“I don’t like that slide,” said my boss. We were reviewing a PowerPoint presentation we were set to give hours later to an important client. “I don’t get the point of it.”
“It talks about how if there is a mismatch between consumption of a medium, and the advertising spent on that medium, it makes sense to shuffle budget around to media where the consumption outpaces the spend. The advertising hasn’t oversaturated the channel, in other words.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that consumers consume media, like the Internet and Television, at various rates. If the…”
“I know what media is, you don’t have to be condescending.”
“I’m not, just bear with me.”
“Fine.”
“Anyway, if advertising spend on one media is greater than the advertising spend on another media, as a percentage of total advertising budget, then the consumption of that media should also be higher.”
“Ok.”
“So, if people consume media at a rate faster than advertisers spend, the medium is not fully saturated, and you can get more bang for your advertising buck.”
We were in his office. He was leaning back in one of those office chairs that has seventeen levers and comes with a user guide. It is the kind of chair that contorts office workers into 138 different uncomfortable, yet ergonomically flawless positions. His arms were crossed; he was weighing my explanation.
“How much time do we have for this presentation?”
“One hour.”
“Let’s just say mobile is very effective, and advertisers aren’t spending enough on it,” he said, “then you point at the chart. They won’t even question it.”
Monday, June 30, 2008
Presidential Credentials
Outraged Republicans are calling for Obama to repudiate a comment made on CBS' "Face the Nation" by General Wesley Clark, Obama's military adviser. Clark challenged the fact that many Americans automatically give McCain the nod in the ambiguous experience department by virtue of his storied military legacy. “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president," Clark said.
It was certainly an incredibly dumb thing to say. Clark should realize that there are far too many people incapable of suspending hysteria long enough to actually reason that there is nothing inaccurate about the statement. Perhaps sensing he was about to trod on sacred ground, Clark prefaced it by saying, "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war."
I hate that you can't call that into question something as basic as this without offending millions of people. It's a true statement, and we should be able to have a reasonable discussion about qualifications.
It was certainly an incredibly dumb thing to say. Clark should realize that there are far too many people incapable of suspending hysteria long enough to actually reason that there is nothing inaccurate about the statement. Perhaps sensing he was about to trod on sacred ground, Clark prefaced it by saying, "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war."
I hate that you can't call that into question something as basic as this without offending millions of people. It's a true statement, and we should be able to have a reasonable discussion about qualifications.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Take Me to Your Leader
My company just brought on a new executive, the third we’ve had in this particular role in the last year alone. The new guy has the gleaming spit shine of a well-heeled software lifer: teeth that make audible ca ching sounds when flashed (he’s always smiling), perfectly maintained hair that is neither pleasing nor offensive, and a country-club wardrobe that surely must be the envy of every 50+ male suburbanite in the Southeast.
He is the kind of guy who cocks his head slightly to the side when you are speaking to him, seemingly hanging on every word you say. Occasionally he’ll look upward while you are talking to him, as though your words about iPhone SDKs have inspired him to ponder life’s deeper questions, which apparently take only seconds to answer, and he begins nodding and chuckling knowingly. Then he says something like “this reminds me of the time when...” or, “I once knew a man who...” He understands you, in other words - your motivations, your challenges, your goals. He is here to help you, Skywalker. You can trust him to show you the way.
While he rarely says anything insightful, he never says anything dumb, and always speaks flawlessly. He is slow, plodding, and methodically articulate with speech patterns devoid of any vocal crutches or audible bridges. There is an aura about him that is neither affected nor innate. It is the type of aura that silences a room full of people without base intimidation. I continually find myself not unhappy to simply be quiet, only to be dumbfounded by the phenomenon after the fact.
He is blisteringly calm and unaffected by anything - good, bad or ugly.
I am not like this.
He is the kind of guy who cocks his head slightly to the side when you are speaking to him, seemingly hanging on every word you say. Occasionally he’ll look upward while you are talking to him, as though your words about iPhone SDKs have inspired him to ponder life’s deeper questions, which apparently take only seconds to answer, and he begins nodding and chuckling knowingly. Then he says something like “this reminds me of the time when...” or, “I once knew a man who...” He understands you, in other words - your motivations, your challenges, your goals. He is here to help you, Skywalker. You can trust him to show you the way.
While he rarely says anything insightful, he never says anything dumb, and always speaks flawlessly. He is slow, plodding, and methodically articulate with speech patterns devoid of any vocal crutches or audible bridges. There is an aura about him that is neither affected nor innate. It is the type of aura that silences a room full of people without base intimidation. I continually find myself not unhappy to simply be quiet, only to be dumbfounded by the phenomenon after the fact.
He is blisteringly calm and unaffected by anything - good, bad or ugly.
I am not like this.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Jimmy Two Ways
Any of you readers who made the jump with me from my non-anonymous blog are already quite familiar with my thoughts on James Dobson, father of Christian extremism, ghost-writer of faith-based legislation, and fear-mongering fascist currently at the helm of “Focus on the Family” and the American evangelical movement.
The genesis of my loathing (pun fully intended) started in the fifth grade, when my parents chickened out of giving me "the talk" and instead plugged in a tape of Dobson explaining how babies (and sin, depending on some rather arbitrary technicalities) are made. He said the word “puberty” as if it were spelled “pooberty,” and though I was pretty religious at the time, I couldn’t get past it.
There are several resources on the Web for those interested in a library of Dobson’s crimes against humanity, so I’ll stop short of launching into a redundant rant. There’s a rather astonishing glimpse of the making of Dobson’s tyrannical obsession with phantom attackers of American families here, and a well-penned article on a range of his colorful views, including homosexuality here.
Dobson’s twitchy trigger finger squeezed off the Religious Right’s opening salvo for the 2008 general election recently, slamming Obama for deliberately distorting Biblical passages in a June 2006 speech to a progressive Christian group Call to Renewal. In challenging Christian leaders to balance biblical principles with reasonable policymaking, Obama asked, “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?” Good questions. Later in the speech, he added, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values. It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.”
Perfectly reasonable, to the reasonable.
"What the senator is saying there, in essence, is that 'I can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion, because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue,' " Dobson said, reiterating that he is not, in fact, a reasonable person. "And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, than it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution,” Dobson added. Dobson also chastised Obama for referencing obscure Old Testament passages covering “antiquated” things like dietary code which are apparently rendered irrelevant by the messages and themes in the New Testament, a common tactic Evangelical apologists employ in contemporizing Christianity to excuse itself of passages demonizing ever-changing cultural trends.
Dobson should be aware, however, that the only outright commentary on homosexual behavior (which he has lambasted here, here, and here) in the bible is found in Leviticus, Chapter 18, verse 22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination." The same book of the bible, in other words, from which Obama was quoting. Jimmy, you can’t have it both ways.
The genesis of my loathing (pun fully intended) started in the fifth grade, when my parents chickened out of giving me "the talk" and instead plugged in a tape of Dobson explaining how babies (and sin, depending on some rather arbitrary technicalities) are made. He said the word “puberty” as if it were spelled “pooberty,” and though I was pretty religious at the time, I couldn’t get past it.
There are several resources on the Web for those interested in a library of Dobson’s crimes against humanity, so I’ll stop short of launching into a redundant rant. There’s a rather astonishing glimpse of the making of Dobson’s tyrannical obsession with phantom attackers of American families here, and a well-penned article on a range of his colorful views, including homosexuality here.
Dobson’s twitchy trigger finger squeezed off the Religious Right’s opening salvo for the 2008 general election recently, slamming Obama for deliberately distorting Biblical passages in a June 2006 speech to a progressive Christian group Call to Renewal. In challenging Christian leaders to balance biblical principles with reasonable policymaking, Obama asked, “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?” Good questions. Later in the speech, he added, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values. It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.”
Perfectly reasonable, to the reasonable.
"What the senator is saying there, in essence, is that 'I can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion, because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue,' " Dobson said, reiterating that he is not, in fact, a reasonable person. "And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, than it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution,” Dobson added. Dobson also chastised Obama for referencing obscure Old Testament passages covering “antiquated” things like dietary code which are apparently rendered irrelevant by the messages and themes in the New Testament, a common tactic Evangelical apologists employ in contemporizing Christianity to excuse itself of passages demonizing ever-changing cultural trends.
Dobson should be aware, however, that the only outright commentary on homosexual behavior (which he has lambasted here, here, and here) in the bible is found in Leviticus, Chapter 18, verse 22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination." The same book of the bible, in other words, from which Obama was quoting. Jimmy, you can’t have it both ways.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Shit. Piss. Fuck. Cocksucker. Cunt. Motherfucker. Tits.
You can't say those words on television, and this morning at least one less person on earth is upset about it. I'm not the type to lament the loss of celebrities I don't know personally, but today is different: George Carlin died last night of heart failure at 71.
Beyond being uproariously funny, in possession of an unrivaled wit, and delectably surgical with the English language, Carlin’s most generous, long-standing contribution to our culture may well be the humor-cloaked ferocity with which he reminded generations of what I think of as the duty of free speech. I think Carlin thought of free speech as much more than a de facto human right, like food, water and shelter, things that most Americans can simply take for granted. Free speech was something different to Carlin, something that could be lost – forever. I think Carlin viewed free speech not as some kind of ambiguous ideal, but as an important muscle in the fabric of civilization that needed exercise. George Carlin was the Richard Simmons of free speech.
He wasn’t without his detractors, obviously, and I confess that at times he said things that even made me, an adoring fan, cringe. But, looking past some of his more colorful material (which I think was included just so Carlin could appeal to as wide an audience as possible) you can see that the enduring legacy of Carlin’s work is to distill intent from context – that elusive, yet critical leap every human makes to infer what was meant from what was said. Through his ruthless sarcasm, and his old-man bitterness, I always suspected Carlin truly, really cared for people - in a way that made picking up that heavy mantle his only option.
Beyond being uproariously funny, in possession of an unrivaled wit, and delectably surgical with the English language, Carlin’s most generous, long-standing contribution to our culture may well be the humor-cloaked ferocity with which he reminded generations of what I think of as the duty of free speech. I think Carlin thought of free speech as much more than a de facto human right, like food, water and shelter, things that most Americans can simply take for granted. Free speech was something different to Carlin, something that could be lost – forever. I think Carlin viewed free speech not as some kind of ambiguous ideal, but as an important muscle in the fabric of civilization that needed exercise. George Carlin was the Richard Simmons of free speech.
He wasn’t without his detractors, obviously, and I confess that at times he said things that even made me, an adoring fan, cringe. But, looking past some of his more colorful material (which I think was included just so Carlin could appeal to as wide an audience as possible) you can see that the enduring legacy of Carlin’s work is to distill intent from context – that elusive, yet critical leap every human makes to infer what was meant from what was said. Through his ruthless sarcasm, and his old-man bitterness, I always suspected Carlin truly, really cared for people - in a way that made picking up that heavy mantle his only option.
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