Month: December 2013

“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.”

—Walt Disney, American cartoonist, born December 5, 1901

As well he might. Mickey was very good to Walt Disney.

Disney the corporation is perhaps the greatest example of what I call “cultural cancer.” I mean the endless mixing and mutation of literary and visual arts so that the end product is an undifferentiated, timeless mass of “entertainment,” without any possibility of making fine cultural distinctions or understanding the history of ideas. Please do not get me started on the strange effect any approach to the end of the Mickey Mouse copyright has on the United States Congress.

Continue reading “Mickey Mouse and the Jade Rabbit”

“I am responsible only to God and history.” —Francisco Franco, Spanish leader, born December 4, 1892

Fear men like Francisco Franco who are on intimate terms with God and history.

We graduated from the Lean Launchpad Pioneer Valley Fall 2013 at Click Workspace last night. We learned a lot and had a great time during the last twelve weeks. Congratulations to Andy Wollner of uChampion, Dan Nelson of Food on a Truck and Randall Smith of receive.ly. We look forward to hearing more about their fantastic startups.

Many thanks to Paul Silva for getting this up and running, and to Rick Feldman, Jim Mumm, Thom Fox, Joe Gensheimer, and everyone else who helped out. There will be a new session of the Lean Launchpad Pioneer Valley starting in February 2014. Get more info and sign up for the course; you won’t regret it.

We’ve found it pretty hard to actually sell stuff with Facebook Ads. The sweet spot we’ve found is to use FB Ads to attract people to an active, fun Fan Page that appeals to their interests. A Fan Page Like is a pretty direct channel to communicate with actual or potential customers, with lots of opportunity to bring them back to the brand’s website. Here’s a case study of the most successful FB ad campaign we’ve ever run. Crazy Orchid Lady Facebook Campaign

And indeed, as John Phillip Sousa worries in this somewhat overwrought piece about the threat to American civilization of then-new (1906) technologies of recorded music, what of the national chest?

Today and Tomorrow in #westernma

Reading

“Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?”

“Sweeping across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats, political war cries or popular novels, comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song or play for us a piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul. Only by harking back to the day of the roller skate or the bicycle craze, when sports of admitted utility ran to extravagance and virtual madness, can we find a parallel to the way in which these ingenious instruments have invaded every community in the land. And if we turn from this comparison in pure mechanics to another which may fairly claim a similar proportion of music in its soul, we may observe the English sparrow, which, introduced and welcomed in all innocence, lost no time in multiplying itself to the dignity of a pest, to the destruction of numberless native song birds, and the invariable regret of those who did not stop to think in time….

“It cannot be denied that the owners and inventors have shown wonderful aggressiveness and ingenuity in developing and exploiting these remarkable devices. Their mechanism has been steadily and marvelously improved, and they have come into very extensive use. And it must be admitted that where families lack time or inclination to acquire musical technic, and to hear public performances, the best of these machines supply a certain amount of satisfaction and pleasure….

“When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?”

John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” 1906

The Last Word

“A lawyer’s dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.”

—Samuel Butler, British poet, born December 4, 1835

“Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?”

—Sir Rowland Hill, English inventor, born December 3, 1795

I couldn’t remember who Sir Rowland was, so I looked him up. He was an educational innovator early in his career, but his greatest work was done in postal reform. Hill transformed a hodge-podge of private services, expensive and poorly managed, into a cheap, fast, efficient communications medium for a society in rapid industrial and commercial development. He received a two-year contract to run the new British Post Office in 1839, and proceeded to lower the cost of a half-ounce of mail first to four pence (about $2.00 in today’s money), and the next year to one penny (about 50 cents). The new penny post was a tremendous success, and served as a model for the rest of the world. We’re at the far end of Hill’s revolution, and “snail mail” seems hopelessly out of date to us, but it was a crucial piece of the development of the modern world.

Continue reading “When Snail Mail Was State of the Art”

“Everyone carries around his own monsters.”

—Richard Pryor, American actor, born December 1, 1940

Interesting piece about the often-repeated story of the automobile saving late nineteenth-early twentieth century cities from drowning in a sea of horse manure. The story is not quite as simple as it’s usually told: cars didn’t become very common until much later, streetcars were an important element, and long-established patterns of street use had to be changed by elaborate propaganda campaigns dedicate to reshaping them. For example, “jaywalking” was invented in the 1910s: only rubes from the country (“jay” is a synonym for “rube”) would do something so naïve as to use the street, now devoted to the automobile, incorrectly.

Continue reading “If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride”