The New York Times recently unveiled its latest Innovation Issue, whose basic premise is to answer the question: “Who made that?”
Covered in the fascinating interactive are the origins of such things as:
I can’t figure out how to copy/paste text, but if you follow the link below, you’ll be sure to be engrossed in reading this issue for hours!
The Mexican-born writer Roger Omar Omar, who travels a great deal, has visited 40 schools in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, France, and Germany; in each of those countries, he met with children aged 8 to 10 and collected about 200 dreams. Omar says that the younger the children are, the shorter the dreams they write down. It would be too much work to read and type up all of the dreams, he says, but “I have found dreams that are precious gems.”
In all, since then around 8,000 dreams have been collected for the project. From those, Omar selected some 180, which he then asked various artists to illustrate. They are found in his Flickr collection.
On the common themes in children’s dreams:
In addition to death and frightening animals, the world’s children dream a lot about food (especially eggs, and chocolate), furniture and toys that come to life, monsters, superheroes, robots, toads and even the Eiffel Tower.
The article is here. Have you ever kept a dream diary?
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(via Metafilter)
HOLIDAY MAGAZINE was published from 1946 to 1977. A blog I recently discovered is highlighting some of the notable pieces from the magazine over the years. I liked this piece by Murray Goodwin, “In Defense of Brooklyn,” published in 1946:
Where in Manhattan can the hot and tired gentry plunge into the ocean from a six-mile-long frontage of beach? Seek high and low; you’ll find no spot in Manhattan which can offer so much comfort to so many people as can Coney Island. From Manhattan, from the Bronx, they pour into Brooklyn laden with children, paper bags, vacuum bottles, water-wings, patched inner tubes. In myriad tongues they sing their happiness at finding a square yard of tan sand to plump upon, just spitting distance from the surf, and where the sun may fall on them in warm embrace. Brooklyn, with a heart as big as its body, bids them all to try the breakers in the daytime, or seek a thrill at night aboard the giddy roller-coasters, giant swings, and midget dodgem cars.
Yet Coney Island, the “nickel empire,” is not the big borough’s only source of enjoyment. Brooklyn offers quieter and calmer ways to get more out of life. You prefer green and verdant thin Hop into a subway or bus or trolley car, and in less time than you can say “Leo, Durocher,” you find yourself outside the justly famous Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Go on in. It’s absolutely free, all fifty beautiful acres of it. Feast your eyes on the horticulture collections and plantings. Take your time viewing the Japanese landscape garden, probably the most celebrated in America. Cared for mainly by expert Japanese gardeners, these landscapes embody the religious and social traditions of Japan. But even if you cared nothing for the symbolism, you can’t help but be impressed by the sheer beauty of these gardens. Besides these Japanese “Niwa,” you’ll find other areas devoted to wildflowers, rock gardens, pools of graceful water lilies. The magnificent buildings spotted among the gardens contain still other collections, in addition to mountains of data on flora and fauna. This material is available to whomever wishes to peruse it.
A pebble’s heave from these gorgeous floral displays lies Prospect Park. Here, at your disposal, are 526 rolling lush acres of trees, green meadows and bluffs, containing picnic grounds, a zoo, a colorful lagoon, tennis courts and baseball diamonds for the young and athletic, bandstands where summer evening concerts surfeit the music-lover, parade grounds, and wide gravel walks. Why, it puts New York’s spindly little Central Park to shame; just a mere collection of thorns and fagots! The site of Prospect Park is steeped in American history. North of the zoo is the Battle Pass, appropriately marked by a bronze plaque which informs the curious that General Sullivan made his stand against the British here in the Revolution’s Battle of Long Island. Stroll north to Lookout Hill and pause a moment before the monument commemorating the bravery of the Maryland regiment which held the Hessians at bay in the same heroic battle. Wander southward along the East Drive, and you will bump into the Lefferts homestead, built in 1777 by Lieut. Peter Lefferts to replace his home which was burned to the ground by the British. Mount the steps and go in to see how graciously the early Brooklyn settlers lived the rich paneling, the sturdy trundle beds, the hand-hewn timbers in the attic.
Read the rest here.
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If you’re interested, here’s some some other reads from Holiday which I am reading or have saved to read for later:
1) “Nobody Knows More about Chili Than I Do”
2) “Opening 100 Clams” (the very first article to appear in Holiday)
3) “Living with a Peacock” by Flannery O’Connor.
Finally, there is this profile of Holiday in a recent issue of Vanity Fair.
I actually consider it more of an art than a science, but this is a nice synopsis on how ticket pricing drives scalpers:
Most concertgoers don’t usually consider ticket prices as incredibly low. After barely keeping up with inflation for decades, concert prices have risen wildly since 1996, or around the time when baby boomers, who helped start the industry, aged into a lot more disposable income. (It was also around this time that Internet piracy made the music industry more reliant on concert revenues.) These days, prices can seem incredibly high. Barbra Streisand, who charged more than $1,000 for some seats at a concert in Rome, inspired so much anger that she canceled the show. Yet to an economist, the very existence of scalpers and companies like StubHub proves that tickets are far too cheap to balance supply and demand. Pascal Courty, an economist at the University of Victoria, in Canada, who has spent the better part of 20 years studying the secondary-ticket market, has identified two distinct pricing styles. Some artists, like Streisand and Michael Bolton, seem to charge as much as the market will bear — better seats generally cost a lot more; shows in larger cities, with higher demand, are far more expensive, too. (If you want to catch Bolton on the cheap, head to Western New York.) The second group comprises notable acts, like Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam, that usually keep prices far below market value and offer only a few price points. An orchestra seat to see the Boss in Jersey costs only about $50 more than the nosebleeds in Albany.
Springsteen’s style might seem more altruistic, but performers who undercharge their fans can paradoxically reap higher profits than those who maximize each ticket price. It’s a strategy similar to the one employed by ventures like casinos and cruise ships, which take a hit on admission prices but make their money once the customers are inside. Concert promoters can overcharge on everything from beer sales to T-shirts, and the benefits of low-priced tickets can accrue significantly over the years as loyal fans return. In part, this explains why artists like Springsteen and Petty are content to undercharge at the gate while others, perhaps wary of their own staying power, are eager to capitalize while they can.
Regrettably, I once bought a ticket to a Red Sox game from a scalper that turned out to be a fake. These days I usually buy direct from source. I’ve had good luck with StubHub as well.
Jonathan Safran Foer, in a wonderful essay, laments how technology (phones, texting) has made us prefer to use the diminished substitute to communicate. And so:
The problem with accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we, too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
This is beautifully phrased:
We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It’s not an either/or — being “anti-technology” is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly “pro-technology” — but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.
Until last year, Myanmar was one of the three countries in which the sale of Coca-Cola was banned (sanctioned). This NPR article discusses how the company marketed the soda to people who’ve never tasted Coca-Cola before (or have forgotten the taste). The key: billboards, fliers, and free samples:
Myanmar has spotty electricity and bad refrigerators. Coca-Cola was worried that people were trying Coke at room temperature. At the tastings, everyone gets an ice-cold bottle of Coke, and instructions on the proper way to drink Coke — a five point plan for deliciousness:
1) Get a glass.
2) Chill the bottle.
3) Put three cubes of ice in the glass.
4) Pour at a 45 degree angle.
5) Add a dash of lime.
A shorter version of the advice is on the back of the bottle. In fact, all the marketing messages, the slogans, the history of Coke, and the ice-cold mandate are all squeezed onto the bottle. Moin says its the one place where they know they can catch the consumer’s eye.
This was an interesting pricing strategy:
In the center of every label is the price of the product, 300 Kyat, about 32 cents. Coke almost never does this. It lets the retailer set the price, but this time, they were convinced that stores would just continue to sell Coke at a huge mark-up unless they put the price on the bottle.
WordPress has a weekly photo challenge, and this week’s theme is Fleeting.
Curiously enough, I posted a photo with that title less than a month ago on my photoblog, Erudite Expressions. I captured it in Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn a few months ago.
Have a great weekend!
In what may be one of the most cynical but tell-it-like-it-is posts I’ve ever read, Freddie deBoer offers some “Discouragement for Young Writers”. It’s a must-read, in my opinion. First, a cautionary note:
A third of this is tongue in cheek. You’ll have to decide which third yourself.
I’m not a writer; I’m just someone who reads and writes a lot. So you may take all of this in a “credit only to the man in the arena” sense, and I wouldn’t blame you. But I’ll tell you: there are advantages. Not being a writer is a wonderful salve for your writing. I sometimes read things that writers have written and say to myself, if only s/he wasn’t a writer, s/he’d be going places.
I don’t think this is the one third that’s meant tongue in cheek:
You probably can’t make it as a writer. That’s the very first thing you should understand. Start every day by looking into the mirror and saying: I’ll never write that novel. I’ll never write that novel. I’ll never write that novel. Hopefully after you’ve gotten it through your skull you can get to work on something that will put money in your pocket. (Spoiler: it won’t be a lot. Within a rounding error of $0 is a nice, conservative assumption.) You might, if you aren’t too hung up on writing that novel, write a novel. There’s a small chance someone will buy it, once you’ve written the one that isn’t the one that you think about writing that gets in the way of your work. There’s even a remote possibility it’ll be good. Even really good. But probably not.
But this most likely is:
Buzz is nothing. Getting your name out there is nothing. All of the positive mentions and trackbacks and Facebook hits from that piece you did for somebody’s vanity project website are nothing.
The best thing to do, sometimes, is to ignore the vapid advice. Spot on:
It’s a fact of life that writers, who always aspire to speak with specificity and go in fear of abstraction, tend to give the most vague, useless advice on writing. “Use concrete language! Write about what you know! Listen to criticism!” Thanks, coach. They mean well. They really do. But “be specific in your writing” has as much content as “make a profit in your business” or “score more points in your football game.” Useless. All useless.
This part is definitely tongue in cheek. Some people do care.
Nobody gives a shit that you used to cut yourself. Nobody gives a shit that your parents divorced. Nobody gives a shit that you have cancer. Nobody cares.
But this is a good sound-off. I do think writing is worth trying (I’ve tried and failed):
So do it for awhile and if you don’t make it find something else that’s good enough. Then you can get all nostalgic about when you tried it out. I’m a romantic at heart, and it’s a beautiful thing to attempt.
Again, a must-read. Especially if you need a dash of reality to go with all that enthusiasm you’ve been inhaling.
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(hat tip: @fmanjoo)
Caleb Garling, in an illustrative post on San Francisco Chronicle’s site, explains why Zynga is failing (and perhaps is destined to fail):
One, since its inception, most of Zynga’s revenue was from users on Facebook. If you are a business, and you have tied your success to another business — especially one with aspirations of world domination — you’re setting yourself up for heartbreak. Zynga tried to get people to go to Zynga.com to play — and avoid Facebook taking about a third of every dollar it made — but never really pulled it off. (And frankly, any app developers with big aspirations should take a lesson.)
Two, your attention span. Most casual gamers don’t want to wait to get to their computers to play. In fact, the best time to play games for many people — those with jobs — is between computer time, commuting or waiting for the dentist.
Three, building games for many different platforms is just hard! You have to deal with different screen sizes and technical requirements, not to mention deciding whether certain devices have a demographic that will create a positive return on investment for that particular game on that particular platform. And all the while, individual developers, that can be a little more nimble, eat away at market share for games on each one.
As for me? I am wary of games (and most apps, really) that are free but target you with in-app purchases. For instance, Real Racing was a great game for iOS, until they decided to ratchet it with in-app purchases.
I only play two of Zynga’s games: Words with Friends and Scramble with Friends.
The composer Joseph Bertolozzi is going to Paris, knowing no French. Why? He intends to make music banging on The Eiffel Tower. From The New York Times:
His mission is to “play the Eiffel Tower” by striking its surfaces, collecting sounds through a microphone and using them as samples for an hourlong composition called “Tower Music.” He eventually hopes for a live, on-site performance of the work to celebrate the tower’s 125th anniversary next year.
What a cool story. Mr. Bertolozzi has spent more than four years on his quest. He raised $40,000 from private donors and convinced the Eiffel Tower administration that he was a legitimate musician. And he’s dedicated:
In preparation for his Parisian experiment, Mr. Bertolozzi studied the design of the Eiffel Tower. He listened to the works of French composers like Ravel and Poulenc, whose pieces have elements of cafe music and street sounds.
The tower, too, serves as “a deeper inspiration for me to try to find new ways of creating sounds,” he said. “So it’s just constant reinvention.”
Books I Read 