The New New Thing asserts:

You think your car radio is broken because it doesn’t display the name of the song and the artist. You tap a word on a paperback and wonder why the definition doesn’t automatically pop up. You swipe a digit across the screen of your cell phone and all you get are fingerprint smudges . . . Our touchscreen existence has literally rewired our brains . . .

Yes!

What shall we name this New New Thing that literally reWires our brains?

iPavlov.

Hey, kids, it’s not the technology that makes you; it’s the thoughtfulness.

reWired is only Low WATT zombies ambling along the Peripheral Route, Cue-ing along, Ding-Donging a song.

Again, Whitehead says it nicely.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Mitch Miller has died.

Miller enjoyed a long and successful life as a music producer and impresario of great renown.  Most notably, he understood the Rules of Persuasion.  You might recall an earlier post . . .

“Emotion never makes you a hit,” he said.  “I always tell this to singers:  Emotion is not something you feel.  It’s something you make the listener feel.  And you have to be very cool and know what you’re doing.”

Miller learned early on that, It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid, and rode that rocket to the top of the charts many times with many different artists demonstrating the generality of the Rule and his great skill.

Let’s sing-a-long one more time.

Remember:  All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere!

Noted:

In its May issue, Playboy magazine named Texas the No. 1 party school in the nation, followed by West Virginia and Wisconsin-Madison.

Of course, that’s just Playboy.  What about the Princeton Review for 2010?

1. University of Georgia
2. Ohio University, Athens
3. Pennsylvania State University
4. West Virginia University

Doesn’t this help destroy all those hillbilly stereotypes?  Of course, at the risk of producing other stereotypes, but . . .

And folks wonder why I made Coach Don Nehlen nervous back in the day.  I had most of the starting lineup in my grade book, baby.  Fortunately I am nothing but Sincere.  They all actually passed!

Let’s Go!  Mountaineers!

P.S. That late 1980s group was nothing but crazy good fun.  AB.  Major.  Reggie Rembert.  Eugie.  An O-line of seniors.  A nicely mean-spirited D with Renaldo and Steve Grant.  Glad to be a part of it all.  Sports Beat, baby.

Observe a model of the Before and the After.

“It’s part of the whole outfit,” says Ms. Benson, a 25-year-old assistant to a music manager. Wearing the Booty Pop brand of underwear, which contain egg-shaped foam pads to plump up the posterior, “I look better, I feel better, and as a result, I act better,” she says.

The Liking Cue from CLARCCS, right?

You do see this is a persuasion example, don’t you?

Booty Pop is actually a pretty good persuasion metaphor, too, so let’s note that.

Green with the environment, green with money, and green with envy – put them together and you get the Eco Index.

The Eco Index, which is basically a software tool any apparel maker can use, poses a series of questions to companies on their environmental and labor practices—some of which require answers from the companies’ suppliers. It then assigns a score representing a percentage of a perfect score.

The folks who make and sell clothes have spent the last three years developing the Eco Index.  They think it addresses Green concerns in a way that will make more Green for them.  See, consumers torn between two different brands of jeans, say Levi and Wrangler, might just look at the Eco Index score to close their decision.

At first glance, I’m impressed with the Eco Index.  It is fabulously inSincere and if implemented, probably will work as advertised.

However, I’m worried.

It’s taken three years to develop a self report scale?

And, they chose a self report scale to measure things like labor practices and environmental impact?

Sounds like those bad observational studies from epidemiology, climate studies, evolutionary psychology, and economics I laugh about on this blog.

Three years to develop a new self report measure?  That’s the time period for a new NIH grant.  Can’t tell you how many planning meetings I’ve attended where someone was proposing to take three years and a quarter of a million taxpayer dollars to invent a self report scale to measure perceived breast cancer risk or estimated calorie expenditure while eating Hostess Cup Cakes or whatever.  The guys behind the Eco Index must have some NIH experience.

And why self report?  Why not just count things like, total amount of fines and penalties paid, worker mortality and morbidity, amount and type of materials used in products?  It’s really better to use an epi conceit like

1.  Estimate the amount of pollution you’ve contributed to local water systems over the past 10 years.  Circle the letter that best describes your estimate.
a. none (we never pollute, we recycle in novel ways)
b. very little (accidental)
c. some (in a hurry)
d. a bit (profits were down that quarter)

If the WSJ was covering some crazy science project on global warming that used self reports like this, they’d beat the writers into the ground like tent pegs.  But, for a Green solution to a Green problem, business is simply Green with envy for epi.

Will the Eco Index work as a persuasion tactic for sales?  Yes.  Of course.

A society advances by the number of operations its people can perform without thinking!!!

“Hey, an Eco Index of 99!  I’ll take three!!!”