Blogless

1. Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.

Read the whole article here.

2. Sergey Brin on Google’s China Decision

I don’t actually think the question of whether this was the Chinese government or not is all that important. I know that seems strange. The Chinese government has tens of millions of people in it, and if you look at the associated army and whatnot it’s even larger. It’s larger than most countries by far. So even if there were a Chinese government agent behind this, it might represent a fragment of policy, as it were. There are many people there, and they have different views.

If you look at when we entered China with our Chinese operation in 2006, I actually feel like things really improved in the subsequent years. And I know there was a lot of controversy surrounding it, when we had to self-censor a fair amount, but we were actually able to censor less and less, and our local competitors there also censored less and less. We from the outside provided notification when the local laws prevented us from showing information, and the local competitors followed suit in that respect. So I feel like our entry made a big difference. But things started going downhill, especially after the Olympics. And there’s been a lot more blocking going on since then. Also our other sites, YouTube and whatnot, have been blocked. And so the situation really took a turn for the worse.

Read Google’s original statement on China here, and watch the whole interview here.

The Goodness 500 has a premise we at DLB can agree with: help consumers find the most socially responsible companies in an aesthetically pleasing way.

However, looking at the companies in their rankings, I question their definition of good. There are quite a few companies I wouldn’t think to see on this list, particularly the large number of financial institutions.

The rankings appear to be gleaned from several public reports on charity donations, equality, and environmental policy. These issues are important, but don’t tell the whole story. What company would allow itself to look bad on one of those reports when anyone (like Goodness) can easily look up such numbers? Donate some money, follow the rules, and everything looks fine. Meanwhile, the company might use child labor or issue bogus loans. Much more difficult to look up.

What’s missing is the ethical dimension. I’d like to see a Goodness 500 that really quantifies trust and fairness, not the Goodness-On-Paper 500…

The following map shows the flow of carbon emissions in traded goods, and which countries are major exporters and importers of carbon emissions.

As GOOD reports: “When someone in the States buys shoes that were made in China, the carbon emitted in their production gets added to China’s tally, despite the fact that the shoes get exported.”

The visualization and study shows that looking only at domestic emissions is pretty misleading and doesn’t capture the true emissions caused by particular country’s total activity. It also makes a case for changing the way we think about allocating responsibility for products to consumers. Read the full story.

1. Google is Making me Stupid

I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle…

The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.

Read the whole article here and an interesting follow-up here. (Thanks, Seamus.)

Detail of Google Monster by Asaf Hanuka

2. Max Barry: The Lawnmower People

But [corporations] weren’t enough of a person, apparently, so now they have First Amendment rights. In particular, they have the right to spend as much money as they like on political advertising: airing ads in favor of anti-regulation candidates over pro-regulation ones, for example.

The Supreme Court has let them into homes: now the [corporations] will speak to us through TV, radio, internet, print, and tell us who to vote for. That might not seem like a problem. After all, you are a smart person. You’re probably not persuaded by advertising. The thing is, everyone thinks that, and advertising is an $600 billion industry. Someone, somewhere is getting $600 billion worth of persuasion.

Read the whole article here.

Grasshopper, the error you seek is yourself!

1. Designing a New Hot Dog

Image from Fast Company.

A few weeks ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared hot dogs a potential choking hazard for young children. In this Fast Company piece, Ravi Sawhney of RKS set out to redesign hot dogs to be safe (and fun!), settling on the spring shape above.

I like the idea in the comments: just slice the dog down the middle before feeding it to your kids. That sounds like the DLB way.

2. “Mad Libs” Forms Increase Conversion 25-40%

Image by Luke Wroblewski.

The headline pretty much says it all.

At first look, it does seem to be a more appealing form design. Though I wonder if it works better because of novelty, or because it really is better than a standard form?

3. To Do Better, Feel Worse

According to studies referenced in Scientific American, people in a bad mood may perform tasks better than those in a good mood.

Grumpy people paid closer attention to details, showed less gullibility, were less prone to errors of judgment and formed higher-quality, persuasive arguments than their happy counterparts. One study even supports the notion that those who show signs of either fear, anger, disgust or sadness—the four basic negative emotions—achieve stronger eyewitness recall while virtually eliminating the effect of misinformation.

That last part sounds like it could apply to commercials or videos to make them more effective. Other than that, while I’m glad bad moods are good for something, I’m not about to induce one just so I can be more productive…

4. Most Attractive Sounds

I must admit, I don’t pay much attention to sound in designs, but after this story I might.

According to the article, 83% of advertising is exclusively sight-based. To me, that spells opportunity.

After reviewing the lists of memorable sounds (I’m not going to say “addictive”, as the writer suggests, that’s just silly), I was surprised at how closely I associated them with their branding or with a particular product category. It may be time to flex those sound design muscles.