As far as I can tell, there is a 15-year-old filmmaker in the States who is devoted to producing lego-animated versions of famous Eddie Izzard bits. Thank God for the Internet! I definitely prefer watching Lego to watching Izzard in drag.
These ones are particularly brilliant:
Death Star Canteen
Supermarkets and Trolleys
More wonderfulness on Thorn2200′s YouTube channel.
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These papercraft gear models made by Haruki Nakamura (the paper artist, not the Baltimore Ravens safety) are simply beautiful.
I would love a motorized version of either of these sculptures, with the motor on a timer that made the gears turn every couple of minutes.
While I was away on vacation, my latest Big Idea column came out in ROB Magazine, this one on neuromarketing.
I remain sceptical about whether technology like fMRI will truly change the world of advertising, product design, etc., but I definitely think that it’s something we’ll be talking about for years to come.
They were so certain they had a winner. In the early 1980s, Coca-Cola spent $4 million conducting nearly 200,000 taste tests and interviews in an attempt to gauge consumer reaction to a sweeter formulation of its century-old soft drink. The data was unequivocal: Consumers preferred the new formula 8% more than Pepsi and an astonishing 20% more than the original Coca-Cola recipe. But none of that would matter. People simply didn’t want New Coke, and the resulting product quickly became the greatest marketing disaster of all time. Company president Donald Keogh summed it up thusly: “All the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to the original Coca-Cola felt by so many people.”
That emotional attachment we feel toward certain products and brands is something marketers are dying to understand. They’re forever trying to get inside our heads, and they’ve recently turned to neuroscience for help. Researchers dabbling in “neuromarketing” make use of technology like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to delve into our minds like never before. It works like this: By measuring blood flow at more than 100,000 locations in the brain and watching the output on an fMRI scanner, scientists can get a pretty good idea of how your brain is processing information. Just last year, a team from MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon made a real breakthrough when they were able to correctly predict which combinations of products and prices would get their subjects to buy a product. All they had to do was watch a group of neurons in the forebrain called the nucleus accumbens (the same portion of the brain that gets turned on when we anticipate a financial gain) and wait for them to light up on the scanner.
A few companies had already been experimenting with this technology. In 2002, scientists working for DaimlerChrysler found that fMRIs could give them a better understanding of how men reacted to cars. In one study, subjects were presented with images of car grilles, and a part of their brains called the fusiform face area (the portion of the temporal lobe that allows us to recognize faces) was triggered. It was later hypothesized that one of the reasons BMW’s Mini Cooper had been selling so well was that, at least subconsciously, it had an “adorable face.” Furthermore, when drivers were shown pictures of high-performance cars, particularly the Ferrari 360 Modena and the BMW Z8, the areas of the brain associated with concepts of wealth and social dominance were excited. No focus group or survey could ever pick up such a pure and unguarded emotional response.
Martin Lindstrom has spent most of the last 20 years travelling the globe, helping steer the course of such brands as Disney, Pepsi, McDonald’s and American Express. According to him, the problem with traditional market research (that is, surveys) is that it relies on people being honest and accurate in their answers. Why would people lie? Any number of reasons. They may be attempting to appear more affluent, cultured or educated than they really are. They may be trying to please or impress the researcher by giving what they believe to be a “correct” answer, or, quite possibly, they are simply unable to articulate how they really feel about a product.
“Surveys and focus groups force people to pass everything they think and feel through a rational verbalization filter,” says Lindstrom. “Neuromarketing taps into the 85% of our mind that is unconscious. Try asking someone: Why do you love your wife? Give me three bullet-point answers. It’s ridiculous. Yet that is exactly what we’re doing when we ask people why they love their iPod.”
In 2004, Lindstrom directed the largest neuromarketing study ever conducted. The project lasted three years and involved the work of 200 researchers, 10 professors, and over 2,000 subjects in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan and China who volunteered to have their brains scanned. Lindstrom outlines the results of this study in his book, Buyology, released earlier this month. One of the most fascinating chapters details an experiment that underscores just how powerful some brands have become. A group of people who deem themselves devout were shown a series of religious symbols as well as a number of consumer products, ranging from pints of Guinness to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The products of particularly powerful brands, researchers noted, lit up the same areas of the brain—just as strongly—as the images of crosses, rosary beads, Mother Teresa, the Virgin Mary and the Bible.
The chances that a machine could help a company make a product so good and so satisfying that using it becomes a quasi-religious experience are slim. Still, there are some who feel that having this much insight into the way we think is simply too much power to put in the hands of marketers. CommercialAlert, the consumer protection organization founded by Ralph Nader, calls neuromarketing “Orwellian” and claims that it will lead to ever more marketing-related diseases such as obesity, diabetes and alcoholism. They find it offensive that one of the world’s greatest medical inventions is being used to sell goods, rather than help people.
Martin Lindstrom is unwilling to cede the moral high ground. In his book’s introduction, he writes, “The more companies know about our subconscious needs and desires, the more useful, meaningful products they will bring to market. …Imagine more products that earn more money and satisfy customers at the same time. That’s a nice combo.” Neuromarketing isn’t mind control; it’s market research, and it remains to be seen whether it can help companies avoid disasters like New Coke in the future. After all, the functional MRI is merely a descriptive technology. It’s like the difference between a weather map and a climate model: The map can tell you where it’s raining, but not why it rains. And that’s not going to change any time soon. The brain is still a far more complicated machine than we understand.
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Lively Thought will be on a two-week hiatus starting today. I could have said “vacation” but “hiatus” sounds more publishy.
In these hard economic times, it’s always great when someone can produce some humour from our suffering. Over at the Washington Post, Tim Harford (whose work is always a favourite at Lively Thought) has produced a piece that explains the current crisis using the game of Monopoly as a metaphor.
As Harford explains, Monopoly is a perfect analogy because the whole game is a giant real-estate boom with vague rules and easy money, thanks to an overly-generous central bank. Properties can always be mortgaged instantly, and when the bank runs out of money, they just print up more by scribbling numbers on a piece of paper.
Plenty of nice little Easter eggs as you work your way around the interactive board that the Post has put together.
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Sick Boy: Personality, I mean that’s what counts, right? That’s what keeps a relationship going through the years. Like heroin, I mean heroin’s got a great fucking personality.
That was the quote that jumped into my head reading this great interview with an (ex) heroin dealer at Vice Magazine. Though, really, he seems more like a character from a Guy Ritchie flick than someone out of Trainspotting.
Some highlights (warning, it seems heroin dealers sometimes use words that aren’t too nice):
On using heroin for the first time, in prison, after being arrested for running his giant smack operation:
In September 1995 I used heroin for the first time, out of boredom and curiosity. It felt lovely and warm, like somebody putting an electric blanket over you. But the best thing about it, and this is why the jails are full of heroin, is that it makes time go by very quick. Twenty hours on heroin is like two hours normal. I got out ten years later and I didn’t know I done the bird [prison time].
On how he and a buddy got heroin into prison:
I had five kilos of pure heroin straight from Turkey buried along with two Berettas, an Uzi, and four shotguns at St. Pancras graveyard in North London. Every week I’d phone a girl up and use the word “brandy,” which was code for brown—heroin—and she would go and get it. She dug up the stash and shaved off some, and then it was given to a second girl who had a boyfriend in my prison. It was wrapped in a condom and nylon sheeting, shaped up proper like a dildo. She stuck it up her cunt. On the visit, they’d snuggle up close, and her boyfriend would put his hand slyly down her knickers, get it, and then stick it up his arse. Back in my cell, he’d get 60 grams and I’d get 60 grams.
On how getting by in prison isn’t too hard, if you have money:
I never ate prison food. They [the guards] brought me in Marks and Spencer salads. In one prison the screw brought me in four ounces of weed, half a carrier bag full of phone cards, half a bag of tobacco, a TV, a phone, and two bottles of brandy, every week, for £500 a week, plus the bill for the food. He’d wink and say: “Your box is under your bed.” Then I’d pay another inmate to look after it. If you don’t have money, you have nothing.
On quitting heroin and crack after prison:
I went for treatment in Turkey twice. A detox where they put you to sleep through withdrawal. It cost £20,000. My family paid. But when I got back onto the streets here in London, I kept slipping. Finally, I fell in love. It’s as simple as that. I haven’t touched a stone since.
And, finally, when asked why he doesn’t get back in the game, if he’s scared:
Fuck off. D’you want a smack?
Brilliant. I wish I was the kind of journalist who was out there interviewing drug dealers, instead of merely talking to economists and scientists on the phone.
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There’s a new king of the Barack Obama tribute music video genre, MC Yogi.
Obama ’08 – Vote For Hope from MC Yogi on Vimeo.
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For the last two years, I’ve had the pleasure of being able to work on a publication that the Globe & Mail puts out on the state of Canadian universities. This publication had previously been called “University Report Card,” but this year the name has been changed to “Canadian University Report.” I enjoy having the opportunity to connect back with campus life and find out what’s going on there now. Last year, I wrote about how technology is changing the classroom, and this year I got the chance to look into the technology transfer process at univerisities today.
As someone who spent a lot of time hanging around in university labs a decade (and a half! yikes!) ago, I was amazed by how much more serious and business-like things seem to be today.
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Given our obsession with weather, it is fitting that the first Canadian instrument ever to land on another planet is a weather station. On May 26, 2008, a suite of highly sophisticated meteorological tools aboard the Phoenix spacecraft started keeping tabs on the atmosphere of Mars. The design and construction of this station was led by a team of scientists and engineers from York University who collaborated with the Canadian Space Agency, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, a Canadian laser-based surveying company called Optech, and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, to name a few.
It is perhaps the single most dramatic example of what can be achieved when the barriers between universities, the private sector, and government agencies are broken down.
Deconstructing those barriers is the job of “technology transfer” offices at universities across the country. Technology transfer is the process of taking the intellectual property that is generated on campus and finding ways of getting that out into the real world. It can involve patenting and licensing inventions, doing research for hire, fostering the growth of spinoff companies emanating from campus research, or building and operating research parks where private companies can set up shop in an atmosphere that is tightly integrated with campus life. For some, this represents a real step forward in the role that universities play in our society: They are no longer isolated “ivory towers” but centres of innovation where inventors and scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs can come together.
The creeping influence of the private sector on campus, however, has a number of critics. Universities have been accused of selling off their most noble mission, the pursuit of truth, to the highest bidder. Even worse, there is a perception that universities that once shared their research openly and widely have become secret enclaves, hording knowledge until the day they can find a way to profit from it. Jennifer Washburn, author of University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education writes, “The openness and sharing that once characterized university life has given way to a new proprietary culture more akin to the business world.”
Arthur Schafer, a biomedical ethicist and director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, has called for a ban on universities accepting corporate funding for research. Speaking to a conference on academic integrity last year, Prof. Shafer told the crowd, “If we want public science in the public interest, it’s got to be paid through public tax dollars, it’s got to be free of corporate interests.
At York, however, Stan Shapson, vice-president of Research and Innovation, does not see any conflict. “The word ‘commercialization’ gets certain people’s backs up, and there’s really no reason,” he says. “Universities do a lot of basic research. In most cases these are things that are years or decades away from having an impact on society, but when faculty members are working on things that can have an impact today, then why not develop closer relationships with industry and the private sector? Researchers might have a great idea, but they don’t necessarily know where to take that idea, or how to prototype it. Working with industry should be part of the natural cycle of doing research.”
According to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, private sector funding for research at Canadian universities has grown dramatically, from $910 million ten years ago to over $1.7 billion today. For Dr. Shapson though, the most exciting thing about the Phoenix project wasn’t the millions of dollars in research funds that came to York because of it, but the experience gained by the students and researchers. “The most important type of technology transfer that occurs,” he says, “is the experience we provide to our students, most of whom are also going to wind up in private industry. We don’t look at this as a money maker. In fact, if you look carefully at the business case you’ll see that it’s very difficult to make money this way, unless you’re the University of Florida and you hit on Gatorade.”
When discussing how universities might turn their research efforts into moneymakers, the subject of Gatorade always seems to come up. A mixture of water, sugar, lemon juice, sodium, potassium, and phosphate, it is one of the simplest, yet most successful products ever to come out of a university. Since the University of Florida started collecting royalties on the sports drink in 1973, it has made over $80 million (U.S.). This is the dream that keeps technology transfer officers wandering the halls of universities and asking researchers what they are working on. Everyone’s chasing the next Gatorade.
One of the people who knows how hard it is to find another Gatorade-type invention is Angus Livingstone. He’s been managing the University-Industry Liaison Office at the University of British Columbia for twenty years now, making him the “dean of technology transfer” in Canada. During that time, he estimates that they’ve looked seriously at perhaps 2,500 different technologies. UBC holds hundreds of patents, and in the last year or so, it has surpassed
the $100-million mark in total revenue earned from license agreements, making it easily the top school in Canada in intellectual property earnings.
However, Mr. Livingstone emphasizes that the vast majority of inventions they work on never wind up making any money. Of all the revenue UBC has earned, he estimates that 98% of it comes from just 20 different license agreements. The university’s biggest money maker has been QLT, a spin-off company started by a group of UBC biologists in the early ’80s that is now one of Canada’s biggest biopharmaceutical companies.
Mr. Livingston says it’s possible for universities to be too vigilant when it comes to protecting intellectual property. “There are certain technologies,” he says, “which do have great value, that may turn into large companies or even entire industries, and those should be protected, but there are very few of them. In the ’90s there was a lot of concern about the potential value of intellectual property, and there was a very strong desire to try to protect everything and extract as much value as possible. That was often at odds with industry though. They wanted easy access to whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. It cost us some relationships.
“Eventually, we started to understand each other better. Now, we understand the needs of industry and industry understands the needs of the university. The benefits flow in both directions and that includes training and educational opportunities for our students.”
At the University of Western Ontario, Mr. Paul Paolatto agrees that managing the relationship between the university and industry is an essential part of the process. Paolatto is the Acting Executive Director of WORLDiscoveries, Western’s main technology-transfer office, and the former president of a company that started as a technology spinoff at UWO. Since he comes from the industry side, rather than the academic side, he feels he brings a unique perspective on how the two can work together best. Mr. Paolatto sees the mission of technology transfer as one of expanding upon the work that researchers are already doing, not directing them toward his notion of what a money-making idea might be. “Researchers tend to focus on publication and leave it at that, but if we can take some of that intelligence and commercialize it, then there can be benefits to the environment, to health care and to the country as a whole. It’s not just about monetary gain; though that is a consideration, this can also be about social gain.
“We are seeing so many inventions that previously would have died on the lab bench and we’re moving them to market. Canada’s biggest asset today is our knowledge base. If we can tap into that a bit better it will help offset some of the decline we see in other areas of the economy. This is really an exciting place to be. I’m delighted to be a part of it.”
On the opposite side, purists argue that even if corporate funds do not in fact compromise academic ethics, they can still give the impression that ethics are compromised, which is almost as worrying. One case often cited is that of Dr. David Healy.
A respected scholar from the University of Wales College of Medicine, Dr. Healy was offered the position in 2000 of heading up the Mood and Anxiety Disorder Program at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health (CAHM), a hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. Just before he took up his new position, Dr. Healy gave a talk during which he blamed Prozac and other SSRI antidepressants for triggering suicide in some patients.
Shortly after his talk, the offer from CAMH was suddenly rescinded. He was informed that it was apparent that his approach to psychiatry was not going to be compatible with CAMH. The appearance of a serious breach of Dr. Healy’s academic freedom was exacerbated by the fact that Prozac’s maker, Eli Lilly, was a major sponsor of U of T, CAMH, and the clinic that Dr. Healy was supposed to lead. Both the university and Eli Lilly insist that the sponsorship arrangements had nothing to do with the job offer being rescinded. The incident became known internationally as “The Toronto Affair” and Healy’s $9.4-million lawsuit was settled out of court.
The pharmaceutical industry funds a large percentage of medical research in Canada today. Many medical schools would find it difficult to operate were it not for the dollars rolling in from these companies. Given those facts, it’s not just academic purists who wonder how much confidence we can have in studies that are ultimately funded by someone who has a vested interest in the outcome. The potential moral problems associated with taking money from tobacco companies or arms manufacturers are also familiar topics of debate on campus, and many have rules concerning just what kind of money it is alright for the university to accept, and what kind is not.
It’s not desirable to return to a time when universities were completely cut off from corporations. But they also need to maintain their ideals. Jennifer Washburn puts it well in the final pages of University Inc. “Universities should be places that are engaged with the outside world, encourage creative problem solving, and support entrepreneurial thinking. They should have mechanisms in place to facilitate the transfer of new knowledge and inventions to industry and provide students with the tools and training they need to start up new companies and pursue new careers without sacrificing their autonomy or compromising the values and ideals they have long pledged to uphold.”
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A famous editor I used to work with once told me that he didn’t like going to a certain well-known restaurant in Toronto, because it felt too much like going to church. It was too much of a burden to have to revere each bite, rather than simply eating it and enjoying it on a more superficial level. The dishes at this restaurant were so complex and the presentation so fussy that they demanded that you dissect and discuss them, and this made it just too much work to get through a meal.
Certainly, there is something to be said for a meal that challenges your palate and your mind, but sometimes you just want to fill your belly, satisfy your hunger, and experience the pleasure of eating. However, new research seems to indicate that exactly the kind of “mindful eating” demanded by haute cuisine might be a key to helping us maintain healthier weights.
A fascinating new study out of the Oregon Research Institute indicates that there is a real difference between the way obese people and slimmer folks experience the pleasure of food. The study measured the brain’s response to consuming a chocolate milkshake and found that the response in obese people was greatly diminished. The study also followed the weights of subjects for a year after the test and found that the lower the brain’s response to the milkshake, the greater the risk that these same people would experience unhealthy weight gain during the subsequent year.
Eric Stice, who lead the study, told Reuters in an interview “It’s much the same way that people who smoke regulate cigarettes. If you give them the low-tar cigarettes, they make up for the lost tar by smoking more efficiently, and get more of it.” The study also found that those subjects with a variant of gene TaqlA1 were more likely to have this diminished response to food.
At Psychology Today, Jay Winner responds to this study by suggesting that we can train ourselves to get more pleasure out of food by becoming more reverential about it. He’s an advocate of mindful eating, the practice of paying careful attention to the aromas, textures and flavours of what we eat. There’s even a Center for Mindful Eating that advocates a whole set of principles for improving the relationship between what we eat and how we think about it.
It sounds like the best advice for losing weight I’ve ever heard. I’m going to do my best to try it out.
Either that, or I’m going to devote myself to The Banana Diet.
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