Month: May 2013

How You Should Frame Netflix’s Recent Loss of 1,800 Movies

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Someone recently asked Dan Ariely a question about Netflix:

Dear Dan,

I am a longtime Netflix customer. Recently, Netflix removed about 1,800 movies from its service, while adding a few very good ones. I know I probably never would have watched those 1,800 movies, but I am upset and am seriously considering leaving Netflix. Why do I feel this way?

—Kristine

Dan’s excellent answer:

As a movie man myself, I appreciate your perspective. The basic principle at work here is loss aversion: the idea that losing something has a stronger emotional impact than gaining something of the same value. Even though the deleted movies were probably not that great and the current library of Netflix may be, objectively, much better, having movies taken away from you feels like a painful loss.

One way to think about this is to contrast new and old Netflix users. A new one would just look at the overall quality of the movie collection, which may be better than it used to be. For the old user, however, the current collection is just one part of the experience, while the loss of all those movies is another. As a result, the longtime member may be much less happy.

My suggestion is for you to try thinking about Netflix as a service that provides you not with particular movies but with an optimal, curated variety of films. Compare it to a museum: We don’t think of ourselves as owning any of the art, so we aren’t upset when it changes what’s on view from its collection. If you can reframe your perspective this way, my guess is that you will enjoy Netflix more.

I couldn’t agree more. I don’t feel bad about missing those 1,800 mediocre/lame movies. I trust the company will add better titles in the coming months, and so long as that happens, I will continue paying them $7.99/month for the access.

When Empathy Fails

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Paul Bloom’s essay in The New Yorker titled “The Baby in the Well” has some excellent arguments on how empathy can backfire. To me, these two passages were most significant/interesting:

On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Caylee’s Law.) But the appetite for retribution is typically indifferent to long-term consequences. In one study, conducted by Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov, people were asked how best to punish a company for producing a vaccine that caused the death of a child. Some were told that a higher fine would make the company work harder to manufacture a safer product; others were told that a higher fine would discourage the company from making the vaccine, and since there were no acceptable alternatives on the market the punishment would lead to more deaths. Most people didn’t care; they wanted the company fined heavily, whatever the consequence.

This dynamic regularly plays out in the realm of criminal justice. In 1987, Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who had been released on furlough from the Northeastern Correctional Center, in Massachusetts, raped a woman after beating and tying up her fiancé. The furlough program came to be seen as a humiliating mistake on the part of Governor Michael Dukakis, and was used against him by his opponents during his run for President, the following year. Yet the program may have reduced the likelihood of such incidents. In fact, a 1987 report found that the recidivism rate in Massachusetts dropped in the eleven years after the program was introduced, and that convicts who were furloughed before being released were less likely to go on to commit a crime than those who were not. The trouble is that you can’t point to individuals who weren’t raped, assaulted, or killed as a result of the program, just as you can’t point to a specific person whose life was spared because of vaccination.

Read the rest here.

On Being Swallowed by a Hippo

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Paul Templer recounts a very scary experience of being swallowed by a hippo in Africa:

I was aware that my legs were surrounded by water, but my top half was almost dry. I seemed to be trapped in something slimy. There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest. My arms were trapped but I managed to free one hand and felt around – my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo’s snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth.

I wriggled as hard as I could, and in the few seconds for which he opened his jaws, I managed to escape. I swam towards Evans, but the hippo struck again, dragging me back under the surface. I’d never heard of a hippo attacking repeatedly like this, but he clearly wanted me dead.

Hippos’ mouths have huge tusks, slicing incisors and a bunch of smaller chewing teeth. It felt as if the bull was making full use of the whole lot as he mauled me – a doctor later counted almost 40 puncture wounds and bite marks on my body. The bull simply went berserk, throwing me into the air and catching me again, shaking me like a dog with a doll.

Then down we went again, right to the bottom, and everything went still…

Read the full account here.

Engineering the $325,000 Burger

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The idea of creating meat in a laboratory — actual animal tissue, not a substitute made from soybeans or other protein sources — has been around for decades. The arguments in favor of it are many, covering both animal welfare and environmental issues. But now Dr. Mark Post, an engineer in the Netherlands, wants to show the world that meat made in the laboratory may be a reality, thanks to a $325,000 burger his lab finally developed (the unveiling has been delayed):

Dr. Post, one of a handful of researchers in the field, has made strides in developing cultured meat through the use of stem cells — precursor cells that can turn into others that are specific to muscle — and techniques adapted from medical research for growing tissues and organs, a field known as tissue engineering. (Indeed, Dr. Post, a physician, considers himself first and foremost a tissue engineer, and about four-fifths of his time is dedicated to studying how to build blood vessels.)

Yet growing meat in the laboratory has proved difficult and devilishly expensive. Dr. Post, who knows as much about the subject as anybody, has repeatedly postponed the hamburger cook-off, which was originally expected to take place in November. His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” For the London event he plans to add only salt and pepper.

What kind of cells are used in creating this cultured meat?

In his work on cultured meat, Dr. Post uses a type of stem cell called a myosatellite cell, which the body itself uses to repair injured muscle tissue. The cells, which are found in a certain part of muscle tissue, are removed from the cow neck and put in containers with the growth medium. Through much trial and error, the researchers have learned how best to get the cells to grow and divide, doubling repeatedly over about three weeks.

The cells are then poured onto a small dab of gel in a plastic dish. The nutrients in the growth medium are greatly reduced, essentially starving the cells, which forces them to differentiate into muscle cells. “We use the cell’s natural tendency to differentiate,” Dr. Post said. “We don’t do any magic.”

My guess? We are about ten to fifteen years away where cultured meat becomes mainstream.

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Previously: the quarter million pounder with cheese.

The College Application Process Isn’t What It Used To Be

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Back when I was applying to college, if I was wait-listed or was deferred, I would just sit back and do nothing about it (luckily that didn’t happen; I applied to only three schools). Not today’s teens, however. Not only are they sending physical letters to colleges, many students are putting themselves out there via social media, making videos on YouTube, and the like:

Ms. Wolfbauer, of Carver, Minn., says she has written the admissions department to tell it “how much I want to go there and why Hamilton has been my No. 1 choice since the beginning of my college search”; she sent in “a lot of high school projects,” including one that won a statewide competition; and last weekend she started filming a video with friends — teachers to be added later — “basically telling them how awesome I am, talking about the positive qualities I have and why Hamilton should accept me.”

Does she ever worry it might be too much? “I more worry that I’m not doing enough,” she said.

Especially not while other students on waiting lists are bombarding their dream schools with baked goods, family photos, craft projects depicting campus landmarks and dossiers of testimonials from civic and religious leaders, to name just a few come-ons that admissions offices have seen over the past month.

The Times compiled some of the video pleas here. Below, a few of the ones I’ve watched:

 

Good luck to all the wait-listed students out there!

Your Heart Attack Bill: $3,300 in Arkansas, $92,000 in California

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Well, this is a shocking story from CNN: hospitals across the nation — even those located just miles apart — charge wildly different rates for the same medical procedure:

Encompassing more than 163,000 separate records, the data set will be a gold mine for researchers analyzing the often inscrutable field of health care pricing. Through standardized diagnostic codes, it allows comparisons for similar services provided by different hospitals.

For example, the average bill for treatment for a heart attack without major complications at a hospital in Danville, Ark., was $3,334. Across the country in Modesto, Calif., the same diagnosis incurred an average bill of $92,057.

The New York Times has an excellent interactive where you can compare how much your hospital charges for various procedures versus the national average.

Closer to where I live, Gwinnett Medical Center and DeKalb Medical Center have average costs for all procedures lower than the national average; on the other hand, the Atlanta Medical Center has costs higher than national average for virtually all procedures.

Interview with Photographer Peter Belanger on Shooting for Apple

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Great interview at The Verge with photographer Peter Belanger, who’s shot some of the most iconic products for Apple.

What camera is nearest to you at the moment?

Canon 5D Mark III, this is my go-to camera. My base lens is the 24-70mm; if I could only have one lens this would be it. It works in almost all situations. I’m always impressed with how shallow the depth-of-field looks at f/2.8 with this lens.

You’ve created images seen by millions of people every day, but most people probably have no idea that you’re the photographer with whom they’re so familiar. I see your images every day walking around New York City. How did you come to work with Apple so much?

When I was starting out I freelanced for agencies that had Apple accounts. Over the years the agencies evolved and many of the designers and producers moved internally at Apple. Because I had a working relationship with lots of them, they kept using me. I feel very lucky that this relationship continued.

He gets one thing right: nailing most of the image in camera, rather than relying heavily to post-production. I guess Mr. Belanger using Apple’s Aperture program shouldn’t be a surprise (I prefer Lightroom).

Linguists Identify 15,000-year-old Ultraconserved Words

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You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!

According to this Washington Post piece summarizing this study, many of the words in the above sentence would have been understood by someone living 15,000 years ago:

That’s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then.

The traditional view is that words can’t survive for more than 8,000 to 9,000 years. Evolution, linguistic “weathering” and the adoption of replacements from other languages eventually drive ancient words to extinction, just like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic era.

A new study, however, suggests that’s not always true.

A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”

Fascinating.

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Full paper from The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: ultraconserved_words.

What Is It Like to Fast for One Week?

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Writing for Aeon Magazine, S Abbas Raza and his wife decided to fast for one week. What ensued was a rollercoaster of boredom, increased energy, and diminished mental ability.

First of all, every single one of the seven days felt exactly the same: mornings were completely fine and I felt pretty much as I normally do until about lunchtime. I tried to pack in any work, especially work that required mental concentration, into this period of each day. After midday, I became a little fidgety and found it hard to concentrate on anything. I had much more than usual amounts of physical energy and did all kinds of household chores happily, such as defrosting and cleaning the refrigerator one afternoon (anyone who knows me will testify that this is highly unusual behaviour). But my mind flitted from one thing to the next, and my reactions were slowed down very noticeably by evening. If my wife asked me a question, it took about five seconds for it to register and another five before I could formulate and deliver a reply. In fact, I became decidedly cognitively impaired: one day after taking a shower and shaving, I applied aftershave lotion to my face and noticed that it didn’t have the mild sting it usually does. That is when I realised I had not actually shaved. I just thought I had.

A thoughtful conclusion: meals provide the much-needed punctuation throughout the day:

In fact, the biggest surprise was just how much more time we had on our hands. I was struck by how much of the day I normally spend attending to my digestive needs: thinking about what I would have for lunch or dinner; shopping for groceries (which we do almost daily); cooking — in my case, elaborate Pakistani meals most evenings; then actually eating, washing dishes, cleaning up, even moving one’s bowels. Eliminating the simple act of eating frees up much more time than you’d think. In addition to the couple of hours of daily exercise we kept up throughout, we took long walks in the mountains (we live in the Alps), did crosswords (rather slowly), surfed the net and fooled around on Facebook, and we still always had more time to fill. I realised that meals provide needed punctuation to the day, and without them our days seemed strangely lacking in structure.

It was an interesting experiment, but a fair warning: don’t try this at home.

I’ve done intermittent fasting before (for one day at a time), and I agree that one’s energy can (surprisingly) spike; however, I also became more mentally sluggish.

The Lucrative Business of Hollywood Script Doctors

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After the success of House of Cards on Netflix, reading this piece is both interesting and disturbing:

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.

His recommendations, delivered in a 20- to 30-page report, might range from minor tightening to substantial rewrites: more people would relate to this character if she had a sympathetic sidekick, for instance.

How soon before this goes mainstream and all scripts are run through an algorithm?

For what it’s worth, I agree with the writer quoted in the piece:

It’s the enemy of creativity, nothing more than an attempt to mimic that which has worked before. It can only result in an increasingly bland homogenization, a pell-mell rush for the middle of the road.