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Something very exciting happened by accident the other day. I wrote a comment on a post on the very interesting film blog “SHADDOWPLAY” and David Cairns, who writes the blog, decided to follow up on the post and in doing so he referred to me as “author Alex Andronov“.

Apart from the nice alliteration, I think it is the first time I’ve been referred to as an author by somebody I don’t know. I know it shouldn’t be that important but along with receiving my first royalty payment it was hugely significant to me. I loved the feeling. This might just be a giant ego trip for me, but I can live with that.

Why do we need to ban factory-farmed chickens?

Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have both been on TV recently explaining that battery farming techniques are terrible and people should stop buying food farmed in such conditions. Fair enough – I only ever buy Free Range.

Certainly Jamie has been calling for a ban. A ban doesn’t solve the problem. People currently have a choice. They can either care about animal welfare or they can have cheaper food. And large numbers of people choose to have cheaper food. Banning battery farming won’t make free range farming cheaper overnight. You and I might be able to
absorb the cost but what about everyone else? They aren’t choosing the nicer version now – there must be a reason.

The drive to ban activities is a dangerous one. It comes from intellectuals wanting to force their enlightened views on others. Spend the money on education if you must change behaviour. Just banning it doesn’t solve the problem – changing people’s minds so they feel it’s worth spending more is better. That way people still have a choice and supermarkets will stop stocking goods when people stop buying them.

Katherine sent me a text message the other day. Nothing that surprising in that – I suppose. But we were in the same house, and she was asking me if I wanted a cup of coffee.

Now when I was brought up, I was always told that I was not supposed to shout up the stairs. Shouting, I was told, was a terrible thing to do as it made the baby Jesus cry. So we weren’t allowed to shout up the stairs at home. So if you wanted to ask a question you had to go up and ask. When I was a child I always wanted some kind of intercom system, some way of contacting those in other rooms without shouting. And that is very much what Katherine had achieved with her text message.

On the other hand my parents tried to teach me the value of money and how one should try very hard not to waste it. In many ways this text message was exactly that – a waste of money*.

So was it a reasonable thing to do? What solutions do you have? We do have an internal telephone that has an intercom, but there isn’t a telephone in every room so that needs to be taken into account.

*We were both within our minutes but is that an opportunity cost or a sunk cost? Economists amongst you – you be the judge.

It’s very difficult to have a truly objective awareness of how ill you are. As a thinking modern man, I know all too well that woman consider most men to only really get “man ‘flu”. The problem is that moaning is very much a male characteristic – although I know men who would never moan in a million years. It does seem to characterise our gender.

The only thing I can say is that I was so ill that I didn’t stop coughing for three weeks, I felt dreadful and, most tellingly, I stopped being able to write. This doesn’t happen very often – actually being ill doesn’t do it just by itself.

This reminds me, I really agree with current poet laureate, Andrew Motion – he drinks a lemsip every morning before he starts writing because it reminds him of feeling ill which is a melancholy*, self-reflective time. He thinks this helps him write because writing is about self-absorption – something that goes along with being ill. It works for me. The only downside is when you aren’t able to take a proper break, in those cases you have to use so much of your non-existent energy on normal life that there just isn’t the energy for writing – and so I just stopped. I hope you’ll forgive me.

Anyway, I’m back. I hope you’re happy now. Most importantly “Preparation” which is the continuing story which didn’t continue because, irony of ironies, it wasn’t prepared in advance, will continue from this Friday. Happy Christmas and happy New Year.

* This reminds me of my favourite answer to the question “so how are you doing?” I’ve ever heard which was, “I feel melancholy”. It was immediately clear that the individual wasn’t English**.

** He was Italian.

I’ve always wondered what’s really going on with those people who propose in really public places. Are they doing it so that the event is memorable? And if so why don’t they realise that:

A) Getting engaged is a pretty memorable occasion, and

B) If you want to do memorable, why not go to a great but relatively secluded location?

I blame the movies. Actually I saw a pretty good compromise in Rome. A guy there proposed while at the colosseum. It was just big enough an occasion to fit the criteria but small enough to be okay if she hadn’t accepted.

I think it is a weird lack of self belief that causes some guys to invoke the jumbo-tron. They want to make sure she’ll accept and also commit themselves to going through with it. But what happens if even with all of that peer pressure she still says no? Well you’d have to kill yourself.

Or of course you could kill her instead. That’s what a Spanish guy did recently when he proposed to his girlfriend on national television. Of course it makes me think of a follow-up question – why do people write amusing posts about things that aren’t that funny? Well I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that one.

One of the strangest aspects of an economy is what happens when things are free. And in the new internet economy we are seeing some really strange effects.

One of the most obvious free things are blogs. Here you are reading something I have created for free. Not only that, but I have published it for free as well using software that is also free. So who is paying for this?

Like most bloggers, I am doing this because I enjoy it. Also I see it as Richard Herring puts it on his blog – I am “warming up”. But what about the corporations involved, why do they do it? They largely see blogs as free content to hang their adverts on. They might not even force you to have ads on your blog, in fact there are no ads here, but they know that most users will realize over time that they can charge for content (through advertising) and enough of them will do it to make it a hugely profitable business.

People’s expectations change when things become free. If you try and give something away people will assume it’s worthless (well no surprise, you just told them that in the price) but if you charge for the same item, people will buy it. This has been well-established and still is the way the economy works out in the physical world. But on the Internet this relationship has been broken. We have now all learned that free products on the Internet can often be very valuable. In many ways it is advertising’s fault – it allows the company to charge us without consent. When you watch a TV show, you don’t feel like you just paid for it, but you have. Or at least you will. Or perhaps you are one of those people for whom advertising doesn’t work. You realize everyone thinks they’re immune to it? You can’t all be right.

The strangest effect of free things is the incredible expectation of quality. Products from Google aren’t just useful add-ons to your computer, they are tools people use all the time. I have at least one of their products open at all times when I’m online (Google Reader, if you’re interested). The amazing thing is that they are useful and they work – and they’re free. But this leads to some wacky expectations of free products. If you look at the comments on (Dilbert-creator) Scott Adams’ blog, you’ll see some pretty critical comments. Scott’s blog is so good, that when he fails his readers in some way, they complain. Usually they seem to get upset when he says he’d like to make money from his activities or when readers don’t agree with their interpretation of what Scott said. The question has to be, what right do they have to complain? He didn’t force them to read the post and he gave it to them for nothing.

The final point is from Joel Spolsky. Joel is a software developer. He warned other developers from making custom-ware, saying that trying to please everyone is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps Scott should realize that his repeat customers are unlikely to be the ones complaining. But on the other hand he has boxed himself into a bit of a corner. His posts largely annoy stupid people who leave, and smart people don’t click on ads.

My suggestion to him? Split the blogs. The Dilbert blog can have all of the silly stories from around the world and the heart-warming ones too. Then on the Scott Adams blog he can talk about his philosotainment. I know I’d still read both, I just think it would make it more enjoyable for him.

I was talking yesterday about judging a book by its cover and it reminded my of something from the recent trip to my father’s house.

We were having a wine tasting and it wasn’t blind. This led naturally to the subject of what advantage a blind tasting has. The most important thing you’re guarding from in a blind tasting is probably reputation. If you know what Robert Parker thinks about the wine then you might let it influence you unduly.

But a second aspect is one of design – the design of the label, the weight of the bottle and any directly printed onto the bottle. This last was considered by some around the table to be a key indicator. A very poor indicator, by the by, is fastening (although plastic corks are a big no-no). Between screw tops and corks there is not much useful information to deduce the quality of the wine.*

All in all though, the only trend observed is that heavier bottles tend to be nicer. Not a guarantee of course and I can hear all of the objections coming. I’m not saying heavy bottles of wine will be nice but that wines of a better quality will often have thicker bottles.

As a side note we all knew what we liked about some labels but found it difficult to articulate what it was. Garish labels are usually bad, as are pun titles but not always (try drinking some Nine Popes if you don’t believe me). But as to what a good label looks like, it’s something you have to learn.

If all of this sounds wishy-washy then that’s because it is. What we clearly need to do is a double-blind test. Look at the bottles and score the wine without tasting it, and then score the wine. If we split the bottle scores into weight and label then we might be able to prove the better indicator.

Sounds like something to try over Christmas. The only problem is that if you’ve seen the label then you know what wine it is. Bringing previous experience and Parker back in to play. This might take some planning.

*Although everyone agrees that the screw top is far preferable. Because there isn’t consensus out in the industry there isn’t a trend in the wine.

I recently bought a copy of Woody Allen’s new book of short stories “Mere Anarchy”.

While nosing around a book shop in Rome, Katherine spotted the Italian edition of the same book. Just take a look at the cover – isn’t it far more interesting?

So I bought it – of course – even though I can’t read Italian. I literally judged a book by its cover. And I was quite pleased to.

Last night I went to see the movie Helvetica at the ICA. A movie about the ubiquitous typeface (if you don’t think you know it then you might know the cheap knock off Arial). Once you know what you’re looking for you will see it everywhere (hint: the a and e are the easiest ways to identify it). So an important typeface is 50 years old, but is the movie any good?

I very much enjoyed it. The design gurus interviewed were just as crackers as you need to keep the thing moving along. In fact there were quite a few laughs in the sold out cinema – mostly people were laughing at the obsessiveness of the type designers. The only question I had afterwards was one of how different the film would have been if a different typeface had been the star? The film’s main interest was in these crazy characters of the world of type and they would have happily spouted forth on any font. I think the film maker was wise to hang the film on a specific typeface though as it did ground the piece, I just don’t think in that in the end Helvetica was the star of the movie.

After the movie one of my friends, Anna said that she’d enjoyed it but that it made her feel a little dirty. I think she felt that because there were these obsessives revealing the details of their secret world. I loved the obsessiveness of it all. It certainly stuck a chord with me and the way Adrian and I approach our work.

All in all an interesting film. Should you see it?