It’s almost summer. Which presents a number of uniquely tropical problems in Townsville – when do you turn the aircon on? How cold do you set it? How do you keep mozzies out?
There’s a cool little collection of sleep related cartoons over here. Like this one:
Gerard Henderson typically annoys me. He’s from the Right Wing think tank the “Sydney Institute”. I don’t like him because despite agreeing with a lot of what he says, I think he sounds smug when he’s saying it.
His ivory tower takedown of Kyle Sandilands and his Megan Fox-esque grip on history and the significance of Hitler’s total evilness was right on the money. He points the finger of blame at needless comparisons to the Nazi overlord made by politicians. It really does lower the level of political conversation.Sadly it appears on the SMH website alongside a story featuring insidious current affairs styleIf some opinion leaders use ”Nazi” or ”fascist” or ”communist” to denigrate political opponents, is it any wonder some demonstrators in the US and shock jocks in Australia will follow their lead?
Hyperbole has become a way of getting noticed in the never-ending news cycle. Exaggerated comments about the applicability of totalitarianism to contemporary democracies get a run because so little is known about the suffering of the victims of Hitler and Stalin.
Not having children seems a high price to pay for having an infamous great-great-uncle. It occurs to me that I write about Hitler quite frequently. Or more specifically, I paradoxically write a lot about how writing or talking about Hitler is bad.“Analysing forgotten cigarette butts in a small village in lower Austria, a used paper serviette in a New York fast food restaurant and the seals of letters sent over 30 years ago from northern France, Marc Vermeeren and Jean-Paul Mulders said they had traced all known living relatives of the Fuehrer for the first time.”
“…”The American relatives have agreed not to have children to extinguish the saga of Hitler and stop living in fear, but have promised to publish a book before they die,” said Mulders.”
The second PR lesson we can learn from celebrities is courtesy of Kanye’s now infamous crashing of the stage at the MTV Awards. Stupid thing to do really.
The silver lining came from Beyonce – who Kanye was advocating for – when she showed how to act with grace, and class, and brought Taylor Swift back on stage. And now, Kanye has gone “viral” with spoofs already happening.There are lots of PR lessons we can learn from celebrities today. Firstly. Megan Fox has lived up to her name, biting the hand that feeds her. Or at least the hand that raised her from obscurity.
Director Michael Bay cast Fox in Transformers, and the starlet had some rather unkind words to say about him in a magazine. In her interview with a British magazine, Fox had said of Bay:“He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. “He has no social skills at all.”
Ouch. That isn’t very nice. Some of the crew responded with a letter via Michael Bay’s blog – which he contributes to, but clearly doesn’t run, because he pulled it a couple of days later and posted his apology.
I subscribe to Michael Bay’s blog with google reader – so it’s not completely lost to you. And the SMH has a story on the letter today. Here’s an excerpt.He granted her the starring role in Transformers, a franchise that forever changed her life; she became one of the most googled and oogled women on earth. … Wait a minute, two of us worked with Angelina – second thought – she’s no Angelina. …We know this quite intimately because we’ve had the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox on both Transformers movies. We’ve spent a total of 12 months on set making these two movies. We are in different departments; we can’t give our names because sadly doing so in Hollywood could lead to being banished from future Paramount work. We actually don’t think she knows who Hitler is by the way. But we wondered how she doesn’t realize what a disgusting, fully uneducated comment this was? Hopefully Michael will have Megatron squish her character in the first ten minutes of Transformers 3. We can tell you that will make the crew happy! …Nice. Firstly, let me say, Godwin’s law needs to be more widely broadcast – comparing anybody – particularly a movie director – to Hitler is just plain silly. Secondly, if you’re working in a close knit industry like Hollywood – or a regional area, or a city, or the Christian community – don’t bag out people who you’ve worked with. It’ll no doubt hurt you more than it hurts them.
The Internet is big. Remember those posts about what it would look like if you printed wikipedia – or just the featured articles.
Here are some infographics about what it would look like, and take, to print the whole shebang. Probably including my blog. It’s like, totally on the Internet man…
There are a couple more of those here.
I get a little bit sick of people (particularly colleagues) asking questions that a little bit of googling will help with.
Seriously. Who doesn’t ask google first? If you’re in this boat, then here’s a little passive aggressive tool I’ve been using lately – let me google that for you.
That’s right people. PR is important. It adds gloss. That’s why I have a job.
More New Maths gives a nice little equation.
By the same token:
optimism = realism + good PR person…
pessimism = realism – good PR person.
Bluetooth headsets make people look like idiots. Talking to thin air makes a man look crazy. Talking to your hand is only marginally better…
But that’s what these little ring things are going to do…
It’s just a concept at this stage…
“The color rings are an accessory for cell phones that are inspired in the gestural language of the use of the phone. It is conceived as an extension of the hand, which makes their use a more natural one, and more comfortable and more attractive as well. The rings are thought to be either an electronic component, or a fashion accessory. They were designed to be worn in the thumb and pinkie fingers, and work as a microphone and headset, respectively. These, interconnected wirelessly with the phone, allow responding calls only by separating the fingers and speaking, using distance sensors between rings to activate the call.”
Via the design blog.
It’s not surprising the lengths Mario fans will go to to pay homage to the Italian plumber. He is, afterall, the father of video games…
Making Mario with poker chips is one thing…
Making him with a Rubiks Cubes is slightly more impressive…
But with a display of coloured Pepsi boxes in a grocery store – that’s an entirely more awesome matter…
I’ve been playing around with my RSS settings. I broke a couple of things. But now they’re fixed. I think.
If you’d like to subscribe and you’ve been having issues recently with the “RSS” link on the site – now’s the time. It works. Hooray. Click here to update your feed.
Also, if you subscribe to any old versions of the feed you should probably change – the nathanintownsville domain expires in a month.
This meat tenderiser has a nice ring to it.
I remember growing radishes in school. They tasted ok fresh from the ground, but I’ve never really had cause to purchase them…
Until now.
How does the Wii work? I’m sure there’s all sorts of Nintendo technical jargon to explain it – but I suspect it’s all lies and this is closer to the truth…
