What if the movie Contagion were about viruses rather than globalization?

Soderbergh’s Contagion is a movie about the ills of globalization, right down to the ridiculous closing sequence in which deforestation by a multinational is blamed for a viral pandemic.

But viruses are more than a MacGuffin, they’re the intersection between the organic and the inorganic, between that which lives and that which exists. Viruses may be responsible for some of the biggest upheavals in human history and they continue to impact human behavior in ways that undermine our identity.

Consider Kathleen McAuliffe on T. gondii and more:

But T. gondii is just one of an untold number of infectious agents that prey on us. And if the rest of the animal kingdom is anything to go by, says Colorado State University’s Janice Moore, plenty of them may be capable of tinkering with our minds. For example, she and Chris Reiber, a biomedical anthropologist at Binghamton University, in New York, strongly suspected that the flu virus might boost our desire to socialize. Why? Because it spreads through close physical contact, often before symptoms emerge—meaning that it must find a new host quickly. To explore this hunch, Moore and Reiber tracked 36 subjects who received a flu vaccine, reasoning that it contains many of the same chemical components as the live virus and would thus cause the subjects’ immune systems to react as if they’d encountered the real pathogen.

The difference in the subjects’ behavior before and after vaccination was pronounced: the flu shot had the effect of nearly doubling the number of people with whom the participants came in close contact during the brief window when the live virus was maximally contagious. “People who had very limited or simple social lives were suddenly deciding that they needed to go out to bars or parties, or invite a bunch of people over,” says Reiber. “This happened with lots of our subjects. It wasn’t just one or two outliers.”

More, previously.

ideas/mental illness/movies & television/nature

Bingo in Baghdad

From Daniel Voll’s The Hunter Becomes the Hunted in Esquire:

Clemente arrived to interrogate the suspect, a handcuffed middle-aged man named Zaid, and underneath a napkin on the table, he found a small device, the size of a brick, with a hand crank and wires with alligator clips at the ends. Clemente shut down the interrogation, took Omar for a walk.

“Is that how you do police work?”

“Of course. We torture them.”

“Don’t you try to figure out what they are doing first, and who they work for?” Clemente asked.

Omar said, “No, why should I? This guy is a terrorist — he was going to blow up people.”

“We can flip him,” Clemente said. “Let me talk to him.”

continue…

people/power

The religious impulse

Elif Batuman in the New Yorker:

The findings at Göbleki Tepe suggest that we have the story backward—that it was actually the need to build a scared site that first obliged hunter-gatherers to organize themselves as a workforce, to spend long periods in one place, to secure a stable food supply, and eventually to invent agriculture.

ideas/people

From Plato’s Republic to The Firearms Philosophy of Ivan Chesnokov

Wherein I argue that the best way to learn, apart from painful personal experience, is via a story filled with colorful characters.

Exhibit A: The Firearms Philosophy of Ivan Chesnokov

I didn’t know I had any desire to learn about firearms until I stumbled on this collection of satirical forum posts penned in the style of a Soviet-era Russian who speaks ENTIRELY IN ALL CAPS:

MAN WHO ARGUES ONE SHOT DEATH BY PROUD MILITARY CALIBERS IS FUCKING FOOL. I EXPLAIN WHY.

THIS MAN LOOKS FOR PISTOL TO HIDE ON PERSON TO SHOOT MAN FROM STREET WHO WOULD DO CRIME TO HIM. MAN WHO WOULD DO CRIME IS NOT LIKE BANZAI CHARGE OF JAPANESE INFANTRY. HE IS NOT IN “GROUND OF DEATH” FROM EPISTLE OF WISE SUN TZU. MAN WHO WOULD DO CRIME IS NOT FIGHTING FOR LIFE OR FREEDOM OF PEOPLE. HE FIGHT ONLY FOR THINGS, HE CAN GET SOMEWHERE ELSE FROM SOMEONE ELSE. THIS MAN DOES NOT FIGHT TO DEATH. THIS MAN FIGHT ONLY UNTIL IS CLEAR MAN WITH PISTOL RESISTS AND SO HE RUN AWAY.

PISTOL OF 9 MILLIMETERS OR CALIBER OF .45 IS GREAT SHOCKING HOLE IN BODY. IS GIANT SPOUT OF BLOOD AND PAIN OF MORTAL WOUND. MORE MEN DIE FROM BULLET OF THESE TWO CALIBERS THAN ALL OTHERS IN HISTORY OF WORLD.

I ADVISE AND YOU LISTEN. LAST TIME ARMY CARRY BAD PISTOL INTO COMBAT WAS NAMBU OF JAPANESE EMPIRE. SINCE THAT TIME MILLIONS OF MEN CARRY PISTOL OF 9 MILLIMETERS. IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM WITH STUPID GENEVA TREATY BALL BULLET. IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU WITH TEN ROUBLES PER CARTRIDGE HOLLOW NOSE BULLET AND FANCY BRASS OF NICKEL PLATING. YOU PRACTICE WITH MANY MAGAZINE, YOU CARRY MANY CARTRIDGE. WHEN MAN WAVES GUN AT YOU, FILL HIM WITH BULLETS FAST AND STRAIGHT. MORE HOLES IS BETTER THAN BIG HOLES. CARRY PISTOL WITH LARGE MAGAZINE AND MANY CARTRIDGE.

IN THIS WAY YOU DEFEAT CRIMINAL.

Poetry. Worth a read.

ideas/people

How North Koreans (and Cubans) read the state-sponsored newspaper

From the excellent blog Ask a Korean!, a very familiar account of how readers adjust to propaganda in order to eke out the truth:

Take, for example, the war in Iraq. When the war broke out, North Korean newspapers would report: “Iraqi army is bravely battling against America’s imperial army, downing two fighter jets and five missiles.” With this report, North Korean people would think: “Ah, there is a war in Iraq. There would have been a lot of fighter jets, and they only got two. They have no chance — America would win pretty soon.” And in fact, the reports on the exploits of the Iraqi military would decrease over time, and then completely disappear from Rodong Shinmun. Then the people would think: “Iraq is losing the war.” Some time later, upon seeing the reports that say “Iraqi patriots are bombing the American military base in Baghdad,” North Korean people would think: “So Iraq is now under American rule.”

previously: why are there newspapers in north korea?

journalism/people

what if car dealerships were run more like Apple stores?


Nissan Leaf, Apple iPhone

recently, i went to check out one of the most expensive high tech gadgets you can buy: a new car. 

perhaps, our experience was atypical. but I suspect not given the larger transition underway in the auto industry.

at one dealership, only a single dealer – out of say 10 – knew about the model we were after. and that dealer wasn’t in.  

at another dealership, two sales reps traded rough words almost within earshot of us while discussing which of them was allowed to show us the car we wanted to see.

can you imagine going into an Apple store and finding nine sales associates who know all about iPhones but nothing about a MacBook? Or striking up a conversation with a sales person only to see them get into it with another one about which products they’re allowed to demo?

i understand that commissions are at the heart of the auto sales business. but do they need to be?

could a  bonus for which dealership has the best customer service drive more sales across the board? could a higher baseline salary produce a more democratic and a more collegial work place where everyone knows the products and everyone can sell the products?

consumers are already changing the way they shop by going to web sites to research big ticket purchases. a more informed consumer will expect a more informative salesperson. and a more integrated sales experience, from vehicle maker web site to dealership, could benefit all involved – not just the consumer.

for example, if the car marker’s web site encourages potential buyers to schedule an appointment to see the vehicle in person, rather than dropping by without warning, the dealership could hire fewer warm bodies and focus only on retaining the superstars. such a referral process could even generate helpful leads.

a differently trained sales team could also bubble up important consumer insights to the engineering and marketing teams. after all, who better to capture the “deal breakers” than the deal makers?

update like so.

business/technology

My problem with Footloose (2011): not enough Mexicans

Footloose (1984) had tension because it was of the moment.

The Moral Majority was just entering its apex and small town America was a pop cultural phenomenon (months after Footloose was released, Farm Aid hit the air and Small Town reached #6). There was also, generally, lots of dancing in the streets.

Fast forward to 2011 and covens of sexy but celibate vampires play a bigger role in the popular imagining of white adolescence than uptight congregations. So while Footloose (2011) had no problems putting butts in seats, I don’t think anyone – not even its makers – believes it put its fingers on the pulse of young Americans.

And, yet, if the 2011 retelling had been set in a city like a Salinas, CA (pop. 150,000, 75% Latino, 40% under 18) it could have represented a community at the crossroads: teeming with young kids rebelling against their hick parents, caught up in a mess of gangs, a shitty economy, starved government, fire and brimstone preachers, and a dance trend that combines (Mexican) country with techno.

movies & television/work

more on Mexican restaurants; planting a cactus in too small a pot

A few weeks ago I asked why Mexican restaurants are so often decorated like 19th century ranch homes when Mexico is a living, modern culture. Such decor perpetuates the lie that traditions are preserved in amber, when, in fact, they are preserved by usage and adaptation.

La Surtidora Abarrotera Mercantil “Julio Gabriel Verne” is the old-timey sounding name of a new restaurant which serves the most traditional and basic Mexican dishes as they are meant to be experienced: in the present.

It is, not surprisingly, located in Mexico.

While its quirky name and spare decor are just as affected as that of a restaurant named after a colonial-era landmark and decorated with hand-wrought ironwork, the social and political implications of its affectations are very different.

We use the word “nostalgia” to refer to a temporal longing – the desire to go back in time – but the root of “nostalgia” means literally a pain for returning home; from whence we came. It is an understandable desire: to undo the passage of time is to escape our certain fate: change, death.

Life is thus a journey away from our origins, away from sameness, towards difference and disruption. As much as we may want to end up where we began (an odyssey) the very journey transforms us – just as entropy and others will have transformed whence we came.

People have many reasons for becoming a steward of tradition – whether by preserving a recipe or a relic – but such traditionalism does a disservice to the very roots it seeks to preserve when it denies them a chance to grow, branch out and bloom anew.

business/design/latin america

why are they so religious? also, camels, needles and the 1%

Many religions offer the promise of a supreme and perfectly fair authority. Such an eternal and just arbiter offers relief for people who live daily under unjust, biased and/or inhumane authorities.

Consider who is keeping Christianity and/or Catholicism alive in many parts of the United States. Undocumented migrants live in terror of being seized and punished solely for wanting to work in a productive economy and to raise their children in a safe society. They are like other groups around the world, in the Middle East, in Africa, in Pakistan, who turn to religion to restore their faith in a just order.

Rather than sating their thirst for justice, such a faith must also whet it. Perhaps, they take religion seriously because it takes seriously the matter of justice. Some religious citizens could thus be motivated to participate in a coalition that addresses the glaring injustices in civil society.

For example, those bringing light to the plight of the 99% might consider using posters that remind TV viewers that the Christian God expects more from the 1 percent than largesse. Something about camels being passed through the eye of a needle. Or about being generous when you yourself have received the generosity of others.

ideas/power

on mental illness and political culture

I wonder if scientists have looked at epidemiological records for evidence – if there is any – of a correlation between political extremism and mental illness.

That is, has anyone tested the hypothesis that those who have broken with reality are more likely to participate (and possibly even to lead) groups that advocate for a radically different reality.

ideas/mental illness