black Sabbath (via Hugh Dingwall)

Gremlin anatomy

Photos of Christopher Robin & Pooh & the others

Via Andrew Jack – BOSCH ACTION FIGURES well statues or whatever but I’d make He-Man punch them.

People who write letters to lexicographers are as mad as people who write letters to any other place. Feel their pain. (via Making Light)

Papercraft Shackleton’s Endurance! And other disaster dioramas too. (also from Making Light)

Tracking the decline of Livejournal (Making Light again)

Warren Ellis on how to actually see the future. He’s started a Vice column too.

The Wire gets a 16-bit game

And finally… via the City Gallery Wellington, oddly enough… it’s the RAINBOW SPONGE

A Decade At Large

Ten years ago today, I left New Zealand. I had a plan to sort of end up in the UK and do… something. I ended up spending three years in Edinburgh. Seems like it was longer.

Sitting on the plane out of NZ with my good buddy Mr TwoTrees, we talked about why we were going. In our mid-20s, we were at the top end of the OE age group. We weren’t out to party like crazy, or to find ourselves, or to earn a nest egg of sweet sweet GBP. Our motivations were harder to nail down. One strand of mine I could identify: I wanted to learn the size of the world. I wanted to get that sense of scale that only comes from experience.

By the time I landed back in Wellington, I knew the world’s size. I had also made a new lifetime home in Edinburgh, and many crucial epic wondrous friends who each pushed my life in new directions. And walking in Welington, I knew this was the right place to be, where I had to be so the next stage of my life could begin.

I didn’t do everything right, far from it. It made a hard road for my lovely Cal, left behind at the airport ten years ago, part of a scattering loop that took nearly a half-decade to reconnect. I think of the me sat on that plane and I remember how many mistakes I had made and would continue to make. That day was the beginning of a journey that would create a new version of me. Not that there was anything much wrong with the old me, but the stuff down deep was ripped out and rewired and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to undertake that process, the privileges of my heritage and my financial situation and my supportive family and more.

A decade ago, I got on a plane; travel without a tourist. Across a whole lifetime there’re probably only a few days one can point to and say, then, right then; the exact moment where I started a fresh page and wrote myself anew. This is one of mine.

morgue at large (travel email archive)