Author: denialism_bv2x6a

While Mark is in Begas, attempting to use his big brain to make money, you people are at my mercy!!1! Let us begin!

Check out today’s Times for a book review of A. J. Jacob’s The Year of Living Biblically, One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, the story of a secular Jew who attempts to incorporate rules from the good book into modern life:

…”If I wanted to understand my forefathers, this year would let me live like they did, but with less leprosy,” he writes, sounding like Woody Allen on a bad day. So he made a list of scriptural strictures, the more peculiar the better, and set out to fulfill them as a 21st century New Yorker. This mission is exotic to him, he acknowledges, pointing out, “I’ve rarely said the word Lord, unless it’s followed by of the Rings.”

With that mea culpa for any seriously religious readers, Mr. Jacobs goes about creating a methodology. He acknowledges having obsessive-compulsive disorder and loves the idea of following rules. Seventy-two pages later he has typed out every instruction he can find in the Old and New Testaments and set up a month-by-month plan to try them out…

[…]

Other trips, notably to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., and to Jerry Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Va., carry Mr. Jacobs beyond his own secular Jewish outlook and engage him in difficult theological questions, however briefly. “In fact, you have to be quite sharp to be a leading creationist,” he writes, after grilling one such scientist about Noah’s Ark.

Ha! A lukewarm review, but probably worth a read!

I’m doing the TRUST Seminar at Berkeley this week. Here’s the info and abstract.

Date: Thursday, October 18, 2007
Time: 1:00 PM (lunch will be served)
Location: 540 A/B Cory Hall

ABSTRACT: In synthetic identity theft cases, an impostor creates a new identity using some information from a victim that is enhanced with fabricated personal information. For instance, the impostor may use a real Social Security number, but a falsified name and address. Since this synthetic identity is based on some real information, and sometimes supplemented with artfully created credit histories, it can be used to apply for new credit accounts. In a currently-ongoing case, two men alleged to have used this tactic applied for and obtained 250 credit cards and amassed $760,000 in charges. Experts following fraud trends claim that synthetic identity theft is a growing problem, and is responsible for massive losses among financial services institutions. How can fabricated person obtain credit? This presentation will explore the synthetic identity theft problem, its roots in credit authentication, and possible approaches to reducing its incidence and severity.

We should have a LOL caption contest for this.

Maybe Americans’ bad taste can be reformed! Gary McWilliams reports:

The Wal-Mart Era, the retailer’s time of overwhelming business and social influence in America, is drawing to a close.

[…]

Rival retailers lured Americans away from Wal-Mart’s low-price promise by offering greater convenience, more selection, higher quality, or better service. Amid the country’s growing affluence, Wal-Mart has struggled to overhaul its down-market, politically incorrect image while other discounters pitched themselves as more upscale and more palatable alternatives. The Internet has changed shoppers’ preferences and eroded the commanding influence Wal-Mart had over its suppliers.

As a result, American shoppers are increasingly looking for qualities that Wal-Mart has trouble providing. “For the first time in a long time, quality has a chance to gain on price,” says Lee Peterson, a vice president at Dublin, Ohio-based brand consulting firm WD Partners Inc.

[…]

The company’s unquenchable thirst for scale has been the secret to its market-changing power. “What we are is a ‘supercenter’ with one-stop shopping,” said Wal-Mart’s Vice Chairman John Menzer at an investors’ conference last month. The company expects each year to build another 170 to 190 of the 200,000-square-foot supercenters that are its hallmark and convert 500 smaller discount stores to the bigger format over the next five years. “We would love to wave a magic wand and [make] every one of our discount stores a supercenter,” he says.

But that very focus on scale is now a weakness, for the world has changed on Wal-Mart. The big-box retailing formula that drove Wal-Mart’s success is making it difficult for the retailer to evolve. Consumers are demanding more freshness and choice, which means that foods and new clothing designs must appear on shelves more frequently. They are also demanding more personalized service. Making such changes is difficult for Wal-Mart’s supercenters, which ascended to the top of retailing by superior efficiency, uniformity and scale.

The Journal’s Cynthia Crossen gives an overview of political battles surrounding billboard advertising today. An interesting read, in part because billboard advertising lobbyists have been pretty shameless in their political advocacy. I remember that when I lived in Georgia, they wanted to lop off the tops of trees so that billboards could be better seen. In order to get around regulations that distanced billboards from the roads, the industry created megabillboards that were huge. And they argued that billboards actually improved roadway safety because it gave drivers an interruption from the monotony of driving (one could see how that cuts both ways!).

Anyway, this article demonstrates some of the tensions between those who find them vulgar, and those who think banning them is a form of legislating beauty.

The battle between billboard lovers and haters simmered for half a century before reaching a climax in 1965, when Lady Bird Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Highway Beautification Act…

Under the law, which applies only to highways that receive federal aid, states must maintain “effective control” over advertising on their highways. Billboards visible from the highway in “scenic” areas are prohibited, although land zoned commercial or industrial is exempt.

Outdoor advertisers lobbied heavily against the bill. Walter S. Meyers, an executive with a company that owned 60,000 billboards across the U.S., argued that the law would limit the freedom of the motorist to choose where he wanted to spend the night, where he wanted to eat and what kind of gasoline he wanted to buy. “Most repugnant,” Mr. Meyers said, was the idea that some people wanted to codify beauty. “They would have their standards of taste and art enforced by the government.”

[…]

The U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue in 1981. Nine years earlier, the city of San Diego had effectively banned most billboards, and an outdoor advertising company, Metromedia, sued. But California’s highest court ruled for the city. “To hold that a city cannot prohibit off-site commercial billboards for the purpose of protecting and preserving the beauty of the environment is to succumb to a bleak materialism,” wrote Justice Matthew Tobriner.

The Supreme Court reversed that ruling on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds, noting that “valuable commercial, political and social information is communicated to the public through the use of outdoor advertising. Many businesses and politicians rely upon outdoor advertising because other forms of advertising are insufficient, inappropriate and prohibitively expensive.”

Today, billboards are becoming digitized, and they’re bigger, brighter and more profitable than the old poster boards. Electronic billboards can change messages every few seconds, making it possible to sell the same space to multiple advertisers.

“Outdoor advertising is great,” boasted Clear Channel Outdoor in a recent news release, “because you can’t turn it off, throw it away or click on the next page.”

Clear Channel’s point–that you can’t turn off their message–is one that opens the door to privacy issues in billboard advertising. What? Billboards an invasion of privacy? It’s worth reading this essay by ad man Howard Gossage on the subject.

Ah, the joys of reading the relatively new weekend edition of the Journal…There’s always news you can really use. For instance, if you happen to be in Atlanta and are hungry, the Journal will tell you exactly where you should sitting at Rathbun’s, depending on whether you are an A, an A+, or A++.

Floorplan Key: Red=A ++ List; Yellow=A+ LIST; Blue=A LIST

And when you’re done analyzing your status based on where the restaurant seats you, you can read about how to deal with your pesky, environmentally-conscience children! Ellen Gamerman reports:

In households across the country, kids are going after their parents for environmental offenses, from using plastic cups to serving non-grass-fed beef at the dinner table. Many of these kids are getting more explicit messages about becoming eco-warriors at school and from popular books and movies.

And of course, there is a book you can read to push back:

Earlier this month, a book called “The Sky’s Not Falling! Why It’s OK to Chill About Global Warming” hit the shelves. Its author, Holly Fretwell, says she sees it as an answer to what she calls “one-sided” environmental messages kids are getting in school and from books. “While riding a bike saves energy and is a great exercise, it gives you less time to do other things, like sports or homework,” she writes. “We drive our car because it gets us to work and play faster.”

My favorite: the sidebar on “HOW TO MANAGE YOUR ACTIVIST KID:”

Your daughter wants you to get a Prius but you don’t want to spend an extra $3,000.

Brian Day, executive director of the North American Association for Environmental Education, a professional nonprofit group based in Washington, says it helps to tell children that there’s more than one way to cut down on carbon emissions. He recommends driving less, and reminding kids about carpools.