Author: Daniel Lieberman

“I wasn’t a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie.”

—Veronica Lake, American actress, born November 14, 1919

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The paradoxes and contradictions of the star system and celebrity culture exact an enormous human cost on everyone. Non-celebrities who buy into its mythologies pay the price in endless dissatisfaction exploited by ruthless advertisers and lives distorted or wrecked by emulation of the stars with whom they’re on a pathetic first-name basis. As for the gods and goddesses of our ignoble myths, they don’t seem to enjoy their divinity as much as you might expect. I’m sure Dante could have found a choice spot in Hell for the people who make and live off this system.

Continue reading “Stars and Monkeys”

“It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It’s wrong.”

—Saul Kripke, American philosopher, born November 13, 1940

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We’ve been participating in Paul Silva’s Lean Launchpad class at Click Workspace this fall. Lean Launchpad is a rigorous, proven methodology for startup businesses developed by tech entrepreneur Steve Blank. The fundamental insight of LL is that startups are different from established businesses. Startups must above all be dedicated to learning. They need to formulate hypotheses about our markets and products and most importantly, “get out of the building” and test them by talking to real-live customers and partners. It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun, and the teams in the program have come a long way over the course of the last couple of months. Contact Click Workspace to learn more about the next Lean Launchpad class starting February 2014.

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On the subject of Lean Launchpad, InCommN wants to talk as many real-live potential customers as we can. (There’s a class contest with a prize of a bottle of wine for the team with the most interviews which we’d really like to win next week, so please help us out!) We’ve built a brief survey to test our current hypothesis which we invite you to participate in. Here’s what we’re testing right now:

1. Businesses need advice and connections to grow, get out of trouble, or prepare for a successful exit.
2. Businesses are not satisfied with the advice and connections on offer.

The survey takes about twenty minutes, and everybody we’ve talked to had fun doing it (buying them coffee may have helped in some cases). If you’d like to participate please contact Rick Feldman, Daniel Lieberman, or Rick Plaut. All information is confidential, of course. We can meet you for coffee (like I said, we’re buying), or we can do it by phone.

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Go read about how Valley Girl uptalk (“A manner of speaking in which declarative sentences are uttered with a rising intonation as though they were questions. () may have gotten started in California. If you have time, listen to the interview Woodie Guthrie did with Alan Lomax about his early life in Oklahoma. Also, I had never seen uptalk, annoying as it is, described as the “moronic interrogative” before.

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Today and Tomorrow in #westernma

WEDNESDAY	11/13
7:15-8:00AM	Holyoke	Chicopee Chamber November Salute Breakfast
3:30-5:00PM	Berkshire TBA	Free Information for Small Businesses to Start and Grow
4:00-7:00PM	Pittsfield	Berkshire Chamber 2013 Business-to-Business Showcase
5:00-7:00PM	Springfield	November 2013 Springfield Chamber After 5
5:00-7:00PM	Southwick	Westnet
5:15-7:30PM	Springfield	Valley Venture Mentors
THURSDAY	11/14
9:30AM-12:30PM	Amherst	Business Plan Basics
12:00-1:30PM	Northampton	Click Workspace Brown Bag Luncheon
12:00-2:00PM	Holyoke	Don’t Eat Lunch Alone
5:00PM	Northampton	Northampton Area Young Professionals November Networking Social

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Reading

Woodie Guthrie and Valley Girls?
“…American ”uptalk“, stereotypically associated with Californian ”Valley Girls“ in the 1980s, might in fact have originated with the characteristically rising intonational patterns of northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, by way of the Scots-Irish immigrants who migrated to California in the 1930s Dust Bowl exodus….”
Okie Uptalk

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The Last Word

“Nothing like a little judicious levity.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer, born November 13, 1850

“We were hunter-gatherers of information, and we moved from that to becoming farmers and cultivators of information.”

—J.P. Rangaswami, Indian businessman, born November 12, 1957

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Ten World-Changing Consequences of World War I

If you get to know me, you’ll discover eventually that I never get tired of talking about World War I.

1. The word “souvenir” (French for a keepsake or memento) enters the English language.
2. The United States decisively enters its career as a Great Power.
3. The Bolshevik Revolution ushers in the long nightmare of Soviet Communism.
4. Poison Gas. See The Day the War Stopped.
5. Tanks. The memory of the stalemate on the Western Front leads to the development of new tactics emphasizing armor and mobility (blitzkrieg). Some of the greatest battles of World War II saw thousands of tanks deployed.
6. Air Warfare. See 5. The First War saw the rise of tactical airpower, and some tentative exploration of strategic air warfare, which will reach its dreadful apotheosis in the Second War.
7. Prohibition in the United States, leading to the rise of Organized Crime. You’d think they might have learned something before they started the War On Drugs, which has not done much for American democracy, especially in the civil liberties area.
8. Hollywood domination of the world film industry. There were strong, creative film industries in Scandinavia, German, England, France, and Italy before the First War. The American film industry emerged as the 800 pound gorilla, and has never relinquished its lead.
9. The Spanish Flu pandemic. It infected 500 million people across the world, and killed 50 to 100 million of them (3 to 5 percent of the world’s population). Beating out the war, which “only” killed about 17 million (10 million military and 7 million civilians).
10. Mass Propaganda which developed into Mass Advertising in the 1920s. Go read about Sigmund Freud’s clever nephew, Edward Bernays, who worked for the Committee on Public Information in the Wilson Administration during the war, and was immensely influential in Public Relations and Advertising well into the 20th century. Continue reading “Souvenirs”

“Live with your century; but do not be its creature.”

—Friedrich Schiller, German dramatist, born November 10, 1759

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Remember

The last World War I veteran died last year. 2014 will mark the centenary of the “war to end all wars,” “the Great War,” “the War to make the world safe for democracy.” Today, now called Veteran’s Day, began as Armistice Day. The Armistice was declared at 11:00AM on November 11, 1918.

When you study the history of the 20th century, you learn that in some respects World War I never did end. (See World War II, the Cold War, etc.) The reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990 might be a place to draw the line, or the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991 could be called one. Then, of course, you have to consider the Wars of Succession in Former Yugoslavia, where it all started in 1914, and so on.

Continue reading “The Day the War Stopped”

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”

—Will Durant, American historian, born November 5, 1885

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“Sciences” like economics, sociology, psychology, and history are notoriously squishy, compared to the big dogs like physics or mathematics. Biology began the transition with the theory of evolution, and decisively crossed over with the development of genetics, culminating in the triumph of the discovery of DNA.

The traditional problem for the wimpy social sciences is that you can’t really do experiments on the scale that would be required for rigor. Testing some of the things that we would like to know would be flatly immoral. Raising a child in complete isolation, for instance. Other phenomena were simply too hard to study before the recent availability of massive amounts of “perfectly accurate” data from the internet.

Continue reading “Social Science Growing Up”

“Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen mister, no man alive can throw any harder than Smokey Joe Wood.”

—Walter Johnson, American athlete, born November 6, 1887

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Congratulations to all the Red Sox fans out there!

Walter “The Big Train” Johnson was the hardest-throwing pitcher of his era (with the exception of Smokey Joe, evidently), was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and is still considered one of the greatest players of all time.

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Middle-class mean-spiritedness and condescension make being poor even more awful than it already is. Besides, the putative unworthiness of the poor gives the privileged cover to have the governments they control push ever more income upward in the guise of rewarding “job creators.” Income distribution in 21st century America is more unequal than it was in Ancient Rome. What could go wrong?

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “American humorist Kin Hubbard said , ”It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be“ in ”Slaughterhouse-Five.” This piece from Talking Points Memo is written from the perspective of somebody who understands the nature of social signaling and is too smart to leave it to rich people.

Continue reading “A Good Appearance Is a Tacit Recommendation”

“Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.”

—John B. S. Haldane, British scientist, born November 5, 1892

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I remembered Haldane’s quip from Richard Dawkins’ classic The Selfish Gene, 1976. (If you haven’t read it, the usual run-don’t-walk directive is in force. My hair is still on fire.) The quote wittily points to a genetic explanation for altruism: human beings evolved in a world of small groups, Dunbar number (160) sized or so, and being my brothers’ or—cousins’—keeper benefits my genes. Point is, we are animals, not angels. We are parts of natural systems and we need to seek Truth in science, not metaphysics. Darwin and Nietzsche are smiling, somewhere…

Continue reading “Dunbar, Dawkins, Darwin, Desmond”

“The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but a stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich.”

—Stephen J. Field, American judge, born November 4, 1816

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Reuben, Reuben, I’ve Been Thinkin’

Ha. That’ll be the day. Stephen J. Field, appointed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, was one of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century US Supreme Court justices who were endlessly helpful to the Robber Baron capitalists during the first Gilded Age (the one before the one we’re enjoying so much now). Income Tax? We don’t need no stinkin’ Income Tax? Unions? See the quote. He also assented to Plessy vs Ferguson, the infamous 1896 case that upheld (legal) racial segregation. Field was the second-longest serving Supreme Court justice, only surpassed by William O. Douglas. He was repeatedly asked to resign by his colleagues, as he was intermittently senile in his later years, but he refused, insisting on breaking John Marshall’s record of thirty-three years on the court.

President James K. Polk annexed Texas and led the US to victory in the iniquitous Mexican War. He gets the Last Word today. Polk was the “54–40 or fight” guy, too, dear to generations of American schoolchildren. He has been called the “least known consequential president” of the United States. Tremble indeed.

Continue reading “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?”

“The news is the one thing the networks can point to with pride. Everything else they do is crap, and they know it.”

—Fred W. Friendly, American producer, born October 30, 1915

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And Then There Were None

Love this quote from Fred Friendly; kind of says it all about American media. I imagine the shameless hucksters and ideologues who are now running TV news continue “to point with pride” at their industry. Or worse, they may not give a shit at all.

Continue reading “Fred Friendly Turns in His Grave”

“A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn’t waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks.”

—Frans de Waal, Dutch scientist, born October 29, 1948

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I grew up in the LP era. On the good side, the experience included wonderful sound (some people think analog LPs sound better than digital recordings). The record companies churned out reissues of historical recordings, folk music (real folk music recorded in the field and performed by real folk as well as the works of Bob Dylan and his myriad imitators), classical Indian and Japanese music, Pardon My Blooper Records, comedy, recorded theater (I’m still looking for the recording of “Waiting For Godot” with Bert Lahr)…A 12 x 12 inch cardboad album cover provided plenty of room for visual pizazz on the front and for informative, interesting, or frankly bizarre written and visual content on the back.

Continue reading “You Paid How Much for Speakers?”