April Fool – Chalk Circle. A song I heard on the radio today. Shazam on my iPhone couldn’t figure it out; but I managed to somehow pull it out of the archives.
Yesterday, trying to make a hung-over friend feel better, I mentioned how beer makes one smarter by killing off the weakest brain cells like killing off the weakest buffalo in a herd – à la Cliff Claven in Cheers…
“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”
Beers on the weekend. Click here for the slideshow or click on the image below to advance to the next image.
According to the mission statement on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) website,
PETA works through public education, cruelty investigations, research, animal rescue, legislation, special events, celebrity involvement, and protest campaigns.
What this means is that they produce materials and campaigns that get people, companies and organizations to take note, talk and write about what they are doing.
A recent example is the ‘banned’ Super Bowl commercial, (video above). I don’t think they meant or wanted to have that aired during the Super Bowl. If it did happen, it would have cost PeTA $3 million; or roughly 10% of their operating budget. Not the best use of money as the viewers are likely not their target audience. However, by getting the spot banned, it caused countless news organizations, bloggers and other media types to write about it as well as creating a general hubbub around the spot.
PETA is one of the world’s best marketing organizations and knew exactly what it was doing when they submitted the spot to NBC. They’ve done this before and none of spots have been aired. However, because of the interest, they’ve been viewed millions of times – far more effective than spending $3 million.
The target audience of PETA is actually quite small because when people realize the connection between the treatment of animals and their dinner plate; many cannot deal with that and become quite defensive or are in denial about their food choices. Many never get beyond this point.
Regardless, the PETA campaigns are meant to shock – so they are quite effective. They are probably more effective than mainstream advertising because the effects of their campaigns last in the (emotional) minds of people for years. PETA does piss a lot of people off, including vegetarians, but I don’t know of any vegetarian that would start treating animals poorly or revert to eating animals again because of it. PETA takes the bad with the good.
The good is that they have made someone notice – that’s their first goal. Their second goal is to get people beyond that point. Most will never get beyond the campaign; however, a small percentage will and read further. The third goal is to get people to provide support (money) to carry out their campaigns.
Mainstream marketers can only wish they could have this kind of impact.
As I was going through some things tonight, I ran across two posters that I had forgotten that I had. The first one is of Björn Borg as he won the finals at Wimbledon in 1978. This was a pretty famous image in its day. I got it autographed in the 1980s when he made a promotional appearance in Toronto. The poster has been rolled up in a tube since then. I was lucky enough to watch the finals live at Wimbledon in 1988 when another Swede, Stefan Edberg defeated Boris Becker. I’ve been to Wimbledon (twice), the French Open and the US Open. I’ll have to complete the grand slam in Australia soon.
The other championship that I watched was the Whistler World Cup in 1995. Me and some friends traveled there for a weekend to ski and watch the race – but we all know we like to watch it for the wipe outs. We stationed ourselves at a corner where many skiers lost it and sometimes hit and bounce off a snow fence in midair like Spiderman might do. It’s a crazy sport, but it’s fun to watch. I was at Whistler in 2008 for the World Cup race but it was canceled due to fog. Hopefully the weather will cooperate in 2009.
Most of my photos are altered for colour, contrast and other similar lighting elements. I sometimes even retouch them to take out distracting elements such as lights and smoke as in the above example. I don’t do this often as it takes more time than it is worth. The retouching of the above photo took about 30 minutes before I published it. If I do retouch photos, it can’t require more than a few seconds worth of retouching, otherwise it is published as is or is discarded.
I am by no means a photojournalist where truthfully representing an image is of the utmost importance. One photographer set off a controversy in 2006 by submitting the following doctored photographs to Reuters.
The smoke on the buildings wasn’t that big of a deal, to me, as smoke can move and change rapidly with the wind. However, adding extra flares to the photo with the jet is not accurate or acceptable as it changes the reality significantly. I’m surprised that Reuters would publish the first photo as the photoshop work on the smoke was done very poorly. It should not have been accepted or published in the first place. It was and the accuracy of the photographer’s images were subsequently contested by a blogger, Charles Johnson, who coined the term fauxtography. Never underestimate the power of a blog.
Had the photographer added Godzilla, like Charles Johnson, he could have secured a job with a Japanese film studio.
Rescued hens enjoying a dust bath at Farm Sanctuary in upstate NY; August 2005.
I sometimes joke with my friends that if I ever started eating animal products again, it would be Popeye’s chicken. However, I’m quite sure I will never go back to eating animals again because the pleasure of being vegetarian is far greater than the immediate pleasure such a thing could ever provide.
For people looking to go vegetarian, Erik Marcus believes that the first food to give up should be eggs. A strange choice to many as cows, pigs, chickens, fish, etc. require the killing of these animals to be turned into food. However, many do not know certain types of chickens are bred specifically to produce large number of eggs; unfortunately a byproduct of this process are male chickens. They grow too slowly to be profitable to raise for meat so they are immediately put to death. In the US, I estimate the number of male chicks killed each year is pegged at 300 200 million male chicks and 50 million in the UK.
If they are lucky enough to be female chicks, they can endure the following injustices in their life:
Beak searing or debeaking – removing part of the beak to prevent birds from pecking each other – something that happens in confined conditions;
Confinement – they are confied to a battery cage and get about get about 67 square inches of floor space (that’s about 8×8 inches/20cm square) – less than the size of a sheet of paper;
Forced molting – a process to increase egg production; hens have their food taken away for seven to fourteen days, lighting is dimmed to mimic winter conditions stressing the body in anticipation of spring. This kills the weaker birds.
Most grocery store eggs come from such practices. Free-range eggs are usually derived from chicks obtained from the same source as where the factory farms obtain their chicks. Free-range chickens are usually without a battery cage, but not excluded from over-crowding in a big pen, called yarding. The conditions in Canada aren’t much different that in the US or elsewhere in the world. Food for thought.
Update (6.2.08): Jamie Oliver shows an audience what happens to the male chicks.
Harvey Korman passed away yesterday. Most of my current friends might not know who he is though. He was most popular in the 1970s on the Carol Burnett show and was in the film, Blazing Saddles, which I never saw – but I know was funny because I remember others talking about how funny it was.
However, I liked him best as the voice of the Great Gazoo on the Flintstones.
Advertising, Animal Rights, Couchsurfing, Culture, Environment, Music, Photography, Technology, Television, Vancouver, Video | Garry August 24, 2009 | 
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