Earlier this week, MSNBC’s science editor, Alan Boyle, posted an article on the MSNBC website showing how plant and animal life on Mt. St. Helens has responded vigorously and positively to the volcanic eruption 30 years ago.  For example, most of the area’s amphibian species survived the blast and are thriving.  As Boyle puts it, the wake of the eruption serves as a prime example of how life adapts to changing conditions.

Using the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens volcanic eruption as a platform for imparting some basic concepts of evolution is a good thing, for which Boyle should be applauded.  But why did he also have to provide publicity to creationists by repeating one of their more absurd ideas, that the Earth is only as old as the bible says that it is?

Here is an excerpt from Boyle’s article:

“… Speaking of unexpected consequences, Mount St. Helens has become something of a poster child for “creation geologists” – the folks who argue that Earth was created in accordance with the chronology they say the Bible lays out.

If the floods sparked by the 1980 eruption could cut new canyons through the surrounding countryside, couldn’t a global flood have done the same for the Grand Canyon a few thousand years ago? If the lava dome that has built up inside St. Helens’ crater can produce anomalous radioisotope results, doesn’t that imply that radioactive dating techniques could be way off? Questions like this are raised at places such as the Mount Saint Helens Creation Information Center, not far from the mountain itself.”

In the next paragraph, Boyle gives links which go to footnotes in other articles that, if you know the arguments, refute some creation ideas about Mt. St. Helens, e.g., St. Helens does not serve as an example for what happened to the Grand Canyon because the material that formed the Grand Canyon is much harder than the material from which the post-eruption St. Helens canyons were formed.  But you have to go to the footnote and know the argument, plus these refutations are embedded in the weasel-like obtuseness you might find in a corporate apology for laying off workers while the CEO gets a bonus:

“My colleague at msnbc.com, Alex Johnson, wrote about the St. Helens creationism connection five years ago. The TalkOrigins Archive addressed questions about the canyons, the claims about lava dating and Mount St. Helens’ “coal” formation even longer ago. Nevertheless, today’s 30th anniversary has sparked a revival of the creationist claims.”

It seems to me that this decorated man of science is going out of his way to be friendly to the creationist view.  In the first place, creationism has no business in a legitimate discussion of the lessons of evolution to be learned from a natural occurrence. Creationism has nothing to do with science, and belongs in a discussion of philosophy (even one about the philosophy of science, which is different from science itself).

Now if a man or woman of science were to include a discussion of creationist views in an article on the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, I would expect to see an outright condemnation of creationism that explicitly refutes point by point all the major beliefs that these moronic and oxymoronic “creationist geologists” are spewing.

Instead what we get is a dynamic science reporter suddenly writing in a mealy-mouthed tone of devious objectivity, that is, an objectivity that intends to conceal a greater truth, (such as the fact that one side is clearly wrong or lying).  Boyle’s expression “the folks who argue that Earth was created in…” make the creationists seem like those good and caring neighbors from next door who just happen to be voting for a different candidate than we are.  But in fact, creationists are dangerously trying to undermine our education system by substituting their religious beliefs for real science, and in the process making people more susceptible to some destructive associated beliefs, such as the denial of global warming.

It’s another shameful example of mainstream media pandering to the religious right instead of speaking an obvious truth. 

In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about a Jim Beam ad meant to sell hard liquor to young men.  I wanted to share what happened when I tried to get on the Jim Beam website.  Before letting you on its website, Jim Beam asks you to input your date of birth.  If you are old enough to drink legally, you are allowed to go to the site.  If you are under age, you go to an anti-underage drinking website by “The Century Council,” an organization of distillers (AKA booze-makers).

As it turns out, virtually every booze-maker asks for your age before letting you on the website, although some, like Johnny Walker don’t redirect you to an anti-drinking site, but merely tells you you’re too young to visit the site.

Let’s first consider the impracticality of this way of keeping the underage off the website.  Anyone can lie about his or her date of birth on the registration page of the Jim Beam website.  I haven’t done a survey, but I’m willing to bet that a large majority of underage boys who have some fetishist interest in trolling whiskey advertisements have in the past lied about their age to gain entry to a porno site.

What is the hard liquor industry trying to accomplish with this inept attempt at censorship?  Last time I checked it was illegal for those under age to drink, but that it was still okay to read about booze.  If Jim Beam were truly interested in preventing underage drinking, it would have more about it on the website, which is strangely devoid of any warnings about drinking.

Jim Beam and its competitors are stuck in a conundrum of post-Industrial consumerism.  The demographic group to which the booze-hawker wants to appeal has the very same characteristics as the group it is trying to keep out.  One of the odd side effects of our post-Industrial society has been an extension of childhood and adolescence deep into adulthood.  Some of my past blogs have talked about colleges that compare themselves to the imaginary school in a children’s book, adults who spend a lot of free time playing video games and adult attendance at Disney and other children’s theme parks.

In this case, its buddies getting together to watch sports and do some heavy-weight nonsexual male-bonding.  When teenage boys do it, it’s supposed to be without booze, but other than that, it’s the same experience for both the teens and 20- and 30- somethings.  Goaded by the commercial exhortations and distorted imagery of normalcy of the news media and mass entertainment, the older demographic group—target for Jim Beam, Captain Morgan and every single beer ad you see on TV—has never grown beyond the immature years of teenaged male herding. 

By keeping them boys even as we cultivate new and more expensive products for them, the many individual players in our economic system collectively ensnare these young men in the trap of our consumerist economy.  Moreover, by softening the differences between youth and adulthood, we undermine the rationale for having a minimum drinking age, which is usually one of our civilization’s most important milestones in youth’s traditional rite of passage to the full responsibilities and freedoms of adulthood.

Jim Beam, maker of bourbon, has been doing a lot of wishful thinking in public.  In an ad that Jim Beam has been blasting on ESPN sports talk radio for several months now, the deep-throated announcer describes how great it feels when “men get together for a cocktail, to talk sports…..”

Doesn’t it seem a little weird to the eye to read about men getting “together for a cocktail?”  It sounds even weirder to the ear, and for a reason.  The narrator in the commercial is speaking a language sometimes called conversational English, and in conversational English men do not get together “for cocktails.”  Even when they’re having mixed drinks, virtually everyone will say they are getting together “for a drink” or more often, “for a beer.”  The exception would be to get together for a “cocktail party,” which is understood as an event for couples, not men interested in talking about sports, as is the situation described in the ad.

By using the term “getting together for cocktails” Jim Beam endeavors to recreate reality, or perhaps better, to create a new reality.  On the surface it seems to be corporate wishful thinking at its worse: an attempt to use words to paint the picture of reality that you want to see: in this case, men hanging around the TV room throwing some BS around and downing some cocktails.

Corporations and governments often substitute or create new language in an attempt to change reality or our perception of reality.  Typically, though, the method is to create a new word to describe a product, service, event or experience, for example, “pre-owned cars” or “police actions” (which is how the Korean War was described for years).

In Jim Beam’s case, the ad is using language to recreate the situation in which the product is used.  “Let’s have a cocktail” replaces “Let’s get a beer” in the mythical interchange between real men ready to kick back and relax with some alcohol.

Once I decided to write a blog entry about this ad, I went to the Jim Beam website.  The website seems to be designed to appeal to young men, specifically to young men who drink beer.  The home page features Kid Rock, a musician one associates more with a football game or the meeting of a motorcycle club than with sipping a Manhattan on the Upper East Side.  One of the menu links takes you to its sports tie-in with ESPN called “The Next Round.”  The theme of the TV ads you see on the website is “Guys Never Change. Neither Do We.”

Jim Beam’s strategy is clearly to change the behavior of the youthful pack male who swills beer by encouraging them to have a bourbon-based drink instead.  Jim-B has selected the audience that marketers have been chasing with a vengeance on sports programming for decades.  I won’t question the decision of Jim Beam’s ad mavens and mavenesses to pursue this strategy.  I haven’t seen the consumer research (although I do remember seeing a survey several years ago that showed that in good times drinkers trade up to more expensive stuff and in bad times they trade down.) 

But in general, I think ads like the Jim Beam radio spot that attempt to deform reality are less successful than those that try to reform it, e.g., an ad in which a group of guys decide to get together for a cocktail instead of a beer for a change of pace, and then decide they like it.

Dan Yoder has a very insightful blog detailing the 10 reasons he plans to delete his Facebook account.  I agree with every one of his rationales for abandoning Facebook, all of which have something to do with Facebook’s cavalier and entrepreneurial attitudes concerning privacy. 

But while I agree with everything Yoder says, I nevertheless do not recommend that anyone get off Facebook.  Rather, I suggest that my readers understand what Facebook is and for what ends it should be used.

I see four broad ways that people and organizations are currently using Facebook:

1. As their electronic face to the world, a formal portrait of what they’re doing, similar to that annual letter you copy and send to distant relatives and high school buds, or the two-minute state-of-the-family-or-firm spiel you give at parties or meetings to people you’ve just met or hardly know.  As a formal “face,” Facebook is remarkable because it is so easy to update and enables you to communicate in a variety of media by attaching photos, music, videos and other links.  It also enables you to keep up with the goings-on of all those people with whom you want to have a casual, “I wonder where their daughter ended up going to graduate school” relationship.  In a sense, Facebook automates the occasional letter or phone call, although it does so in a way that can potentially merge your public (business) and private lives.
2. To express their daily thoughts and actions, another version of Twitter.
3. To manage their emails.
4. As portal to a wide array of online games, entertainments and services.

My belief is that there is only one proper and appropriate use for Facebook: the first one I mentioned, to serve as your electronic formal face to the world, a kind of ever-morphing multi-media resume.  To a great extent the other three uses all fall under the category of management of one’s life, or at least one’s life on-line.  It’s in these life management functions that people convey information the confidentiality of which is at risk by virtue of putting it anywhere on Facebook.

I sometimes tell my public relations clients that there are three types of information.  Here they are, with some non-business examples:

• Information you want people to know and that you’re happy to volunteer, e.g., your son just won another scholarship or you’re giving a lecture before a prestigious professional association.
• Information that you would share with others, but often only if asked by certain people, such as a cell phone number to a new acquaintance or your health records to a new primary care physician.
• Information that you would never tell anyone, e.g., the fact that you would cheat on your spouse to be with Michelle Obama.

As with any other “public face,” a Facebook page should include only that information you want everyone to know, or, stated in the negative, only information about which you don’t care who knows.  Keep all other information off Facebook, and that should include all email messages you want to send or receive. 

In other words, don’t use Facebook to manage your life, because when you run your life through Facebook, as many people seem to be doing, you are putting at risk the confidentiality of information which when pieced together define how you live.  As Yoder points out, you are playing by Facebook’s rules, and what’s good for Facebook definitely is not good for your privacy!

At heart, I don’t believe anyone wants to run their life in public or have its details available for analysis.  Instead, I think most of us just want our occasional five minutes of applause—and Facebook is a great advance over former technologies for making sure we all can bask in these Warholian moments.       

The other day I walked into one of the Starbucks on the Upper West side of Manhattan disconcerted and ashamed.  Disconcerted, because the Internet in the apartment I was renting for a two-week working vacation was on the fritz, the owner was nowhere to be found and I had to send email documents to my office and some clients.  Ashamed, because I had vowed never to enter a Starbucks again since learning that it does not prohibit the carrying of handguns on its private property in those states that allow people to carry concealed or unconcealed weapons in public. 

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

And then I saw a bin near the cash register overflowing with clear plastic bottles filled with water.  Starbucks, which owns the company that packages the water, calls it Ethos, and in buying it the drinker is supposed to be “helping children get cleaner water.” 

As I understand it, when you buy a bottle of Ethos for $1.85 in this particular Starbucks, (and probably in most others since the essence of all fast food franchises such as Starbucks is standardization), Starbucks/Ethos puts 5 cents, about 2.7% of the purchase price, into a fund that provides grants to international water projects that help children all around the world. 

The very elegant Ethos website makes an exquisite use of soft watery colors and fluid movement (but using web software that makes it impossible to cut and paste copy).  On it you can find water facts, some very general information about where the five cents goes, information about 2010 World Water Day and, of course, information about the Ethos line of products, which meet the need for a “convenient source of portable water.” 

What a scam! Its Bernie Madoff meets a modernized old-fashion seltzer water, but instead of a two-cents plain, it’s a five-cent rip-off!

The water and cheap plastic bottle that contain it are a very small part of the cost of the Ethos portable water product, so Starbucks is minting money on this charitable venture.  Shame on Starbucks for perpetrating this affinity marketing campaign on a public that has grown to like effortless charitable gestures!  The coffee purveyor makes millions in exorbitant profit while producing millions of bottles that will end up in landfills.

And to those whose purchases of Ethos products has swelled the Ethos fund to $6.2 million, five cents at a time, consider taking these three simple steps:

1. Contribute the whole two bucks (with tax) directly to water projects. 
2. Buy a stainless steel water bottle, a thermos or a bottle made of a high-quality washable plastic.
3. Fill your reusable bottle with water from the tap or from your home-filtered water system (could be built-in, be Brita or a delivery service). 

Now you’re good to go!

Last week I analyzed the solipsistic qualities of a billboard ad for eating peanuts by the National Peanut Board in which the protagonist (main character in a fiction) prefers speaking to his dog.  As usual, when a company creates a character through an offbeat or weird trait, it is talking to a large, if sometimes previously unexplored target market.

In this case, the target market comprises those lonely millions whose best or only friend and closest confidant is a pet—that is, a subservient living thing habiting under its rule.

Yesterday, the Associated Press announced the results a recent poll it conducted in conjunction with Petside.com that reveals that one third of all pet-owning married women believe that pets are better listeners than their husbands.  

Funny that the Peanut Board used a man in the marketing campaign, whereas the survey showed that a mere 18% of all married men with pets prefer to talk to the animal than their better halves.

Don’t these people realize that their little pooches, kitties, tweety-birds and turtles may not understand anything they are saying, or only understand the emotional component as it relates to food, shelter and avoiding corporal punishment?

Interesting to note, while Sue Manning, writer of the AP story, sprinkles it with case histories of these misogynists and man-haters, the one photo that appears on the website version of the story is an obese North Carolina woman with her big dog.  AP, like most news media, is making visual concessions to the rapidly growing number of rapidly growing Americans.

The more interesting discussion, I think, is why Associated Press participated in conducting this poll, which does nothing more than to titillate the gossip genes of those whose community extends primarily into online, broadcast and print media.  

But think of this: Once completed and analyzed, the story is obviously newsworthy because the media dedicates a large amount of space to trivial pop psychology stories. This one has the added blandishment of a kind of genial “man bites dog” undertone.  In other words, instead of covering more breaking news or providing more accurate and in-depth coverage to key issues such as health care, immigration and financial reform, the AP has created its own bon-bon of pop triviality that it can offer to a factoid hungry readership.