Assorted Afflatuses

When I signed up for facebook a little over a year ago, I had two complaints.

First, as a constant advocate for the active voice, I could hardly contain my rage to see facebook restricted my facebook Status to the verb, "to be." To be ranks, at least in my mind, as one of the most dull verbs in existence. A very useful verb, to be sure, but quite dull. I mean, "Bob is thinking the sky looks amazing," sound a lot more kludgey than, "Bob thinks the sky looks amazing." Fortunately for me, and for the ghosts of William Strunk and E. B. White, the facebook folks changed that. I can now list my status as, "Joseph bangs his head against the wall in frustration."

Second, facebook seems to have failed, at least in a grammatical sense, in its efforts to remove gender bias from certain elements of the site. Whenever a user changes some element his Profile, for example, facebook's magic feed-generator slips a little notice, such as, "Joseph added 'Alphabeat' to his favorite music," into my "News Feed."

Sometimes, this is not a grammatical problem. When users have specified their gender, facebook generates a grammatically correct sentence: "Sean added 'Casablanca' to his favorite movies" or "Gwen added 'L'Amant' to her favorite books." But, when the user, out of cowardice, laziness or indecision, leaves the gender box blank, facebook spits out a message such as: "Elizabeth removed 'skiing into trees' from their activities."

I suppose the previous sentence could be correct, if Elizabeth were a team, organization or some other multi-person group or organization. Suffice to say, however, "Elizabeth" usually refers to a single person. As such, it needs a singular pronoun! "Elizabeth removed 'skiing into trees' from his or her activities," would work, and it serves as a gentle reminder to users to step off the fence and declare a gender.

Services like instant messaging and text messaging have done a lot to degrade language, though mostly through their technical constraints. When a message must contain no more than 120 characters, people must make sacrifices. Facebook, however, has none of these technical constraints, and, more grating still, it actively reinforces an error many people already make — substituting "their" for "his or her" — as correct and acceptable. The facebook team, though, deserves kudos for changing the status options. It makes my life read as much less static.

For the last year or so, I have made a concerted effort to buy goods produced in the "industrialized world" whenever possible. My logic being that a scarf woven in Scotland of Scottish wool, while warm, soft and generally wonderful, also reduces my impact on the lives of others. Scotland, after all, has a well-developed, regulated economy that tries its best to ensure workers receive adequate wages, people have access to medical care and the environment does not suffer too greatly at the hands of industry.

Bangledesh, on the other hand, where other wool becomes scarves, does not offer these benefits. Workers toil day in and day out for small sums of money, citizens have little or no access to high-quality medical care and industry has far more scope to exact whatever cruelty it wishes on the environment.

Of course, the reduced environmental and social impact of the Scottish scarf comes at a relatively huge cost to me, the consumer. While someone could buy a warm, soft, well-designed scarf for, say, $20 at Macy's, or some such establishment, that same person could also spend, say, $100 for a Scottish number, in the hope of reducing the social and environmental impact of the purchase.

So I thought.

I just finished reading Jeff Scahs' excellent book, The End of Povery. While Sachs may be one of the world's foremost economists, as the title of his book suggests, he wants everyone — not just people in the developed world — to be happy, healthy and wealthy.

Yet, according to Sachs, those huge textile manufacturing operations in Bangledesh where workers earn next to nothing are the key to Bangladeshis escaping poverty. He notes that every nation — with the possible exception of India — who has already eliminated extreme poverty, or is currently making good headway toward that goal, has begun with cheap textile production. With relatively higher wages, workers can save more. With the skills learned in the factories, workers enter the modern world with usable skills. Eventually, as we see today in China, people begin to move up the economic ladder.

So we arrive at American Apparel. I have never really liked the company, though for all the wrong reasons. Their CEO is just too weird. Brilliant at doing business — the American Apparel concept is golden — but he is really weird.

Now, however, I have a firm basis for my opposition to the company. In some sense, American Apparel is to the United States' poor as the giant, nameless textile plant is to the Bangladeshis. The American Apparel employees earn relatively meager wages, though higher wages than they might earn elsewhere, and the company provides educational programs for employees.

But the United States is not Bangledesh. As Sachs notes in his book, the increase in the Bangladeshi savings rate has a huge impact, not because, with more money in the bank people in Bangladesh can suddenly afford computes, but rather because it enables the children of those textile workers to go to school. American children receive that benefit free of charge.

No, the kinds of inner-city schools where many of those American children will learn are not the world's foremost centers of primary and secondary education. Nevertheless, I would venture a guess that those schools are a lot better than the average school in Bangladesh.

I have no doubt American Apparel has improved the lives of some needy people. Yet I see a greater need in places like Indonesia, where poverty means a lack of potable water, not a government subsidized apartment and cable television. I will probably continue to buy scarves made in Scotland, not least because Scottish scarves is a marvelous alliteration. I will not, however, feel quite as guilty about the iPhone manufactured in China.

On Friday evening, as I opened my web browser to Amazon.com to check the status of a shipment, I noticed a new banner on the homepage. Amazon.com, it seems, paid nearly $4 million to obtain the only publicly-available copy of Joanne Rowling's Tales of the Beetle Bard at a Sotheby's auction on 13 December.

I, for one, never understood why Ms. Rowling limited the distribution of the Tales to the handful of copies she bequeathed to people deeply connected with the Potter series, in addition to the one copy sold at auction for the benefit of a children's charity. Had her goal been to raise money for children in need, she could have easily arranged something with her publisher. A one-time $4 million donation from Amazon.com will doubtlessly do a great deal of good, but Ms. Rowling could do far more by donating the royalties earned from a publicly available printing.

The restricted distribution of the Tales also seemed a rather cruel act coming from such a benevolent person. I have no doubt that every Harry Potter fanatic would love to take in every word on each of the Tales's 157 pages. By confirming the existence of the book and denying all but a few people access, Ms. Rowling disappointed many.

Fortunately, though, Amazon.com — not a narcissistic, reclusive rare book collector — purchased the one copy available to members of the public with the purchasing power to acquire a $4 million book. Employees of the Seattle-based retailer have also confirmed that the company will take their copy of Tales of the Beedle Bard on a book tour to libraries across the United States.

But, when I gave the matter more thought, I realized the lunacy of the situation. Amazon.com paid four million dollars for a book! Few volumes have ever fetched such huge sums at auction. An original Guttenberg Bible or a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio might garner a $5 million bid, but the average rare book — a first edition of Joyce's Ulysses or Dickens's Oilver Twist — would only muster $20 or $30 thousand, even if it were in mint condition with the original dust jacket. In fact, the expert appraisers and auctioneers at Sotheby's only expected Tales of the Beedle Bard to fetch $100,000, which, in and of itself, would have been an exceptional price.

I enjoyed Harry Potter as much as the next person, and I think its remarkable popularity has earned it a special place in the history of literature. Putting a derivative work on the level of Shakespeare, however, is absolutely outrageous.

But what do I know? Perhaps, 2,000 years from now, Nad Umber will pen The Potter Prophecy, a mystery-thriller about a lost manuscript that casts doubts onto accepted religious beliefs.

Christmas — whoops, "holiday" — music tends to make me sick. Hearing the same overly treacly lyrics and conspicuously upbeat music over and over at every turn should make anyone sick. (Even when Frosty is on the brink of a meltdown, the song stays in major!) But, for whatever reasons, as soon as Thanksgiving has ended and people begin eating turkey sandwiches for a month, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer rears its obnoxious head. Or, in the case of Costco, the ballads and dancing Santa displays come out in August.

Nonetheless, at my family's behest, I began looking for some cheerful holiday music to play on the piano to spare them from the usual classical and jazz compositions I play. Trying to find something tasteful, or, at the very least, not overplayed, posed something of a challenge. After a few hours of auditioning songs in iTunes, though, I stumbled upon the only Christmas album I genuinely enjoy listening to: Lee Mendleson and Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Thrilled at my discovery, I rushed to sheetmusicdirect.us — my favorite source for downloadable compositions — and bought a few pieces from the Charlie Brown songbook.

Whatever the difficulty label may have said to the contrary, playing "Christmas Time is Here" is no walk in the park. I could not play some of the chords, like the C13 that requires the player to stretch his or her hand an eleventh from C to E flat.

Fast forward a day or two to this morning. Reading The New York Times Magazine, I came across this article about the Guitar Hero-Rock Band phenomenon sweeping the United States. I have never understood why someone would rather pick up a dinky plastic guitar-cum-game console controller and press a series of multicolored buttons instead of picking up a real guitar and playing real music.

Of all the impossible, fantastic places a video game could take a person, the land of Playing a Guitar seems very unimaginative. It is not legal to carry a machine gun through a deserted part of the American heartland and engage friends in a kill-to-win game of tag, nor is it possible for a plumber to fly through interstellar space and engage whimsical robots in an intergalactic epée. On the other hand, guitars of questionable quality can be found at any big box retailer.

But, as I continued to contemplate "Guitar Hero," I realized that it can and does take people somewhere they would not ordinarily go: to a place where they can play the guitar.

I find it incredibly depressing to think that a sizable chunk my fellow countrymen have grown so tired of physical and mental exertion that they must now resort to a simplified method of playing the guitar. I cannot play the instrument, but given the relative simplicity of most popular music — like the rock and roll anthems immortalized in Guitar Hero — I doubt it could be that taxing for the body or the mind to play on the guitar.

It seems to me like attaching a gyroscopic stabilization system and a motor to a bicycle with training wheels.

Of course, some people will probably write me angry emails asking me why I have never made the same statements about other "simulation" games, like Madden NFL of NBA Live.

Those games, however — unlike Guitar Hero or Rock Band — take the player somewhere fantastic. Few people ever have the chance to play football for the NFL or manage a professional basketball team. But anyone with an instrument and a desire to learn can play a rock song. Even The Sims — in which players do nothing more than tell simulated people whether or not to laugh at another character's joke — allows a person to transcend reality and live life as a werewolf or a crazy cat lady.

Sorry Lou Dobbs. We need to mend our broken minds before we even begin to contemplate (if indeed we would even dare do that before taking action) our broken borders. Some have compared our current era to the Dark Ages, with people questioning sound science — intelligent design, anyone? — and demanding our politicians provide easy-to-comprehend sound bites. If people require their music spoon-fed to them via a series of multicolored dots, I may be inclined to agree. For my part, though, I will go back to the ivories and try to master "Christmas Time is Here."

Nigella Lawson — the slightly hipper, more down-to-earth British equivalent of our Martha Stewart — has long been mocked for using uncommon ingredients in her recipes, among other peculiarities. (This article from the Guardian does a particularly good job). Granted, I tend to watch Nigella Express more to hear how she communicates than anything else. Ms. Lawson has a preternatural ability to extemporaneously devise incredibly witty phrases. Or, perhaps, she simply has a very good team of writers and an excellent cue card holder.

But back to the ingredients. On this week's episode, for her ice cream cake, Ms. Lawson made use of some newfangled chocolate-peanut butter swirl chips from Nestlé's American Toll House subsidiary. According to her, the chocolate-peanut butter chips have come to market so recently that one cannot purchase them anywhere in the United Kingdom, save the Internet.

Something about that proclamation impelled me to do a little research and, after a few minutes of sleuthing, I stumbled upon VeryBestBaking.com, the online home of Nestlé's US food products branch. I clicked on the "Toll House" page and, lo and behold, there were the "all-new" swirled chocolate-peanut butter morsels.

Having tracked down the hybrid morsels, my curiosity led me to investigate Ms. Lawson's claim that the somewhat off-putting mixed chips could not be found in the UK. But before I managed to track down the Nestlé page for the UK, I stumbled upon the French food products, at nestle.fr.

The difference French and American websites speaks to what is wrong with American diets. Visitors to VeryBestBaking.com can select from a wide variety of absolutely revolting recipes, ranging from Tuna Casserole — complete with condensed cream of mushroom soup and a potato chip topping — to a baked Dijon Chicken that would make someone in Dijon very sick and very unhealthy. On the other hand, Nestle.fr features dishes like pan-seared salmon with potato gratin and hazelnut-pancetta-Mimolette risotto. Delicious!

Before people have liposuction or a gastric bypass, they might consider spending a little more time in the kitchen, preparing real food, instead of loafing on the couch and eating some disgusting pile of sludge that took five fewer minutes to prepare. Pharmaceutical and medical research dollars ought to go towards something that might make a real difference, like cancer research, not an effort to find a fix for a problem that already has a solution.

As I write this, I am watching the second half-hour of some absolutely ridiculous self-help program on Rupert Murdoch's new Fox Business Network. I hate to sound patrician or snobbish, but I can only describe the Fox Business Network as the "low-rent" version of CNBC. Candy coated, easily to digest business news for the flag waving set, one might say.

Their 5 PM programming epitomizes the difference between the two networks' philosophies. At the same time the Fox Business Network airs its peculiar self-help program, CNBC is airing "Fast Money." Put concisely: two shows, one time, worlds apart.

Whereas Fast Money features a panel of four or five investment gurus, the Dave Ramsey Show (as I just discovered this strange program is called) features one somewhat overweight pundit who barks out advice to his audience. And, while Dave Ramsey groans on about the best way to eat an elephant — as some kind of perverse metaphor for escaping from credit card debt — the folks on CNBC are probably discussing the best way to put $10,000 of disposable income into a risky, but potentially rewarding stock.

This must be what Mr. Murdoch and the network's executives meant when they said the Fox Business Network would make business news "more accessible." Instead of providing business-related investment advice to the tiny group of people who have tens of thousands of dollars to invest for fun, Fox Business offers helpful hints to the growing segment of America's population in serious debt. Very attractive.

Network executives also like to say Fox Business is not "CNBC-lite." Nevertheless, the style employed by the Fox Business Network makes me think more of its sister channel — the Fox News Channel — than it makes me think of CNBC.

Like its sibling, Fox Business features lots of gold and red, as if to put its viewers into a state of readiness for some vaguely threatening disaster. The Fox Business Network also seems to enjoy featuring headlines with a decidedly sensationalist flavor. "More Treats, But Fewer Seats: Who Pays?" reads one about trends in the entertainment industry. "CEOs with Extreme Hobbies Should Give Investors Pause," proclaims another. It makes me think that business scandals will take root on Fox Business the same way strange stories about lost spouses and missing children eat up time on FNC.

Unlike its sister network, however, the Fox Business Channel does not have a niche to fill. When Mr. Murdoch and his ally Roger Ailes launched the News Channel in 1996, the Fox News Channel captured viewers who considered MSNBC and CNN too élite or simply craved news that could be called (perhaps undeservingly) "patriotic." But a business channel caters to people who do business. And, as far as I can tell, CNBC is the most pro-business network on air. Each and every one of their anchors and pundits has a very pro-trade, anti-tax ethos.

Alas, I see the Fox Business Network succumbing to the same fate as TimeWarner's failed CNN Financial Network. Their programming tackles rather mundane and unimportant topics, rather than focusing on subjects that impact people who do business. Instead of adopting a clean, corporate, business-oriented editorial philosophy, the folks at Fox Business have chosen to take the more Joseph Pulitzer-esque sensationalist route. And, most importantly, the Fox Business network has no niche to fill. I give it two years, at the most.

Green products and services have come a long way. In 2001, when Toyota introduced America to the Prius, it was necessary for a New York Times article to help readers pronounce the name of the then-unknown quantity. Six year later, home design magazines and blogs have gone so far as to declare that, "green is becoming the new neutral color for home decor," as one GreenDaily.com blogger put it.

But, in its journey from niche-market to mass-market, a radical change has taken place in the world of green products. Unlike the Prius die-hards who immediately sought to purchase the first mass-produced hybrid gasoline-electric car in 2001, the Prius buyer of 2007 views the car more as the automotive equivalent of a Fendi clutch than as an instrument of social and environmental change. Today people buy green, think green and do green to be "Eco-Chic."

Solar power firms regularly outfit the curb-facing gables of drab suburban McMansions with a smattering of cells. Celebrated handbag designer Anya Hindmarch launched the "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" tote bag — a white leather tote emblazoned with the aforementioned phrase in highly conspicuous brown script — to great success. Even NetJets Europe, the company that pioneered the idea of fractional private jet ownership, has announced plans to be "carbon-neutral" by 2012.

It is fitting to see the same forces that popularized the gas-guzzling Chevrolet Suburban ignite sales of more environmentally-friendly vehicles, like the Toyota Prius. At the same time, however, I cannot help but wonder whether the Eco-Chic phenomenon detracts from the true goal of green products and services.

After all, it would be far more environmentally sound for someone to travel aboard a commercial jet than to charter their own Glufstream V through NetJets, regardless of whatever "carbon-offsets" NetJets intends to offer. And the idea that a leather tote bag — which requires a cow to be raised, killed and skinned before the hide is treated, dyed and fashioned into a bag — has less of a carbon footprint than one two-gram plastic shopping bag seems perfectly ludicrous.

I have no complaints that the environmentally-sound practices of 7 for All Mankind and Paul Smith add a touch of Eco-Chic to my wardrobe. But people should think of the environment first and their vanity second. Offsetting a flight from Dallas to Milan on a private jet with the purchase of an acre of protected wildness still dumps an extra ton or two of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere.

After a successful first day, I had adopted a very sanguine forecast for my Facebook advertisements. Then the weekend arrived. On Friday Facebook gave me over 30,000 impressions, a solid dozen of which were clicked on by users. Strictly speaking that makes for a dismal click-through rate of about 0.024 per cent, but considering the fact that Facebook displays my ad to the entire country, 0.024 seems a reasonably good rate. Saturday, however, proved less successful, with only 3,000 impressions and not a single click-through. Today does not look fantastic either, with only 2,100 served so far.

When first I saw those statistics, I reasoned that the drop off in impressions stemmed from a sharp decline in Facebook usage during the weekend. That prognostication, though, was without any evidence. So, I set about running a few Google searches.

I never found a dossier or white paper detailing the day-to-day usage patterns of Facebook users, but I did find a very interesting informal study written by a PhD student that examined Facebook trends at his college. Among his finds, the vast majority of Facebook users who categorized themselves as "liberal" considered Harry Potter their favorite book, whereas those who called themselves "conservative" listed the Bible as their favorite. It also seemed telling that the self-described liberals tended to list George Orwell's 1984 as a favorite, while the celebrated dystopian novel did not even make it into the top ten among self-labeled conservatives.

Also according to the study, the Facebook users surveyed were less likely to share their academic concentration than their relationship status. The former strikes me as far less personal or revealing than the latter.

All in all, an interesting read for anyone with any interest in Facebook trends.

All the hubbub surrounding shoddy manufacturing in China, whose latest twist saw a New York Times reporter trapped in a toy factory, has reminded me not to stray from my goal to emphasize quality over quantity. Admittedly, I do have a difficult time sticking to that principle in the realm of gadgets and gizmos, but I like to think that my zealous adherence to the quality over quantity credo in every other aspect of my life compensates, at least a little. So, to keep the spirit of quality alive and well, I present my ten favorite purveyors and manufacturers of high-quality goods. Granted, their products probably cost more than similar wares from less quality-centric manufacturers, and this list is highly capricious. But one must remember that these products will likely last far longer than some inexpensive Chinese knockoff. And the list's volatility does not, in any way, dilute the quality of these manufacturer's goods.

1. LEGO Toys
   The iconic plastic building blocks adored by everyone from children to engineers (and manufactured in Europe to boot)
2. Designer Furniture from Design Within Reach
   An American chain specializing in beautiful, well-designed and functional modern furniture
3. Muji
   Purveyor of everything from diaries to dinnerware who stresses quality and simplicity above all else by making excellent use of materials and minimizing waste
4. Uniqlo
   A Japanese clothing brand which has earned a reputation for making simple, high quality basics at very reasonable prices
5. 7 for All Mankind
   A brand instantly recognized from Seattle to Strasbourg; expensive, yes, but you get what you pay for, as the old adage goes
6. Waterman Pens and Pencils
   Superb French-manufactured fountain pens at a variety of prices
7. Room & Board Furniture
   More classic than contemporary, with lots of pieces that can be tailored to specific demands
8. Knopf Everyman's Library Books
   Well-made, well-bound hardcovers to be read again and again of the world's most notable literary works to round out any bibliophile's collection
9. Caran D'Ache Pens and Pencils
   High-end, but extremely high-quality Swiss manufactured pens and pencils
10. MoMa Design Store
    Furniture, artwork and household goods from world-renowned designers; some pieces come directly from the art museum itself

Apparently, the design-blind folks at Crocs incorporated have decided to make life on Earth even more unpleasant. In a press release on 27 August, they announced the impending release of their apparel line, which, according to the press release, will be available come October. The fact that a market exists for their hideous sandals is astonishing and depressing enough. The fact that a market exists for clothing made out of their proprietary resin, "Croslite," makes me consider buying property on the moon.

The Crocs people have also launched a series of absolutely idiotic advertisements modeled after Apple's PC and Mac campaign. But, as anyone who has watched the advertisements has realized, the cuddly, cute and Crocs-sporting character on the right looks even uglier than the extremely ugly uptight businessman on the left. What has our society come to?