Does the oPhone pass the sniff test?

If I were the inventive type which, unfortunately, I am not, I like to think that I’d invent stuff that was useful.

Like something that Pied Pipered the drain flies right out of my bathtub drain and into oblivion.

A telepathic iron unplugger so that, once the flight to Paris has lifted off the ground, I could just think “unplug iron” and the iron would unplug.

How about self-cleaning eyeglasses, so that someone trying to look me in the eye would never, ever, ever see those smudges and smears and think ‘what a slob.’

But I don’t think I’d ever, ever, ever invent a smartphone accessory that emitted a smell.

So I never, ever, ever would have come up with the oPhone.

Then again, I’m not the inventive type. And Harvard Professor David Edwards clearly is:

The current oPhone…is a separate handheld device that is linked to a smartphone via Bluetooth. (Obviously, the long-term vision is to have it integrated into phones, or perhaps designed to be a protective case for the phone.) When triggered by an incoming e-mail, it can emit one of four aromas: espresso, hazelnut, latte, and mocha. "There's a small cartridge inside that has the ability to deliver these micro-odors when it is heated," Edwards says. (Source: Boston.com)

You mean someday I won’t have to be content with just having bespoke ring-tones for everyone on my contact list (which, come to think of it, I’ve been meaning to get around to)? But I’ll be able to have a special micro-odor for everyone as well? Which means if my phone is on silent, I’ll still be able to tell who’s incoming?

Wow-weeeee! What a breakthrough!

You tell me the world hasn’t been waiting for this one…

After all, haven’t we been hoping against hope that someone, somewhere, would come up with the ways and means to inject even more chemicals into the atmosphere?

Think of all the applications:

…like using smell to persuade you to book a spa treatment, or stop by a bakery to grab a fresh baguette.

New car smell to convince you to dump your car. Balsam to get you to buy more Christmas presents. Incense to get you longing for church.

But Edwards has other ideas, too: "You might go to see a movie, and you'd get a cartridge that's synchronized with the movie, and integrates with the drama. It could be relevant in gaming — a scent track you could design for a game or any audio or video program." Edwards is also interested in what you might call therapeutic smells: a unique aroma that helps you fall asleep at night, or makes you less hungry.

Okay. I’ll concede that something that makes you less hungry might be a useful smell to have around. After all, most good smells – think baguette – get you to want to eat more.

But smells integrated with a movie’s drama?

Movies are supposed to smell like stale popcorn and Raisenets, aren’t they?

What else do you need?

I have been to a couple of movies where the theater experience included unplanned special effects, and, to tell you the truth, they were pretty distracting.

My sister Trish and I were at a screening of Mommy Dearest, when some guy came running through the theater, chased by another fellow waving a gun. Unbelievably, Trish and I were among the only people who left the theater, and when we told the guy in the lobby what was going on, he just shrugged. Which might have made sense if the pursuit had been a Joan Crawford look-a-like chasing a Cheryl Crawford look-a-like with a wire hanger.

Then there was the time my friend Mary Beth and I were watching one of the worst movies ever made – Lena Wertmuller’s Swept Away – when the power in the old Exeter Theater went out. Fortunately, we were able to get a rain check, usable for a movie other than Lena Wertmuller’s Swept Away. Talk about an act of God.

And don’t get me going on the screaming infant at the late night showing of The Harder They Come, which my sister Kathleen will no doubt remember.

Personally, between what’s happening on the screen; the impromptu occurrences like the off-screen chase scene avec gun; the smell of stale popcorn; and the boobs in the row behind you who don’t understand that paying money to see a film in a movie theater with a couple of hundred strangers does not entitle you to spend the entirety of show-time prattling in a loud voice to your companion, there’s already quite enough going on without adding some olfactory nonsense.

I do not need the smell of napalm when I’m watching Apocalypse Now, thank you.

Edwards is not all about goofball stuff like the oPhone.

He was a co-founder of a company now known as Civitas Therapeutics, which is developing an inhalable prescription drug for Parkinson's disease.

Which sounds wonderfully useful, and makes a lot more sense than a scent-omitting smartphone.

All I can say is, there’s one question I don’t need or want an answer to, and that’s What will they think of next?

The balance of trade. (Always happy to do my bit.)

In our none-to-large condo, with it’s none-too-ample storage, I have four old laptops. Since they’re laptops, they don’t take up all that much room, and for now they’re sitting in a tote bag, with another bag full of peripherals: cords, spare cords, spare batteries…

When I finally do get around to doing something about all this electronics proliferation, I do have the software that will wipe clean the disks on three out of the four laptops. The other one – which has a dead battery and no plug in capability – I’ll have to toss out as-is, risking that someone will be able to glean old passwords and financial info off the not quite moribund memory.Or I’ll have to do a tear down. I’ll probably take the tear down option, as that will be kind of fun.

I also have a couple of old Linksys routers.

And somewhere in the reaches of the closet in the den, I do believe there’s a computer screen (of the non-flat variety).

Getting rid of all this gear is on my mega to-do list.

But you know as well as I do what happens to things that make it on to the to-do list, but are not exactly mission-critical, not quite necessary for the conduct of everyday life, and are, at the end of those every days, not exactly a high priority. They end up on the ash heap of to-do lists history, where they stay, I suppose, until they really start making things difficult for the conduct of that everyday life. If it gets to the point where all those laptops, routers, and CRT’s are stacked up to the ceiling, making it difficult to maneuver around, I’ll finally get around to finding someplace that wants them. (Of course, by that point, I’ll probably be such a dotty old lady that I won’t be wiling to part with them.)

Of course, before I get to that point – at least I hope – I will have found some local drop off that’s happy to take all those dead electronics off of my hands.

At which point, they will no doubt wend their way to China where they’re still hungry enough to salvage all the goodies embedded in those plastic (non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, non-environmentally friendly) cases. (Given how frequently we toss out our electronics, and how environmentally-hostile all this stuff is, you’d think that some genius or another would come up with a way to encase all those whiz-bang electronic innards in, say, a cardboard surround.)

Anyway, while we pile up our clunky old so-yesterday electronics on our latter-day midden heaps, Johnson Zeng is scurrying around, seeing the USA. But he’s not meandering from sea to shining sea taking in our national parks, or getting his kicks on Route 66.

Zeng is one Chinese trader, in one rental car, traveling across the U.S. in search of scrap metal. By his estimate, there are at least 100 other Chinese traders like him driving from scrap yard to scrap yard, right now, in search of what Americans won’t or can’t be bothered to recycle. His favorite product: wires, cables, and other kinds of copper. (Source: Business Week.)

I’m pretty sure there’s some copper in all those old laptops. I’ll be able to tell better once I’ve done my tear down.I know that there’s copper in all the extension cords and old phone connectors that our junk drawers are chocked so full of. So even if Zeng himself doesn’t want my laptops, he may be happy to get his hands of that old string of Christmas lights that’s now more string than light.

It’s not easy, by the way, the reclaim copper from wiring. Just imagine stripping all that cord encasing all those wires. Think about the last time you spliced a cord to rewire a lamp. Then think about removing miles of cord from miles of wire.

But I guess if you’ve spent your life in a hovel, and your workdays hoeing rocks, and all you have to show for your troubles are an old Mao jacket and a pair of cloth shoes, standing around all day making a few pennies an hour yanking copper out of old extension cords is a life upgrade.

Because China is still a developing economy, it doesn’t throw away enough stuff to be self-sufficient. Thus, for the last decade it’s imported more than 70 percent of the scrap copper it uses. Meanwhile, the U.S., which throws away far more scrap metal than it can ever use, has become the world’s most attractive market for the savvy Chinese buyer.

Good to know that Hollywood blockbusters and celebrity gossip aren’t our only exports.

Now every time I toss an old extension cord in the recycle box, I’ll be happy to know that at least some parts of it will end up getting recycled.

If only I could toss all those laptops into the bin…

If I only had a brain

Like anyone who reaches a certain age, I worry a bit about being physically enfeebled. So I do a (however half-assed) strength-cardio workout two to three times a week. I try to take a decent sized (two+ miles) walk everyday. When I remember that it’s a good idea, as I walk through the Boston Common, I do a bit of curb walking so that I can improve my balance. When I shop at Whole Food, I carry my groceries back without benefit of cart. And I mostly eat healthy stuff.

Nope. I don’t want to be a frail little old lady slipping on life’s banana peel and breaking my hips.

Not if I can help it.

In truth, however, I’d rather lose my body than my mind.

So I go to the library every couple of weeks – a mild walk while lugging a bag of books – to check out six books. Which I read. I do Sudoku in pencil (unless it’s the easy-peasy ones) and crossword puzzles in ink (whatever the level). I play Taipei and FreeCell (both a physical – mouse clicking! – and mental exercise) on my computer.

Mens sana in corpore saneno, as we used to say in Latin II.

But if I had to pick one, I’d come down on the side of brain vs. brawn. With some wiggle room: if I had ALS, I don’t think I’d be all that thrilled that my mind was still intact. On the other hand, if I had Alzheimer’s, would it really matter if my body still worked perfectly?

Anyway, I’m not taking any chances, so I’ll continue to flex the pecs of my brain. Unfortunately, I have read that the types of reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic (which surely Sudoku counts as) that I so enjoy will, in fact, matter not in terms of staving off senility.

No, you’re supposed to do the sorts of mental gymnastics that companies like Lumosity offer.

Now, Lumosity does not focus specifically on the geezer demographic.

In fact, the folks that people their ads are bright young things.

Still, they do offer brain workouts for all ages:

At Lumos Labs, we believe in improving brains—and lives. That's why we created a simple online tool to allow anyone to achieve their brain's full potential. Drawing on the latest neuroscience breakthroughs, Lumosity's brain training program is shown to work. No matter what your age or background, you can feel smarter, sharper, and brighter.

When I looked at the bios of the team, it struck me that few of them needed much of an assist in order to feel smarter, sharper, and brighter: Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Stanford, Berkley… PhD this. Summa cum that.

Anyway, while I’d seen the Luminosity ads on TV, I hadn’t paid too much attention to them, mostly because when TV’s on, I have my nose planted in my Sudoku book, pencil flying.

But I was aware of them, and found a recent Economist article on them to be of interest. Which is more than I can say for their exercises, most of which sound kind of boring – the brain workout equivalent of the treadmill.

There are around 40 exercises available, including “speed match”, in which players click if an image matches a previous one; “memory matrix”, which requires remembering which squares on a matrix were shaded; and “raindrops”, which involves solving arithmetic problems before the raindrops containing them hit the ground. The puzzles are varied, according to how well users perform, to ensure they are given a suitably challenging brain-training session each day. (Source: The Economist)

Sure, the arithmetic raindrops sounds kind of sudokish.

But, what, no word games? (I have to ask the big questions: why is it that the sorts of things I excel at are, when it comes to cognitive improvement, so useless?)

Anyway, Lumosity doesn’t sound any more entertaining than Taipei and FreeCell, which I get to play for free, as opposed to forking over $14.95 per month. Of course, I’d rather subscribe to Lumosity than sign up with their competitor, NeuroSky:

…which makes “brainwave sensors”—including some shaped like cats’ ears that will apparently wiggle if you are enjoying yourself and droop if you are relaxed.

Cats’ ears or not, whether I subscribe or not is little or no matter to Lumosity, which is going gangbusters.

The popularity of Lumosity since its launch in 2007 has been, well, mind-blowing. Its smartphone app has been the top education app in the iTunes store at some point in 38 countries. On August 1st it launched an iPad version, which it expects to boost its existing 45m registered users in 180-plus countries.

All part of the emerging “digital brain health” market, which is expected to grow to $6.2B by 2020, thanks to us:

Ageing baby-boomers desperate to postpone their dotage are expected to be especially keen buyers.

Some evidence suggests that brain-ercise works in certain situations, but skeptics remain:

“It is tempting to think of the brain as a muscle, that as it gets stronger at one thing it is also stronger at everything, but it isn’t,” says Stephen Kosslyn, until recently director of Stanford’s Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences. “The shocking truth is that the opportunities to generalise are very limited. If you practise some cognitive task you are basically practising that thing. If something else is very similar in its underlying structure there may be some transferability, but rarely 100%.”

Hmmmm. Does this suggest that all my skill at Sudoku only translates into being good a Sudoku?

Meanwhile, the article ends with an exceedingly gratuitous swipe at my TV-watching side-entertainment of choice:

…as long as Lumosity can manage to be more engaging than Sudoku, its future could be bright.

More engaging than Sudoku? The writer has clearly never done a puzzle from one of the Extra Hard or Highly Challenging collections/

What’s so engaging are “remembering which squares on a matrix were shaded”?

If I want to that, I can just take out a deck of Bicycle playing cards and lay them out face down and play a game of Concentration.

Doesn’t anything count any more if it’s not digital?

Who you gonna call? Forget Ghostbusters.

Forget 9-1-1.

And, while you’re at it, forget the St. Bernard with the brandy barrel strapped to its neck.

In this era of global everything – including peril – you’re going to want to call Global Rescue, a Boston-based outfit that specializes in, well, global rescue. (I always wanted to work for a company with such clear positioning. My favorite marketing message of all time was on a van I used to see regularly on my Route 128 commute. The tagline read simply: We clean blinds.)

But before you call Ghostbusters Global Rescue, keep in mind that it’s a Members Only organization. You pay a membership fee based on whether you want medical coverage or medical plus security; whether you’re an individual, family, student, or business; and how long you’re going to be in need of a global rescue. But if you’re not a member, don’t come whining to them when you find yourself in a dangerous situation. It’s too late, baby, now, it’s too late.

Mostly, I make it a habit to stay out of dangerous places, but you never know. Just because I’m not planning an apartment swap with pals in Damascus any time soon, doesn’t mean that something dire couldn’t happen. That’s because:

The world is a dangerous place. Whether it's a car accident, heart attack, broken limb, infectious disease, natural disaster, sectarian conflict or other emergency event or threat of bodily harm, Global Rescue provides our members the ability to control dangerous and difficult situations…If you need to be rescued from a dangerous situation, our special operations trained operators will get you out. (Source: Global Rescue About.)

Other than an occasional bout of food poisoning – don’t eat raw seafood at an outdoor café in Berlin is now one of my travel mantras – my travel has been pretty uneventful.

Oh, sure, we were almost “stuck” in Paris a few years ago by that volcano in Iceland.

And we once spent six hours on the ground at Shannon waiting for the mechanics to okay an Aer Lingus flight that had been struck by lightning.

But none of those events required rescue.

If you were going to travel to someplace a bit funky, however, signing up for the Global Rescue services might be well worth your while.

Who wouldn’t want a Navy SEAL speeding to your rescue, as opposed to, say, a speeding cab driver who doesn’t speak English and who doesn’t know the secret safe way to get to the airport (where, in any case, a private jet wouldn’t be waiting for you to begin with)?

And not just any Navy SEAL:

The senior member of the operations security team is a former Navy SEAL who sometimes paddleboards to work from Hingham — that’s a 2 ½-hour trek in good weather. (Source: Boston Globe article, on the Global Rescue site.)

Well, I used to work with a guy who rowed solo across the Bay of Fundy just for fun, but who commutes to downtown Boston from Hingham on a paddleboard? Yikes!

But I always say that a Navy SEAL who can paddleboard from Hingham to Boston is someone I’d rather see coming to my rescue than a flabby, wheezing, pasty-faced nerd with his shirttail hanging out.

But whether you’re front line or back office, fitness is important at Global.

Even the employees in retail sales and corporate accounts participate in regular workouts on the Greenway in front of the Boston headquarters. On a recent morning, a group of six workers ran sprints with 80-pound sandbags, swung kettle bells, and did push-ups.

Kettle bells? Maybe that’s why the Global Rescue worker reviews on Glassdoor are mixed.

Business for Global Rescue is quite strong:

At a time when companies are sending employees to every corner of the globe and adventure travelers are seeking thrills in droves, Global Rescue’s evacuation and medical assistance services are in great demand. The prevalence of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and civil uprisings also means travelers are more likely to find themselves in crisis.

“You start collecting the data and looking at the direction all these numbers are going in, and there’s kind of a disturbing parity,” said Dan Richards, the former private equity investor who started Global Rescue in 2004. “We’re responding to a need that is real and growing.”

And, of course, that “disturbing parity” (whatever that means) is  likely to show up in both likely and not so likely locations.

Richards’ outfit conducts more than 1,000 operations a year. It has responded to coup attempts in Mali and Madagascar, terror attacks in India, and the 2011 tsunami in Japan. A few weeks ago, Global Rescue evacuated two mountain climbers via helicopter in Switzerland.

A couple of years ago, when Egypt first blew up, Middlebury College had Global Rescue successfully take a group of its students out of harm’s way. (Bet that Egypt is no longer a study abroad option.)

And sometimes Global Rescue just saves a mom from having to get on a plane and fly out to Colorado when her 18-year-old son breaks a leg in a ski race.  Instead of having to get into a full flutter, the family was able to tap Global Rescue.

The company had Johns Hopkins specialists review [Liam] Mulhern’s X-rays, then sent a paramedic from Boston to Colorado to deal with his medications and plane tickets and accompany him on his return flight to Logan Airport.

If the family hadn’t been Global Rescue members, Mulhern said: “My mother certainly would have been on the first plane to Colorado.”

Well, if that’s not the ultimate in outsourcing. (Global Rescue as metaphorical wet nurse.)

But it’s one thing to hop (or not hop) on a flight to Colorado to take care of your son who’s hit a patch of ice on a double black diamond slope. Quite another to get saved from a tsunami or the Arab spring.

Who you gonna call?

I’m a Labor Day broken record, and the record that’s playing is “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.”

Writing Pink Slip may be a labor of love, but it’s labor nonetheless, so – as I did last year – I’m taking the day off.

This is a link to my 2011 Labor Day post, and, as I said, I’m something of a broken record here.  Same old, same old. (But still worth thinking about, that’s for sure.)

Happy Labor Day to all, especially to my brother Rick, who has devoted his life to the labor union movement. I do not know many people who are more passionate about, or fulfilled by, their work. (“When they made you, brother, they broke the mold.”)

The Standard Hotel’s Ad: yet another reason I am just as happy not to be a hipster

It may be because I no longer stay at hotels when I’m in NYC – we’ve been pretty much into the rent-by-owner apartment thing for the last few years – I had never even heard The Standard.

Or it may be that I am just such an irredeemably non-hipster old lady that I was not aware of these hotels.  My hipster quotient is no doubt well below The Standard’s minimum threshold: I don’t own a fedora, or wear Tom’s,  Converse high-tops, or Keds low-tops. I do wear vintage, but it is vintage I own from the first time around. (If only I’d held on to that kelly-green boucle coat…) I like irony as much as the next guy, but I don’t own a single ironic tee-shirt (assuming that the Just Say Moe with the picture of Moe Howard on it doesn’t count).

With zero awareness of The Standard, I had no knowledge of the controversial ad campaign they’ve been running for the last year.

So here I was, blissfully enjoying my The Standard-free dotage, when I saw (over on Buzzfeed) that their latest in a series of provocative ads – the kind certain to make an old crone, however keen on staying in a hotel on NYC’s wonderful High Line, Just Say No – was creating a bit of controversy. Which I suspect is pretty much right up the alley of The Standard’s hipster audience. Although, now that I think of it, The Standard might be a bit out of the price reach of the average hipster, who is no doubt more likely to seek out the type of raffish hotel that William Burroughs might have overdosed in. But, nonetheless, The Standard does seem to strive to give off an artsy sensibility, and where there’s an artsy sensibility, surely there’s a hipster sensibility as well.

In any case, while I don’t necessarily see that this one is “trivializing violence against women, which is how Rosie at Make Me A Sammich views it, there is nothing about seeing a dead young woman crushed by her suitcase that calls out “why not stay here” to me, that’s for sure.

Others in the series have been equally (non-)enticing:

Young woman drooling into her soup? Is there anyone who’s thinking I want what she’s having?

And how about about guy with head down dining woman’s shirt? No wonder people order from room service.

My particular favorite shows a woman peeing on the floor. I’ll spare you that one, but who wants to stay in a hotel that advertises someone urinating on the carpet? Maybe not as bad as finding bedbugs in your room (as long as you don’t step in a damp spot). But, still…

The photos used in these ads are from Erwin Wurm’s series “One Minute Sculptures.”

While Wurm is a bit long in the tooth to be a hipster, he’s certainly got a lot of it down.

His web site doesn’t actually show any of his photos: just lists of his galleries and shows. And there’s his ultra-minimal biography:

Born in 1954
Lives in Vienna and Limberg, Austria

Date-of-birth aside – that and the fact that last time I looked neither Vienna nor Limberg was a cool address – there’s something decidedly hipsterish about that bio.

I know I’m not The Standard’s demographic. These days, I don’t think I’m anyone’s, other than the AARP and Centrum Silver. Perhaps for my epitaph I’ll use “the only demographic in which she belongs.”

I don’t suppose The Standard gives an AARP discount, do you?

Body language

I saw an article last week in The Wall Street Journal on body language. The piece suggested that those who want to get ahead in this man’s world might want to practice “powering posing” for a few minutes every day.

Striking a powerful, expansive pose actually changes a person's hormones and behavior, just as if he or she had real power. (Source: WSJ.)

Don’t know about you, but here’s what I’m picturing. (I shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand of the Great John L)

Guess those bad boys were on to something.

Anyway:

Merely practicing a "power pose" for a few minutes in private—such as standing tall and leaning slightly forward with hands at one's side, or leaning forward over a desk with hands planted firmly on its surface—led to higher levels of testosterone [which tends to boost confidence and aggressive behavior] and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in study participants. These physiological changes are linked to better performance

“Power posing” is applicable beyond the office. For one thing, it might help you get in the door it you pose it up before a job interview. And get you into the college or B-school of your dreams: posers who posed before college entrance exams raised their score levels.

Perhaps the one tiny thing missing in my otherwise illustrious and all together excellent career was the small amount of energy I put into power posing and raising my testosterone level.

Anyway, the article got me thinking about body language-related incidents in my past.

Early on in my career, I took a presentation skills class in which they video taped us all giving a brief talk.

Me being me, I volunteered to go first, foregoing the opportunity to learn by observing the mistakes my colleagues were making and avoiding them.

Anyway, I was pretty shocked to see the video, in which I was leaning back at an almost impossible angle, with my hands clasped in front of me in what I later learned was called the Fig Leaf pose.

Fortunately, I was an eager learner, and on the final exam my body language was superb. (Sheryl Sandberg was on to something when she titled her book Lean In.)

Fast forward a few years, and my friend Cathy and I decided that we had better things to do than sit through yet another interminable rah-rah meeting during which some Wang exec tried to convince us that Wang had a rosy future.

On our way out, we ran into another Wang exec who was on his way in to wave a few more pom-poms.

We spoke with him for a few seconds – I can’t recall what he asked us – but we learned later that, when he got up to give his Buckle Down, Winsocki oration, he referred to us as “a couple of slump-shouldered women” that he’d run into making an early exit. Clearly our posture had given us away as the type of dud employees who were not going to help lead Wang out of the abyss and into its glorious future.  Bad Wangers!

In truth, it was amazing that, by that point, there were any Wang employees capable of walking upright. After all we’d been through, you’d think that all of us would have been stretched out in the corridors, sucking our thumbs and staring off into space. Now that would have been the body language more appropriate to the situation.

Oh, I have a few more body language stories in my corpus o’ business tales, but my favorite is one that I know second hand only.

At Genuity, I was friendly with a fellow who, for a few months, reported to this extremely strange and paranoid individual who, even by the all-politics, all-the-time standards of the company, was always on the political alert. (That she was spectacularly inept at playing politics was beside the point; she was always trying to get in the game.)

Anyway, I ran into my colleague and he told me that he had just had quite an encounter with his boss, who had dressed him down for the behavior he’d shown in a meeting.

“I can’t believe the signals you were giving off when X was talking. They were entirely inappropriate,” she told him.

My friend played the meeting back through his mind, and couldn’t come up with anything that could be construed as inappropriate.

“I don’t understand,” he told her. “When X was presenting, I leaned forward, listened attentively, and asked good questions. At least I thought I did…”

What my friend hadn’t taken into consideration was that X was The Enemy of the Day.

“Exactly,” crazy manager hissed, “That’s precisely what you were doing. You acted as if you were interested. You encouraged him. You made him look good. You were totally off base.”

So beware of your body language! It can get your going or coming.

The Donald: still being schooled on Trump University

If there’s someone on the American celebrimaginative scene who’s more stunningly ridiculous and obnoxious than Donald Trump, the name’s not coming to my mind just now.

I would say that he’s a latter-day P.T. Barnum, if P.T. Barnum had been born with a silver developer’s groundbreaking shovel in his hands. But P.T. Barnum actually gave us some worthwhile stuff: like General Tom Thumb and his equally diminutive bride Lavinia, the Barnum & Bailey Circus (if you like that sort of thing), and a stuffed elephant granted to Tufts University, which gives Tufts its team name, The Jumbos.

He also gave us an adage to live by – “There’s a sucker born every day”  - even if it’s more likely that it was said not by him, but about him, in reference to the folks he was duping.

What’d we ever get from The Donald? “You’re fired,” birther nonsense, and bad hair jokes.

Anyway, there’s plenty of wisdom packed into that one little sentence.  While most of us would take it as a caution – i.e., don’t be a sucker - Mr. Trump apparently adopted it as words to live by. It may even be on Trump’s coat of arms. (Dollar sign rampant, hair piece couchant.)

And now, a couple of years after his Trump University had to rebrand itself as the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, and shroud all Trump U’s wisdom and knowledge behind the firewall of its virtually ivy-covered virtual halls by password-protecting it, the New York state AG is going after Trump for defrauding “students” out of their hard-earned (or hard-borrowed) cash in hopes of becoming a Trump Mini-Me:

…saying the real estate mogul helped run a phony "Trump University" that promised to make students rich but instead steered them into expensive and mostly useless seminars, and even failed to deliver promised apprenticeships.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says many of the 5,000 students who paid up to $35,000 thought they would at least meet Trump but instead all they got was their picture taken in front of a life-size picture of "The Apprentice" TV star. (Source: Huffington Post.)

While it’s hard to imagine someone so limited in intellectual capacity that they’d let themselves be fleeced out of $35K like this, such is the hold that “brand” and “celebrity” and the lure of “get rich quick” have on the American psyche.

Meanwhile, Trump – no doubt delighted to have this free publicity opportunity handed to him during the summer doldrums -  has countered by claiming that the lawsuit is without grounds – sort of like Trump U, come to think of it – and that the AG is motivated by politics.  Trump’s attorney is arguing that the AG is trying to extort campaign contributions. But surely the AG is canny enough to realize that it’s hard to grift a grifter.

Trump’s man also says that:

… Trump University provided nearly 11,000 testimonials to Schneiderman from students praising the program and said 98 percent of students in a survey termed the program "excellent."

Ah, but what does this mean if you don’t know the measurement scale:

Would you rate your experience with Trump University: a) excellent; b) better than excellent; c) unbelievably better than better than excellent; d) all of the above. In order for us to provide you with a colored photograph (suitable for framing) of you yourself standing in front of a life-size cardboard pop-up of Mr. Trump, you must answer this question.

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that 98 percent of those who were capable of convincing themselves that matriculated at Trump U was a good idea were equally capable of convincing themselves that the experience had been excellent.

The $40 million that Schneiderman seeks will be used to repay Trump U alumni.

There may, indeed, be a sucker born every minute, but sometimes those suckers have a moment of WTF clarity – sucker’s remorse, as it were – and sometimes the attorney general steps in and decides that even suckers deserve consumer protection.

Personally – if somewhat maliciously – I’d love to see this lawsuit succeed, if only to find out whether Trump has the $40 million on hand to pay it off.

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Here was Pink Slip’s take on Trump University -  Hey, Donald Trump. Wossamotta U? – from May 2011.

Remember when the big toilet paper debate was putting the roll over or under? Make way for the fatberg!

When it comes to putting the toilet paper roll on the holder, I grew up in an “over” household. But somewhere along the way I converted to “under”.

I understand that I am the minority here, but in truth, I can go either way.

I did, however, embrace the family brand, and I am a Scott toilet paper girl all the way….

Scott is a nice compromise between those “cotton-y soft” or “quilted” brands that are too squooshy for my tastes, and the completely non-absorbent, shiny waxed paper variety I encountered on my first trip to England many long flushes ago.

I believe that the toilet paper in the British Museum even had the crown embossed on it. 

It struck me at the time that, if Her Royal Majesty could go out of her way to endorse a toilet paper, she could have chosen one that actually worked.

A square of newspaper would have done the trick far better than waxed paper, that’s for sure.

Personally, other than the over-under argument, and the squooshy soft vs. Scott’s “just right” options to chose from, there shouldn’t be all that much to do, say, or improve upon the use of toilet paper, should there?  After all, toilet paper has been – at least by my apparently lax standards of hygiene –  a completely adequate replacement for hayballs, corncobs, leaves – what about poison ivy? – Sears Roebuck catalogs, snow, moss, coconut shells, a sponge soaked in salt water, mussel shells, and sand, which, according to the Toilet Paper World Encyclopedia were all used at one point or another.  There was also something called a gompf stick, which I take it was a scraper. (Ugh.)  When in Rome, if you were wealthy, anyway, you used a combination of wool and rosewater, which sounds okay as long as you weren’t the one responsible for disposing of the wool.

Having seen them on “reality TV”, I do understand that there are some frugal fanatics who make their own reusable toilet paper out of rags, apparently discounting the water, soap, bleach, and energy (assuming they don’t hand wash) cost of laundering said rags, the opportunity cost spent doing said laundry, and the reputational and child-embarrassment costs associated with being the type of person to make your own reusable t.p.

Anyway, in the world we live in, I would have thought that the lid was firmly down on any to be or not to be discussion on using toilet paper.

If it ain’t broke…

But the consumer gerbil-wheel we all spin on requires constant innovation. So now we are being invited by Kimberly Clark brand Cottonelle to “start the conversation” about the “taboo topic” about whether plain old toilet paper is sufficient to meet the purpose at hand. Or whether:

…North Americans [should get] talking about their bums and on the road to a better way to clean "down there" by using the Cottonelle Clean Routine -- combining dry toilet paper and flushable wipes for a cleaner, fresher experience. With the help of London-based immersive journalist, Cherry Healey, Cottonelle is helping consumers to open up about their bathroom behaviors and "makeover" their old toileting routine. And with a sleek, newly designed dispenser for Cottonelle Flushable Cleansing Cloths, Healey is set to start the conversation now. (Source: Kimberly Clark press release.)

Well, all I can say is the Brits have come a long way in terms of their own loo-ish fastidiousness since the days of the waxed toilet paper.

Now they’re telling us how to come clean?

It's true that nothing will leave you feeling cleaner and fresher than the Cottonelle Care Routine. This combination provides a clean you can feel throughout the day so you'll be ready for anything. Unfortunately, since bathroom habits are not something that people regularly talk about, many people don't know that there is a better way to get clean than just using toilet paper alone. According to a recent survey, one third of Americans find "wiping your bum" to be the most taboo topic likely because more than 50 percent of us say we were raised not to discuss what happens behind the bathroom door. However, it seems America is ready to open the door to this topic since 80 percent of Americans say they would be comfortable talking about bathroom habits with others.

Hard to believe that Americans are uncomfortable talking about anything these days. Especially given that, “more than 60 percent of us talk on the phone and nearly 40 percent email while on the toilet.”

I did not need to know this.

The Cottonelle brand feels so strongly about the importance of highlighting better bottom care that it updated the flushables' packaging to an upright, durable dispenser as well as the name - from "wipes" to "cleansing cloths" to better reflect the role they play in a care routine. …The goal is for the Cottonelle Care Routine to become a regular bathroom habit, so much so that having wipes on hand become part of bathroom etiquette. Right now, most Americans agree that not wiping off the seat (94%), forgetting to flush (92%) and not refilling toilet paper (74%) are offensive bathroom behaviors. One quarter (25%) of Americans agree that not having flushable wipes is offensive but that number could increase as more people adopt the routine.

More than one quarter of Americans “agree that not having flushable wipes is offensive”?

Huh?

Well, I suppose that nothing should surprise us here, given that only about half of our country-folk believe in evolution.

Before we all start adopting the Cottonelle Care Routing, and revving up the numbers on how we negatively view those who lag behind the adoption curve, we may want to take into consideration a bit of the British experience with the use of wet wipes “cleansing cloths,” which they have been taking to more rapidly than their American cousins.

What those “cleansing cloths” are doing over there is combining with fat to form something called a fatberg:

A sewer-clogging lump of congealed cooking fat mixed with wet wipes and other products. Coined from fat and the suffix of iceberg.

Last week workers cleared a “bus-sized” fatberg from the London sewer system, averting a huge sewage overflow in the suburb of Kingston. (Source: Nancy Friedman’s blog Fritinancy).

Just what we need.

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A squeeze of the Charmin to my sister Kathleen, who first read about this on Britishisms (bum being more of a Brit usage than the more All-American bottom or butt).

And as if the world were not already a crazy enough place, Galley Cat spotted one of the cartoon Charmin teddy bears carrying a volume of Kafka while on his way to do his thing…

Put a ring on it…

Before I leave to take a ride on the T – Boston’s public transpo system – I take my Charlie Card (smart card that contains the electronic version of the subway tokens that used to clang around in change purses for us women and pockets for you men*) out of my wallet and place it in my hand.

That way, when I get to the T station, I don’t have to fumble around in my pocketbook to find my wallet it, and can quickly glide through the turnstile and head on up or down to catch my train.

The Charlie Card fumble is but a minor annoyance, one of many on the long list of minor life annoyances (which will be a full topic for another day). Personally, I find it more annoying that, when I approach the T station I am most likely to use, I have to decide whether it’s worth jay-running to catch the train I can hear chugging out of the tunnel, or prudently wait for the light to change and catch the next train. This is less of a problem than it used to be, now that there are heat lamps that makes dead-of-winter waiting less onerous at the Charles-MGH station,  which has an outdoor platform.

For those not familiar with this T station – and why should you be? – this is a partial of what the approach is like. There are actually two of these stretches, and a) they’re not that wide; b) they have Walk-Don’t Walk (which in Boston is pedestrian-optional) signs; and c) they generally have cars in them. This street-level approach replaced a couple of rickety metal bridges. The risk on those was that you’d slip on the steps and break your leg running for a train, as opposed to the far worse risk of getting hit by a car hurtling off the Salt-and-Pepper bridge and running a red light (or failing to stop for jay-runners). So, we now have a more handicapped accessible way of getting to the station than we had in the past, but it’s a way that may well produce more people requiring at least temporary handicapped accessibility precisely because they were run down by a delivery van, cab, or commuter. Hmmmm.

But I digress, when the real point of this post is to address – not digress – the minor annoyance that is making sure that you have your Charlie Card in hand when you’re hurrying to catch a train.

For every minor annoyance (turn, turn, turn), there is a minor solution (turn, turn, turn), and a time for every purpose under heaven.

And for the minor annoyance that is making sure that you have your Charlie Card at the ready, the minor solution is the Sesame Ring, the brainchild of some MIT and Singapore University of Technology and Design undergrads:

“Having missed the train many times while fishing for our Charlie Cards (smart cards used for public transportation in Massachusetts), we looked for a solution in wearable technology. After months of hard work, we created the 3D-printed Sesame Ring, supported by the MBTA,” the project page states. “Now, you can walk right up to the gantry, use scientifically approved magic, and scoot on through!”

The project has more than exceeded that $5K Kickstart it’s looking for, thanks to the publicity it received on boston.com, which, in turn, inspired those who want to join the ranks of “wearable technologists” (their words), without going cross-eyed and insane with Google Glass, to commit $27 to replace or augment their so-yesterday Charlie Cards with a hip and happenin’ piece of bling.

Michael Morisy, the  boston.com Innovation blogger, has characterized the rings as “stylish.”

Well, I don’t know about that.

I looks more like something you’d be able to trade the 50 tickets you won playing skee-ball at the arcade for, but I will reserve full judgment until mine – I ordered the tangerine – is delivered in a couple of months.

Ah, the minor annoyance can be such a slippery slope.

Here  I was getting all sorts of ready to make fun of finding a minor solution to a minor problem, and the next thing you know, I’m in for $27 worth a wearable technology.

It was the 3D printing that made me do it…

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*I actually wanted to use parentheses with the letters F and M in them here, but attempts to do so resulted in these unwanted and pesky little icons: and .  I get the “F is for flower” but what up with those two little guys? Is that supposed to be “M is for marriage” or “M is for men”?

Icons off!

Call 911 for a cable outage? Oh, grow up!

It’s not as if I’ve never called 911.

Why, in just the last couple of years, I have dialed it on several occasions.

Last December, we smelled burning wires. The odor seemed to me to be emanating from our heating system. It seemed to my husband, who just happens to be the great-great-grandson of Ebenezer Scrooge, that, somehow, my plugging in the Christmas tree  - with those oh, so, powerful tiny white lights – had sparked a chain of Bad Events that was going to burn the house down.

After examining the tiny-white-light wire and plug, and the wall socket, my husband conceded that this was not very likely to be the source of the burning wire smell.

We waited a bit to make sure that the smell was not dissipating – it wasn’t – and proceeded to call 911. When I got the dispatcher, I explained that while this did not seem to be an emergency-emergency – there were no flames licking the walls, no smoke billowing from the vent registers – it did seem worthy of a check out. I asked whether they would advise us to call our HVAC service 24 hour number, or whether they thought the BFD should come by.

Not surprisingly, the answer was BFD. An engine was dispatched, and after a walkthrough of our condo, the BFD declared that, while it was good that we had called, it was not a bfd. We did have a smoldering wire in our heat exchange, but once the heating system was shutdown, we were not to worry. (I also got the BFD to declare that plugging in the Christmas tree had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the incident.)

Not having heat wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, this being New England in December, but we survived.

Earlier in the same year, I had been at The Writers Room of Boston on a Sunday, working with a friend and fellow member, along with my 15 year old niece, to defrost The Room’s ancient, ice-impacted dorm-sized fridge, which is used primarily to house members’ lunch yogurts, milk for coffee, and left over lunches (which are typically left to go bad). Marilyn and I were doing our civic duty as members. By assisting with Operation Defrost, and helping out a needy non-profit, Molly was earning a couple hours to check off her community service requirements list.

Anyway, in my zeal to complete the project, I managed to sever the Freon line.

Marilyn and I had the presence of mind to get us all out of the kitchen, shut the door, and open a number of windows. Oh, yes, and to dispatch Molly to the downstairs lobby a.s.a.p. so that she wouldn’t be inhaling any Freon.

Heads hanging out the windows so as not to breathe the Freon-ish air, I tried googling to see what level of haz-mat this was. Meanwhile, Marilyn tried to get a hold of her son-in-law the chemical engineer.

When neither of us was able to easily find the answer, we joined Molly in the lobby, where I called 911.

Again, I explained that this was not a grave emergency, but that we just wanted to talk to someone about whether The Room was a haz-mat site, whether we needed to inform the building manager, whether someone who had breathed in some Freon should seek medical attention, etc.

Well, it was a slow Sunday morning in downtown Boston, and the jakes were getting bored hanging around the station, so within a couple of minutes, we had a fire truck out front, and a couple of laughing firemen explaining that the only way the Freon would have harmed someone was if a double-wide freezer-fridge had exploded in something the size of a telephone booth. One of the firefighters volunteered to go up and toss the dorm fridge out the window for us, but we declined.

My third recent 911 encounter occurred after I witnessed a wrong-way bicyclist struck by a delivery truck. The bloody bicyclist was hurled into the air, nearly landing on me, and after I quickly assured him – based on no particular wisdom or authority – that he was going to be all right, I called 911 to report an accident. (By the way, the guy was all right, even though the way he was bicycling was all wrong.)

Of these three incidents, the one where I probably should have called the non-emergency number was the Freon blast – even if I was extremely happy to have the firefighter assurance that Molly was going to be okay.

But, let’s face it, 911 is more memorable than whatever the non-emergency equivalent is. (There is a 211 number but, when I read up on it, it sounded a bit too non-emergency-ish.)

Anyway, over the period during which I called 911 three times, I would estimate that we lost Internet and/or TV service on at least a half dozen occasions.

These occurrences prompted a) grousing, b) calls to Comcast, c) checks on the old Blackberry to see whether there were outages in the area.

It would not have occurred to me in a billion years to call 911.

Then again, I don’t live in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and I don’t watch Breaking Bad, which was apparently on the other evening, when  Fairfield was flooded with 911 calls from upset Cablevision subscribers.

The Fairfield Police Department was not amused and took to its Facebook page to post a refresher course on using its emergency system. The message read:

"We are receiving numerous 911 calls regarding the Cablevision outage. This is neither an emergency or a police related concern. Please direct your inquiries to Cablevision. 911 should only be called for Life Threatening Emergencies ONLY. Incidents that are not of an emergency nature may be reported to the Fairfield Police Department. ... Misuse of the 911 system may result in an arrest." (Source: Hartford Courant.)

What would possess someone to call 911 because they didn’t have TV reception?

I don’t typically set myself up as any sort of paragon of normalcy, but isn’t my typical reaction to a cable outage the normal one?

I.e., what is called for is a combination of a) grousing, b) calls to the cable provider, c) checks on the old smartphone to see whether there were outages in the area.

Tell me that almost the entire population of Fairfield, Connecticut, doesn’t have an iPhone that was not impaired…

Calling 911? What a bunch of boo-boo babies.

One commenter on the Fairfield FB page suggested that because the evening’s episode of Breaking Bad was “super-intense and very riveting”, the people who called 911 “ not thinking rationally when reaching for the phone." Which the commenter found “kind of awesome.”

Well, I guess in a way that a TV show can be so “riveting” and “super intense” that viewers suspend the rational parts of their brain is “kind of awesome.”

I certainly got swept up in the final episode of The Sopranos.

But I think that if cable had broken bad while Meadow was parallel parking outside the diner, and Tony was starting to play Don’t Stop Believing on the juke box in the booth, I would have started swearing my head off. And looking for the #$*&&(@!!!&(*number for Comcast.

I might not have been quite as calm as Fairfield resident Benn Gott, who wrote:

"When my Internet went out an hour ago," he wrote on Facebook, "I took a hint, put one of my dad's old jazz records on the turntable, and pulled out a good book. That, plus the crickets and peepers, has turned this into a very good night indeed."

But I don’t think it would have occurred to me to call 911.

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I first read about this in an AP article on boston.com.

The Boredom Room

Somewhere, early on in my work life, I worked at a bank.

There were a couple of older men who “worked” in our immediate area who didn’t appear to have all that much to do. They came in late, had long – presumably liquid – lunches, and left early.

When I inquired, I was told that they had not been doing a particularly good job in their earlier positions of importance, so they’d been kept on in make-work, do-nothing positions. All very old-school-tie WASPy – all the machers at the bank were prepster-Ivy Leaguers.  Let’s put old Dexter Standish III in a place where he can do no harm; after all, I crewed with Dex at the Snodgrass School, and his sister is married to my brother. Let’s allow Mansfield Mayflower IV to wait out the years until he can collect his pension in a respectable “job” where he can continue to make use of all those nifty seersucker suits and bow ties from J. Press.

There was even an eponymous term for the act of taking care of an old school tie-er. When someone was kept on in this way, it was said that he was being Elliot Quincy’d.*

Of course, this benefit was only available to members of the club.

Still, back in the day it was, at least for some folks, a kinder, gentler world when it came to keeping the pay checks coming in.

I hadn’t thought of Elliot Quincy in years. But then I read an article last week in The New York Times about something the Times calls the boredom room, which is where workers who by law cannot be laid off are sent to wile away the hours.

Shusaku Tani is a Sony employee who, for the past two years, has gone to “work” in:

…a small room, taken a seat and then passed the time reading newspapers, browsing the Web and poring over engineering textbooks from his college days. He files a report on his activities at the end of each day.

Bet that makes for fascinating reading.

Anyway, when his job was eliminated, Tani – who is only 51 – thumbed his nose at the early-retirement package, which he was able to do under Japanese labor law, which goes to extraordinary lengths to protect employees.

So there he sits in what is called the “chasing-out room” [a.k.a., the boredom room]. He spends his days there, with about 40 other holdouts.

“I won’t leave,” Mr. Tani said. “Companies aren’t supposed to act this way. It’s inhumane.”

I’ve had plenty of bouts with boredom at work over the years, but none of them lasted very long, and I can’t imagine anyone who could go to work, and have nothing to do, for such a protracted period of time and not go nuts.

And it sure sounds like Mr. Tani is letting his stubbornness get the better of him.

Other than knowing about company loyalty and employment for life, I know precious little about how the Japanese economy works – maybe an engineer in his late forties is unemployable - but surely someone that young, with the cushion of a generous severance package, could have spent the last two years trying to find something else to do, other than pore over his moldering college text books and seethe.

The existence of Japan’s boredom rooms is, of course, emblematic of the labor market problems the country has. Given Japan’s rigid labor laws, companies are reluctant to hire younger workers, since employment means a lifetime, death-do-us-part commitment on the part of an employer.

Economists say bringing flexibility to the labor market in Japan would help struggling companies streamline bloated work forces to better compete in the global economy. Fewer restrictions on layoffs could make it easier for Sony to leave loss-ridden traditional businesses and concentrate resources on more innovative, promising ones.

How Sony and other firms cope with the strictures placed on them is setting up rooms like the “chasing-out room”, where:

...the real point of the rooms is to make employees feel forgotten and worthless — and eventually so bored and shamed that they just quit, critics say.

Or stay there, seething. Talk about a recipe for someone going postal.

On the other end of how to treat unwanted/unneeded employees is the USA, of course:

…where companies are quick to lay off workers when demand slows or a product becomes obsolete. It is cruel to the worker, but it usually gives the overall economy agility. Some economists attribute the lack of a dynamic economy in Western Europe to labor laws similar to Japan’s that restrict layoffs.

Crappy as it often is at that atomic worker level, I have to say that I prefer the American way, although we could use a bit more on the support side of things to temper the impact of a crappy economy and/or a crappy company on workers and their families.

Critics of labor changes say something more important is at stake. They warn that making it easier to cut jobs would destroy Japan’s social fabric for the sake of corporate profits, causing mass unemployment and worsening income disparities. For a country that has long prided itself on stability and relatively equitable incomes, such a change would be unacceptable.

Well, the good news and the bad news, from the American perspective, is that no one really seems to give a hoot about the social fabric, mass unemployment, and worsening disparities.

Of course, as the article points out, keeping unneeded older workers in non-jobs means that companies hire fewer younger workers, or hire them on a temporary and part-time basis, in which they don’t enjoy any of the protections that the older cohorts do, which is not exactly a recipe for strong social fabric, stability, and equitable incomes. And punitively treating employees by relegating them to boredom rooms can’t be good for that social fabric, either.

While details to the government plans are still being determined, Mr. Tani’s managers at Sony are already upping the ante. Starting this month, the company has ordered him to work 12-hour shifts on an assembly line at a Sony plant in Toyosato, more than an hour’s drive away. He says he will comply.

And, from a psychological standpoint, he’ll probably be a lot better off than he is reading old textbooks and staring off into space.

Is there not a way in which an economy can work on both the micro-worker and macro-enterprise level? Does a safety net have to mean a boredom room?

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*No, they did not say “Elliot Quincy’d”. I made that up. I’m obviously not going to give away the guy’s name that was actually used, even if it’s more than likely that he is long dead.

Brand Maasai

The world these days is much more brand-conscious than it once was, say, back in the olden times of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

No, today Brands “R” Us, which, I suspect, is a brand violation in its own right. Or would be if I could figure out how to get that R to go backwards.

And once a brand is prominent, its owners go to great lengths to protect it.

Only officially-blessed MLB merchandise is good enough to be sold at the old ball game. And Harvard doesn’t let just anybody bandy its name around, let alone print it on a sweatshirt. (What do you think “Fight Fiercely Harvard” is all about, anyway?) A few years ago, Disney initially turned down a grieving family that had asked to use the image of their version of Winnie-the-Pooh on their child’s gravestone.  Eventually, Disney decided to let the brand violation go.  But while it’s hard to imagine that Disney said no to begin with – even if they were worried that this would cut into a potential fortune in Disney-themed coffins and headstones -it’s even harder to believe that the bereaved parents asked for permission to begin with. Thus the power of branding, I guess.

Personally, I think that organizations and individuals have a right to protect their brand. At least up to the point where doing so doesn’t become utterly redonkulous.

Anyway, given how important brands are to consumers and producers alike, it’s no surprise that groups would want to make sure that they get what they believe they’re entitled to, brand-wise.

Still, I was a bit taken aback to see an article in The Atlantic – yes, they do, indeed, have at least one subscriber out there, and that would be me – on the efforts by the Maasai tribe to trademark their name, and protect it from being used on:

…“Masai” sneakers (in British shoe stores), “Masai” tinted panoramic windows (on Land Rovers), and bright-blue “Masai” beach towels (at Louis Vuitton boutiques).

The Maasai are being helped in their efforts by a non-profit called Light Years IP, an:

…organization dedicated to alleviating poverty by assisting developing country producers gain ownership of their intellectual property and to use the IP to increase their export income and improve the security of that income.

Light Years helps:

…producers, exporters, and governments in the developing world to analyze their export potential with respect to identifying the value of intangibles and then using IP tools, such as patents, trademarks and licenses, to secure more sustained and higher export income. The ownership of IP is secured in market countries through the existing legal frameworks of the developed world.

Light Years IP believes that the Maasai brand may have an annual value of about $10M - no small change to a poor, semi-nomadic tribe whose way of life and culture is coming under increasing pressure from modernization and climate change. (Not that it wouldn’t be a bad idea if some of that way of life – e.g., female circumcision – died out.) Anyway, in all likelihood, corporate interests – such as sneaker manufacturers, car companies, and luxury-goods producers – may have beaten them to the registration punch.

The Maasai aren’t alone, as:

… more and more indigenous groups are staking claims to their traditional knowledge. Last year, the Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters over rights to its name; New Zealand has granted patents to the Maori; India recently offered a trademark to tribes making herbal medicines. Compared with these efforts, the Maasai’s branding battle will be more global in scope, but the tribe isn’t the first to go up against a seemingly unassailable target. The Sami, a group of indigenous Artic dwellers, have already taken on Santa Claus—or at any rate, a Finnish tourist attraction called Santa Claus Village. Among their gripes: that the Sami people’s customary blue-and-red outfit has been used to costume the park’s paid “elves.”

Well, good luck to all these indigenous groups, especially the Sami’s looking for compensation for those elf costumes.

But it does strike me that the sort of usage that they’re going after is a lot squishier than a corporation trying to protect its brand names, icons, and taglines.  And where would it end? Just what’s brand-able and what’s not?

If the Maasai can enjoin Louis Vuitton from describing a color as “Masai blue”, why can’t Germany go after Betty Crocker for German Chocolate Cake Mix? Or Ireland go after the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Or the Boston Celtics.

Maybe the Germans don’t need the money, but the Irish these days could use a bit more scratch.

I’m sure it must be galling for indigenous cultures, now that they’re so exposed to the outside world, to find that some of what’s more or less unique to them is being used by others to make a buck. But are they being out and out exploited, or is this just a case of imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery? Or just a case of flavor of the month: this month’s Masai bright blue gives way to next month’s Inuit white? And if it’s going to cost me to say Masai blue, I’ll make something else up.

Good that Light Years is trying to help out poor countries. And maybe they can get companies to cough up a few bucks to use the Maasai name. Why does Major League Baseball get to have brands, but the Maasai don’t? Is it just being part of a formal structure, with access to lawyers? I guess Light Years will give the Maasai some of that. But I’m still left asking myself what the difference is between a descriptor (German chocolate) and a brand (Disney on Ice). Guess we’ll have to leave it in the hands of the IP lawyers.

Nick Beef: let the crazy 50th anniversary JFK assassination stories begin

With the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination just around the corner, we will all need to gear up for an onslaught of related – however tangentially -  stories.

What are Marina Oswald’s daughters up to?

Are any of the Secret Service agents still alive?

Where did Jackie’s pink pillbox hat end up?

There will be NO END to the specials, the special editions, the strolls down memory lane... (I can already hear Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw droning on.)

Not that I won’t immediately succumb to reading and watching all this “news.”

But I predict that it will be overwhelming, over the top, and over much, as every tiny little bit of trivia is dredged up and examined.

An early entry into the WHAT? sweepstakes has got to be an article I saw a week or so ago on the Huffington Post, which answered – for one and for all – a question that I suspect no one other than the most fanatical of Kennedy fanatics has ever asked:

What’s with the Nick Beef headstone market next to the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Well, it seems like The New York Times wanted to get a jump on Assassination-palooza, and sussed out the story for us. (Why focus on boring stuff like sequestration, or Egypt, when there’s news like this that’s fit to print?)

So if you have been asking ‘where’s the (Nick) Beef'?’, now you know:

Patric Abedin, a writer and “nonperforming performance artist,” uses the persona “Nick Beef.” He says he has a penchant for the morbid, creating photographic haikus with tombstones in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. (Source: NY Times.)

But before he began “creating photographic haikus with tombstones” in the Queens, he was a kid growing up in Dallas, Texas. A kid who, as a six year old son of an airman, was at the Air Force Base when Jack and Jackie landed in Fort Worth the night of November 21, 1963.

Fast forward a few years, and Abedin was something of a “non-performing performance artist” prodigy, whose mother would regularly swing by the cemetery where Oswald was buried:

“She’d get out and look at Oswald’s grave,” he recalls, “and tell me, ‘Never forget that you got to see Kennedy the night before he died.’ ”

The years passed. When he was 18, he read a newspaper article’s passing mention that the grave beside Oswald’s had never been purchased. He went to Rose Hill, where a caretaker in a glorified garden shed thumbed through some cards and said, “Yep, that’s available.”

The young man put $17.50 down, and promised to make 16 monthly payments of $10.

Fast forward one more bit, and Abedin decided, on a lark, to dub himself Nick Beef, while a friend adopted the handle “Hash Brown.”

Fast forward once again, and, in 1996, Abedin – now a humor writer who sometimes used Nick Beef as his byline - plunked down a heftier fee – close to $1K – to purchase and install the Nick Beef gravestone marker that sits next to that of Lee Harvey Oswald. The cemetery official – wisely assuming the name was a joke – initially refused to take the order for the Nick Beef marker. But, fortunately, Abedin happened to have a credit card in the name of Nick Beef, so…

And now the truth is revealed, quieting – perhaps only for a bit – the assassination buffs and conspiracy theorists who have been trying to crack the Nick Beef code:

With the gravestone planted, rumors and speculation took root. It was said that since the cemetery refuses to provide directions to Oswald’s grave — at the family’s request, a spokeswoman for the cemetery said — two reporters had bought the plot so that the curious could ask instead for Nick Beef. It was also said that Nick Beef was a New York stand-up comic who used references to the grave in his act. Assassination buffs swapped theories on the Internet.

And now that truth is out.

And it’s not, according to Abedin, a laughing matter.

Yes, [Abedin] admits again, he has a penchant for the morbid. But this does not mean that he bought the plot next to Oswald’s as a joke, or a piece of installation art, or anything of the kind. It’s personal. It’s about change. The fragility of life. Something.

Look, the Kennedy assassination – or the assassination of any elected official, for that matter – is really not funny. And trust me when I say that I grieved the way that only a 13 year old Irish Catholic girl from Massachusetts could grieve when JFK was killed.

And yet, with all the sentimental clap-trap about the Kennedy family, the obsessional interest – all these years on – in everything to do with JFK’s death, and the complete and utter onslaught of rehash that will start rolling out in the next couple of months as the momentous anniversary nears, it’s kind of bracing that someone’s managed to extract a bit of humor out of it all.

Good we got it in before the real onslaught begins.

HOOPLA is a-comin’. Big time.

You heard it here.

Royalty is just so NOT what it used to be. (“Romanian princess arrested in Oregon cockfighting sweep.”)

Well, I suppose that, having lived through Sarah Ferguson (Duchess of York) trying to sell access to Prince Andrew, and Prince Charles having once pined to be Camilla Parker-Bowles’ tampon, no royal behavior should ever be shocking. Especially when the royals are from one of those hail, hail Freedonia countries with all sorts of pretenders to the throne and exiles in waiting (straight out of Ninotchka) running around. A country like, say, Romania.

Still, I was a bit started to spy this particular headline over on CNN the other day: Romanian princess arrested in Oregon cockfighting sweep.

What’s not to like about that one? (The headline, not the cockfighting.)

Princess Irina Walker, who is fifth in line for the Romanian throne – if it ever comes up for grabs – and her husband were among a half dozen folks out in Oregon “charged with operating an illegal gambling business.”

Those six are also charged, along with 12 others, with conspiracy to violate the animal Welfare Act by conducting unlawful animal fighting ventures on 10 occasions, the statement said…Each of the offenses carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, according to the Justice Department.

As always, the local Oregon news had more detail on the case, including information on just how completely and utterly despicable this “sport” is:

The indictment alleges that the derbies featured dozens of cockfights in a ring, much like a fight card in a night of boxing. But the combatants were roosters, each with knives, gaffs or other cutting instruments attached to their legs, fighting to their deaths in a blood sport now outlawed in all 50 states. (Source: Oregon Live.)

Not in my wildest dreams can I imagine even knowing someone who would want to watch armed roosters gouge at each other until one died. Or until one stopped fighting, at which point it would be killed by a human. Some fun, eh?

A referee supervised the fights as concessionaires sold beer and food, and those managing the action took a 10 percent "house" cut, prosecutors allege.

In this country, cockfighting is largely an immigrant pursuit – the others arrested with the Walkers all had Hispanic names – so I’m guessing that the princess and the pea-headed husband were in it for the “house” cut. Or maybe they ran a concession. (Avoid the chicken satay: it might be a bit too real-time.)

Cockfighting is no petty-ante operation, by the way:

Top purses in the earlier cockfighting case sometimes reached into the tens of thousands of dollars, authorities said.

But the Walkers could lose their ranch, because it’s:

…subject to federal forfeiture because it was used in a criminal enterprise.

In truth, both of the Walkers look like a couple of sad sacks - the sort couple who tied the knot not in the Romanian Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest, but rather in the Heart of Reno wedding chapel in Reno. Which was the case.

But, hey, I don’t imagine that Gwyneth Paltrow or George Clooney would look like Gwyneth Paltrow or George Clooney in their mug shots either.

Irina Walker has never been a visible member of the royal family, which owns four castles in Romania. She has visited the European nation only a handful of times, said historian Filip-Lucian Iorga. Her biography is largely unknown to the Romanian public, he said. The royal family is popular, but largely uninvolved in local politics.

Being largely involved in local politics is generally a wise move, especially in a country that so recently escaped decades of totalitarian insanity at the hands of the Ceausescus. (Not all royals are despots, and not all despots are royals.)  But what, pray tell, does it mean, exactly, to be a royal Romanian?

We get the Brits – they change the guard, they wave from the balcony, they walk around in bespoke suits with their hands clasped behind their backs. They get their faces on tea towels. They have followings. They play polo. They give out the trophies at Wimbledon. They cut ribbons. They are a visible, tourist-attracting presence.

And we even get the lesser royals – like those in Sweden and Holland – who get trotted out for ceremonial occasions and marry each other.

But what’s the function of royalty in Romania?

Not much, apparently, as the royal family has lived very modestly during its long exile. After the communists forced him to abdicate in the late 1940’s, King Michael:

…worked several jobs in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, including as a test pilot and running  a chicken farm and a carpenter's shop. (Source: Second article on Oregon Live.)

And Irina had to work, too. A life-long animal lover – at least according to her family – she had a series of jobs on purebred horse ranches. She sold stuff at Christie’s.  She got married. Had kids. Got remarried in that Reno wedding chapel.

And now she stands accused of running a cockfighting ring on her ranch.

The small-r small-f royal family gave a measured response:

The Romanian royal family released a statement, saying King Michael I "has taken notice with profound sadness of the events concerning Princess Irina of Romania, his daughter. His Majesty and the entire Royal Family hope that the American and Oregon state justices will solve this case in the fairest and quickest manner possible."

My guess is that Princess Irina was a quasi-innocent bystander to the cockfighting operation, tolerating it for the income, excusing it as an other-culture “thing”, letting her husband take care of whatever arrangements were made – but not attaching gaffs to the roosters’ claws or refereeing the matches.

But innocent or guilty, all I can say is that royalty is just so NOT what it used to be.

I don’t imagine that any latter-day Dorothy Parker will be doggerel-ing Princess Irina up the way old Dorothy did for Irina’s great-grand-mama:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.

But she has made CNN news.

Monopoly Empire (We li-ive in a material world…)

Last month, my sister Kathleen had a wonderful post on her blog – yes, we’re the bloggin’ sisters -  about the latest brand-extension to the Monopoly line.  Monopoly Empire joins such properties as the Disney Princess, Sponge Bob, and Simpson’s Electronic Banking (doh!) versions.

Rather than land on Marvin Gardens or St. Charles, in Monopoly Empire, you acquire properties like Coca-Cola and Samsung. It’s also a streamlined version, and takes only 30 minutes to play.  In Kath’s words:

The battle against product placement everywhere has everywhere been lost. Time-stressed multi-tasking is a way of life even for toddlers. We all live in Snack World.
But it seems a little sad that a lot of today's kids just don't have the time, even if they had the inclination, to loll about on an old blanket in someone's backyard and play Monopoly for hours. Yes, kids, there was a time when the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" meant sugar-soaked fun, when sun tan lotion was meant to attract rays not repel them, and when "Go directly to jail," didn't sound like the tagline for yet another TV show.

Like Kath, I realize that the battle against product placement has lost – if it had ever been waged to begin with. Which is not to say that we still aren’t entitled to decry it.

Not that there weren’t product tie-ins and marketing aimed dead-eye at children when we were kids. Among my most prized possessions as a kid were a pair of felt slippers shaped vaguely like cowboy boots, and sporting the image of Roy Rogers rearing up on Trigger, and a plastic Mickey Mouse wallet. I would have given anything for a Cinderella watch, even though it was well known that no child needed a wristwatch until they graduated from eighth grade, when they were gifted with an old-lady or old-man Timex.

But there just wasn’t as much of it, and brand consciousness was pretty limited.

Sure, we knew that some kids wore Keds, and other kids, like us, wore P.F. Flyers, which we wore because that’s what Mr. McEarchern (pronounced Ma-geck-rin, by the way) sold in his cobbler’s shop. Somewhere, since we’d seen the ads on TV, we imagined there were kids who wore Red Ball Jets, but we never encountered any. The supposition was that those sneakers must have been too highfalutin for Main South, or too trashy.

Other than sneakers, I don’t think I realized that clothing came in brand names until I got to high school and saw all the ritzy girls at my school wearing brightly-colored Pappagallo flats and Villager sweaters. (And the brand back then was in the label, not on the outside of the garment. In those days, people weren’t walking billboards.)

Along with being appalled by the crass commercialism of Monopoly Empire, I am saddened by the truncated playing time. One of the best things about Monopoly was that it could go on forever. We would even toss out the rules to keep people in the game, with under the table (or, more likely, blanket) loans, debt forgiveness, and barter.

What a shame that kids are so time-crunched and attention-challenged that they don’t have a couple of hours to wile away playing a board game.

And, while on the subject of playing games, I don’t remember ever being crushed by defeat or thrilled by victory. Even as an eight year old, we knew that this was a fun but essentially meaningless game, a fun thing to do with your friends.

Kath covered the essential story line but, because she hopped on it so early-on, she did report that that Jail and Go To Jail had been removed from the Empire version. Which would have been a colossal mistake, given that so very many empire-builders end up in the hoosegow – have we already forgotten Jeff Skilling and Bernie Madoff? Anyway, the Wall Street Journal had erroneously reported the No To Jail idiocy but, as it turned out, later media outlets pressed Hasbro on the matter, and it does, indeed remain. (Phew!)

Of course, there is no more “Do Not Collect Two Hundred Dollars.”

Such a paltry amount would mean nothing to today’s gamers, or nothing more than their allowance. No, today you collect “Tower Value”, which I guess is tied to how big your tower – built by acquiring brands – is. Which, if this is the case, is one more negative.

In the more egalitarian, Depression-era version we grew up playing, there were certainly haves – hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk – and have-nots – a couple of measly green houses on Baltic – but all players were created equal when they rounded Go.

But here the goal is empire-building, and why not have the rich get richer. Isn’t this far more true to life?

By the way, that empire-building involves acquiring brands and stacking them up in your tower, and:

Watch(ing) the Monopoly Empire towers rise and fall

…And how much fun will you have watching those towers rise and fall? Lots, I'll bet, since you are probably too young to equate towers falling with the fruits of jihad. (This is Kath again.)

To add to the general detestability of Monopoly Empire are the game tokes:

• A bottle of Coca Cola
• A Ducati bike
• An Xbox controller
• A Corvette car
• McDonald's fries
• A Paramount director's board

Which are, of course, all branded, not to mention that hideous platinum color…

But what, pray tell, would today’s kids make of the tokens-of-yore, which were already a bit butter-churny dated by the 1950’s and 1960’s. That high-button shoe?  The flat iron? The thimble? (I had, until Kath mentioned it, forgotten that “unless you owned the Monopoly set, you were never ever in a million billion years going to get to use the Scottie dog or the
racing car.” I was definitely a Scottie girl.)

Here’s the product description from Hasbro’s site:

Buy your favorite brands one by one and slide their billboards onto your Empire tower: the game is a race to the top! Collect rent from your rivals based on your tower height. And be the first player to fill your tower with billboards to win!

With the Monopoly Empire game, you can own some of the biggest brands in the world! Every space on the board is an iconic brand, including Xbox, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Samsung! Splash your Monopoly cash to build your Empire tower as high as it can go. You'll need to make tough decisions and smart moves to take down the competition and be the first to reach the top. Hit the big time and own the world's top brands with the Monopoly Empire game!

That’s right kids, start making those touch decisions and smart moves – and do it in lightning speed-dating time. Top of the world, Ma!

Blecchhhh…..