Check out “Haphead”—a noir-ish near-future SF web series #scifi

  • Haphead (HAP-hed): noun An individual who has learned lethal skills by playing next-gen fully immersive video games. Associated with emotional instability, poor impulse control, and violent public outbursts.

    This Buffyesque web-series is the latest project from the folks who brought you the mockumentary Ghosts with Shit Jobs. If you dig the trailer, please take a second to “Like” it on YouTube, Facebook, G+, etc., or sign up for their newsletter; the more public support they can show for this project, the more likely the Canadian government will bankroll the series. Go Canada!

    • Anti-Smoking Ad Campaigns: Vitamins vs. Painkillers #biz #marketing #rhetoric

    Conventional wisdom in advertising is that it’s much easier to sell painkillers than it is to sell vitamins–i.e., it’s easier to motivate a suffering prospect with the offer of relief than it is to motivate a basically content prospect with an offer of future betterment. This is especially the case with men, who basically *never* believe anything bad will happen to them–or if they do, simply brush it of with cavalier bluster (“Why stop smoking? Sure, it shortens your life, but it only takes the worst years, amiright?”–which I’ve heard countless times, evidently from men you *haven’t* watched their spouses’ beloved grandfathers slowly suffocate in hospice, smothered by lungs gone brittle with a lifetime of Luckies.)
    So, for example, insurance was a really hard product to sell in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s–until it dawned on folks not to focus on the prospect, but instead on his family. Tell a man about how his *family* will suffer when he’s gone, and you give him pain in the here and now that will be soothed by purchasing an insurance policy[*]–i.e., you convert vitamins into painkillers.
    The genius of this ad is that shifts the vague notion of future pain caused by smoking cigarettes into an immediate discomfort and moral panic. Well played Thai Health Promotion Foundation (those with an interest in marketing–and MAD MEN fans–will note that the ad was produced by Ogilvy & Mather).

    Continue reading “Anti-Smoking Ad Campaigns: Vitamins vs. Painkillers #biz #marketing #rhetoric”

    Be the Ant on the Rubber Rope #writing #biz #everythingelse

    Consider for a moment the plight of the ant on a rubber rope:

    An ant starts to crawl along a taut rubber rope 1 km long at a speed of 1 cm per second (relative to the rubber it is crawling on). At the same time, the rope starts to stretch by 1 km per second (both in front of and behind the ant, so that after 1 second it is 2 km long, after 2 seconds it is 3 km long, etc). Will the ant ever reach the end of the rope?

    The answer–which may seem counterintuitive–is yes, although “in the form stated above the time taken is colossal.”
    If I were to write an essay on this, it would be one on incremental progress: No matter how distant your goal, no matter how small your steps, no matter how vexing the hinderance—even to the point of your destination actively moving away from you—you will get there provided you don’t flag and don’t quit.
    But I don’t need to write an essay, because the situation is self-instructive, once you see it for what it is. Instead, I offer this very brief benediction:
    Yes, the road is long, my children, and the universe is fucking with you. But you, my best belovéds, are each a dogged little ant: Just keep trucking, and you will walk that mutherfucker down. Amen.

    Astronaut Ronald McNair: Libraries, Cops, Star Trek, and Social Justice


    What I’ve long admired about Ronald McNair was how polite and persistent he was in telling the haters (both abstract and concrete, external and internal) to fuck off. Just an affable, erudite guy going about his business, taking a moment to say: “Hey, America; couldn’t help but notice the arc of your history was a little crooked. I’m just gonna bend it back towards justice a smidge, if you don’t mind.”

    Tl;dr: Facebook is a Marketing Vanity Press #biz

    The basic problem is this: Facebook tolerates fraudulent click-farm “Likes” because, under Facebook’s ever-evolving timeline algorithms, an *increasing* number of disengaged “fans” *decreases* the visibility of your Page. The only way to recover is to buy more ads from Facebook.
    The analogy to vanity publishing isn’t the implicit perpetual up-sell–although that is at play here, and annoys the crap out of me. What’s bothersome about doing business with Facebook (as I discovered in my only business interaction with them) is that Facebook–like Google, and basically every large corporation out there–forces the little guy to eat all the risk.
    Risk is expensive stuff, but it’s hard to see that expense, so it’s easy for regular humans, living on the regular human timeline, to miss it. The Big Trick that Fat Cats use to get fat is forcing someone else (and generally lots of someones small) to eat the risk.
    ▶ Facebook Fraud – YouTube

    RECOMMENDED VIEWING: Talking Funny with Chris Rock, Louis CK, Ricky Gervais, & Seinfeld #craft #biz #writing

    I’m not a huge fan of any of these comics–I like Chris Rock and some Louis CK, am sort of impartial to Ricky Gervais, and have grudgingly grown to respect Seinfeld as an artist, although I was never very into his show–but I *love* listening to accomplished craftsmen discuss craft. Hell, this documentary could be “Talking Toilets,” and feature four highly accomplished old plumbers who really respect each other’s work and love each other’s company, and I would love it *exactly* as much at this.
    That said, since these four craftsman are “creatives” (*shudder*), what they have to say is both interesting *and* useful to me. If you are a creative craftsperson of any stripe–a writer, a marketer, a speaker, a printmaker–this will be an hour well spent.

    Take a Sec to Nominate Dave-o’s Fiction for Stuff! #scifi


    It’s nominating time for the various 2013 F/SF awards (Hugo, Nebula, etc.), and I have exactly *one* qualifying story floating around out there:
    “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” (first appeared in Asimov’s, Feb 2013–that’s the cover on the left–and was republished as an audio book in StarShopSofa #312, Nov 2013)
    If you like nominating things for stuff, and you liked that story–well, then there you go. If you aren’t in a position to nominate “New Guys” for anything, but still liked the story and want to officially register that enjoyment, then you can vote for it here (it’s under the “Short Story” category):

  • Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Reader’s Award 2013.

    • That poll closes FRIDAY so VOTE TODAY! Now! GOOOOO!
    Thanks!

    Bed Bugs, Statistics, Press-Release Reporting, and You #bedbugs #gaaaah


    I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. This latest installment explores the dangers of bed bugs (SPOILER ALERT: zilch), as well as the dangers of hysterical unverified re-reporting of “information” in press releases (SPOILER ALER: significant). It begins like this:

    We met our first bed bug while traveling in the spring of 2011. My wife had plucked the creature from a friend’s bedroom wall. . . .

    And ends like this:

    . . . If you’re tempted to dismiss such things as “all in your head,” then just remember this: An intelligent man – a man you respect enough to wade through 4,000 words of his thoughts on bed bugs – drove into the vortex, endangering the lives of his toddler and seven-year-old, because he was afraid of the bed bug’s bite.

    And has about 4000 words in between, with a whole mess of numbers and attributable statements of fact (with attribution!).
    In case you happen to run into bed bugs while traveling, I’ve written up this handy supplemental guide: Bed Bugs: A Traveler’s Response.