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Dances With Aliens: Haunted Vet Redux

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Director James Cameron, of Titanic and Aliens fame, has been working away for the last decade developing new technology for a film called Avatar, to be released in mid-December. It will combine digital extrapolations of humans and filmed actors in a 3D projection format. Talk is that it’ll cost $500 million dollars by the time that marketing costs are factored in. News that Rupert Murdoch was “excited and moved” by a sneak peek doesn’t necessarily bode well for adults looking for something more than vision quest fodder for teenage boys.

Trailers have been appearing with increasing regularity as the release date approaches. The latest here on Youtube has an appropriately exotic and violent set of clips to whet interest. For the first time, however, it telegraphs enough of the plot to actually reduce my desire to see the movie.

Let me reach for my psychic hat and do my own “spoiling” after having read little, and seen less, of the promotion for this movie.

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Lies, Damn Lies and…

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One of my academic advisors used to say that any argument without numbers is a religious one. And we all know how productive they are.

Being a numbers jock and P-Chemist, that statement resonated with me. It still does.

But then I went into business, and for a while my job involved the quantitative prediction of consumer behavior. Entering into the social sciences like that, where there is no ideological bias, just a financial incentive to get the model right, was good for me. It trained me to look at the instrument that was used to derive the numbers. To ask if the questioner was asking the right questions.

So my brain perked up when I saw this article on the decline of newspapers:

Big whoop. After several statistical triple back-flips, we now know that 96 percent of newspaper reading is done in the printed product. That’s like talking about modern transportation by pointing out that 96 percent of buggy drivers use buggy whips. Hello? We switched to cars 100 years ago.

Writing on the Nieman Journalism Lab Web site, Martin Langveld made some valid statistical conclusions about newspaper readership. The problem is that he was asking the wrong questions. It isn’t about newspapers; it’s about news.

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Poorly Thought-Out Marketing Slogan

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My son is watching TV and he sees an add in Microsoft’s new marketing campaign. Their slogan?

Windows: Life Without Walls

My son quipped, “If you don’t have any walls, why do you need windows?”

It’s the kind of joke that writes itself. Did no one at Microsoft or their ad agency think of this pun or the impression it creates? Seems to me like an unforced error.

Brain Rinse

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“The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.” Mark Twain

My friend, former Chief Warrant Officer Jim Wright, has made several interesting posts on information warfare.

Of all the words he’s written on the subject, the most important quote is this one:

When information arrives, how many folks ask themselves: How was this information acquired? Is it complete? Is it accurate? Is it biased. Is it relevant? Is there enough detail? Do I accept it because it reinforces what I think I know, or do I reject it for the same reason? How can I verify it? How can I test it? If I can’t test and verify the information, do I accept it anyway? If so, why?

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Those who fail to ask themselves such questions place themselves and those who depend on them, at a significant disadvantage – they will always be at the mercy of those who can observe the universe critically, adjust their worldview appropriately, decide and act.

I have an affinity for that type of inquiry because I am an accredited professional in information warfare I hold an MBA with a subspecialty in marketing. Some segment of society wages information warfare on the individual practically every day of his or her life. And the individual wages it right back.

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The Good Old Days

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Cross posted at LITGM.