CBS Glimpses The Inner the Workings of Viewers Minds - Remains Unimpressed at Results

Thanks to the miracles of modern pseudo-science, network and advertising executives at CBS can now test the effectiveness of their advertising and programming in new and scary ways. Namely, the network can take a peek inside that fevered subconscious of yours to measure the almost certainly detrimental effect of TV commercials on your fragile psyche. Or at least that's what their new advertising consultants at NeuroFocus would like us to believe.
Based in Berkely, California, Neurofocus uses EEG technology to measure viewers' brainwaves, providing them with information on attention levels, emotional engagement and retention in memory to demonstrate not only the effectiveness of advertisements as a whole, but even what scenes or sounds in an advertisement are the most effective. And by directly measuring brain response, rather than having audiences press a button or turn a knob, NeuroFocus claims to be more accurate and less invasive than focus groups and traditional methods of measuring audience response - as long as you consider wearing an electronic skullcap with matching circuit board nose piece invasive.

It's not just CBS that's interested in NeuroFocus. Venerable ratings company Nielsen, struggling to maintain relevance and credibility in a market where online advertising and viewers who don't watch their TV shows on a television, made a significant investment in NeuroFocus earlier this year.
The only problem is that neuroscience remains a very young science, and the ability to measure data doesn't necessarily equate to the ability to interpret it usefully. Most memory retention studies, for instance, have only tested retention over a period of a few hours or so, and while EEG readings can tell definitively whether viewers are engaged by an image or phrase, they can't tell marketers why the advertisement is engaging, or perhaps more importantly, whether viewers were enjoying what they saw or enraged by it.
All this leaves aside the issue of the ethical dilemma created when plumbing the depths of the brain for the sake of hocking merch. The moral gray area becomes especially murky when you then place the information you got there into a "Neuroinformatics Database" that allows marketers to target increasingly narrow segments of their audience. More focused advertising that targets the subconscious is enough to make anyone a little squeamish, and in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, UC Berkeley neuroscience professor and NeuroFocus consultant Robert T. Knight was a bit evasive when asked if NeuroFocus was a step towards some sort of consumer mind control, trying to clarify that NeuroFocus is only kind of into mind control.

"...are we going to help an advertising industry produce a clearer crisper ad? If you want to call that mind control, then we're into mind control."

Knight goes on to clarify, saying that

"... in terms of making you pick something you don't want, for a reason you don't understand, I would never want to go there."

Which is chilling, of course, because it is exactly what someone would say if they were planning to control your mind at some point.

A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request

I'm a sucker for novel internments, like being turned into a diamond a coral reef or being shot into space. I've never been much one for an afterlife, and I like the idea of doing one last interesting thing with my mortal coil.

But as cool as things like this are, as a long suffering Chicago Cubs fan, there's probably only one place I'm really going to feel at home - The Bohemian National Cemetery on Chicago's North Side, where the friendly confines of Wrigley Field provide a background for your eternal slumber. The cemetery will create a 24 foot ivy covered wall strikingly similar to center field at Wrigley.

Would You Trust This Man To Teach Your Children Transfiguration?

For futuer reference, this is Radovan Karadzic. He's a recently captured fugitive and war criminal who was the first man ever connected to the term ethnic cleansing. He's going to be on trial for overseeing the the murder of thousands of Muslims and ethnic Croats in Sarajevo and Srebrenica in the Bosnian war of the 1990's.
Now that this is clear, can we all please stop comparing him to the Headmaster of Hogwart's School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, who, to my knowledge, never committed genocide against anyone? Thanks.

On Conspiracies, Both Vast and Less So

Barack Obama's foreign policy coming out party kicked into full swing today, as he followed breakfast with soldiers stationed and a meeting with troubled Afghan President Hamid Karzai with his first interview. CBS foreign Correspondent Lara Logan got first crack at the Senator - Huff-Po's got a quick breakdown and the video here. Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson are all waiting patiently in the wings for their shot at Obama, and meanwhile, as if on cue, pundits on the right are crying "Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy."
I’m not going to deny that Obama gets more coverage than McCain – the numbers seem to bear that out. What I am going to deny is that more coverage is some sort of tacit endorsement of a candidate, as the argument seems to go. The media loves Barack Obama not on the strength of his policies or his politics, but on the strength of his story. The historic aspect of being the first African American presidential candidate aside, Obama is a young, photogenic, son of an immigrant who has skyrocketed through the ranks of the Democratic Party. That’s a newsworthy story whether you’re an Obama supporter or not, which, if full disclosure is needed, I am. Put up against a former Republican Party maverick who’s running to core party values as fast as his aging legs will carry him and is noted for not being exactly pally with the press, and it’s a pretty easy call for any page editor as to what’s going to make a more engaging story for readers. And engaging stories sell newspapers, something newspaper editors and owners famously enjoy doing.
My distaste for McCain aside, Obama’s trip is newsworthy on it’s own – he’s trying to make a splash on foreign policy, the only issue on which McCain consistently trumps him among voters. And for as much coverage of Obama as there is, much of it is critical, portraying him as a foreign policy neophyte, which can’t trouble the Straight Talk Express too much.
And let’s remember – this is not about McCain being ignored by the media. We hear about it when McCain goes to South America, when he addresses the NAACP, when he does things that are noteworthy. And considering that McCain will almost certainly speak with Gibbons, Williams and Couric during the course of the campaign, complaints about Obama being interviewed on the nightly news seem just a bit disingenuous. He’s a presidential candidate, for God’s sake! Being interviewed on the nightly news is pretty standard operating procedure.

And now for the small conspiracy, which is the fact that conservative talk radio hosts are secretly attempting to destroy my fragile brain. This week, Michael Savage took on the number one scourge of liberty, freedom and prosperity – sick children. In a rant you can listen to here if you’re so inclined, Savage declares that autism a developmental disorder affecting hundreds of thousands of children and their families just in the U.S. is

" a fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' "

There’s also a great bit about high asthma rates in minority communities being a product of a massive cough faking campaign. My personal favorite quote from the piece - “If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool…don’t sound like an idiot.” As if we needed any further proof that conservative talk radio is where irony goes to die, and then rot horribly.
Naturally, Savage’s handlers have already arranged his contrition and issued an apology, but let’s face it – we heard his opinion on the matter when he was on air, not in a later press release.
While annoying and ignorant, Savage is simply a symptom of the current super saturated media environment, in which any brainless, hateful palooka with a big mouth can go on the air and call people liars and frauds. Luckily, it also results in this site, where I can call Savage a liar and a fraud…and an asshole for good measure. There are plenty of people telling you to call you local Savage affiliate – here’s a fairly thorough list, if you want to find yours – and register you’re complaints, but it seems that just asking for him to be chastised or taken off the air lacks imagination. Personally, I’m going to call and ask that Savage be beaten with a length of pipe. Or have his eyes pulled out by crows. I mean, as long as we’re asking for things that won’t happen, let’s go hog wild, right? Meanwhile, stayed tuned to Savage Nation for more classy, well educated commentary on this and other burning issues. Like elderly grandmothers on social security! Have they no work ethic? Didn’t anyone ever tell them not to be poor? Much less old!