Entries tagged “culture”

Most of my career has been dedicated to communications, either in making tools for enabling it, or in trying to practice the art myself. My friends tend to be people of conscience, so they often question why I waste my time on activities that could be described as "marketing" or even as hype when there are much bigger challenges that my talents could be applied to.

Perhaps the best articulation of why I think communications matters is in this short TED talk by Rory Sutherland:

In short, Sutherland argues that we need to start to value intangible, emotional experiences and that marketing, communications and, yes, even advertising can help bring that about. By starting to place importance on experiences and appreciation instead of objects and consumption, we become more sustainable as a society while also becoming more creative as a culture.

A lot of people offered up criticism when I launched Last Year's Model, asking why I was just encouraging people to talk to each other instead of actually doing something. As it turns out, talking to each other is doing something.

From lolcats to goatse to the Zidane headbutt, I've been at least tenuously linked to some of the web's most notable and notorious memes. Naturally, when I heard about ROFLCon, a conference being organized at Harvard to celebrate online memes and celebrities, I knew I had to be there.

The thing is, every time one of these little memes pop up and I get involved, people always ask me "Why are you wasting your time on this kind of trivial crap?" And the truth is, any one of these memes by itself is a relatively meaningless distraction. (Although you'd be surprised how many people have said "Oh, I saw your name mentioned in The Long Tail!", where I'm quoted because of the Goatse T-shirt thing.)

But taken together, the propagation of memes through the Internet is a new channel for creating culture. I think that's a phenomenally important development, and one well worth taking seriously. If that can happen and we're having fun laughing at silly cat pictures at the same time, even better. Because prior to the ascendancy of television as the creator of popular mass culture half a decade ago, the primary method of passing along and popularizing new aspects of culture was through existing social ties. We're returning to that sort of transmission, to culture being mediated by our social networks, though obviously the existence of the Internet has radically changed the way those networks communicate today.

This intersection of silly internet memes and the reinvention of pop culture has taken a lot of interesting forms over the years. Efforts like (the late, lamented) Blogdex and The Contagious Media Project and eventually Buzzfeed were based on the importance of this kind of cultural transmission. Some of the very best blogs, like Waxy and Fimoculous are, appropriately, both propagators and consumers of these memes.

And, frankly, none of this social media stuff so many of us have been working on will have amounted to a hill of beans unless we can change the course of popular culture. The verdict is still out: We've never made a rock star -- if MySpace counted, those bands wouldn't consider getting signed to a major label with a traditional media company as a milestone of success. Snakes on a Plane tanked. Howard Dean is not the President. A funny YouTube video can get a couple minutes of play on a clip show on basic cable. But I think there's a future where we really can do a lot more than just contribute 10 minutes worth of ha-ha to your workday.

So, come join me at ROFLCon. I'll be the one taking everything a little bit too seriously. But don't worry, given the rest of the formidable guest list, you'll still have fun. And in perhaps the only fitting way to end this post, please see "Lolcat r full of win", one of a package of feature-length articles in the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal, which has a bunch of quotes from me. I'm not positive the quotes from me are 100% accurate. Nor, for that matter, am I sure that the cat grammars described there are really accurate, either. But at least it's a fun read, and lookit silly memes, making their way into good, old-fashioned newspapers!

I found Nelson Minar's thoughtful look at Larry Craig's arrest to be very moving because of its deeply empathetic perspective. I find one of the things that frustrates me most about the public media sphere is the profound lack of empathy for people. Now, I don't like Craig -- I think he is a hypocrite. But Nelson took the time to think through the perspective of the person being demonized and understand and explain a very logical path to how a person arrives at the worst day of his life.

I find myself wishing more and more that we could teach people the ability to see the world through other perspectives. I think we can detest someone's hypocrisy and regret his awful decisions, and maybe even resent his beliefs, while still being sympathetic for his having been in a situation that left him with no good choices.

This is also what I was thinking about when ruminating on design and mise en place a few weeks ago. There is tremendous opportunity in being able to see through someone else's eyes.

What makes lolcats appealing is that it's simultaneously obscure and accessible. It's an inside joke told in an online lingua franca, but with a bit of effort anyone can become an insider.

"An in-joke used to be constrained by geography and who you knew socially," says Anil Dash, occasional lolcat critic and vice president of Six Apart, which creates several popular blog-software programs. "This is a very large in-joke" that blurs the old distinction "between Net geeks and the normals," he says.

I've seen some bloggers put up media quotes on their sites as examples of their credibility and expertise. I've already got the ridiculous photo of myself at the microphone up there, but thanks to my most recent appearance in the Wall Street Journal, I am sorely tempted to put "occasional lolcat critic" on my sidebar. Whatcha think?

Following up on Cats, Comics and Closure, Meowchat and PetSpeak (which, surprisingly, came up during a panel on race and class on Friday), and of course Cats can has grammar, I've rediscovered the bizarre things that happen after a couple hundred thousand people stumble across a blog post.

Chief among the unexpected results is that I've become a reluctant dumping ground for people who want to share their lolwhatever sites with me. Please note: I am not asking you to send me more. Doesn't mean I don't like them, or that I won't look at the links you send; Some of them are interesting. But, being fully employed, married, and relatively sane, I couldn't possibly check out all the fascinating, inane, and useless web memes that have popped up around lolcats and image macros.

If you want to get a feel for what the realm looks like, here's a random sampling:

• Update: I missed a good one, just published today. Cat Power: You cannot resist lolcats just went up on Slate, a meditation on the meme in the form of a slideshow. I even got some props.
• I Can Has Corgan, for fans of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. Also the subject of a Stereogum contest.
• I Has A Tardis, for those interesed in Dr. Who cat macros.
• Research indicating that emoticons are tied to cultural context. Duh! The discussion on Ars Technica is a little less dense than the original research (PDF format), but that one seemed like an obvious call.
• Unsettling Gawker fave Kreepie Kats considers the meme.
• And there's even a nod in a recent episode of current geek-fave web comic xkcd.

And that's all I have to say about that subject for now.

Wow, you kids really like overanalysis of imaginary pet languages, huh? The best thing about writing Cats Can Has Grammar has been the responses.

• Mat sent me a link to this SF Chronicle story on MeowChat, the online language adopted by cat fanciers when they impersonate their cats in online chat. Note to whomever writes the headlines over at the Chron, if you have to say, "It's not just for crazy cat ladies", it's already not true.

• Danny also brought up MeowChat in my comments here, offering up this overview which gives us a "gives a reasonably good breakdown of that story, though unfortunately in heavily accented meow".

• I made it to Language Log! "After a bit of investigation, though, I've decided that I don't feel badly enough about this to undergo the lolcat immersion required to change it." NO LOLCATS FOR U LOL.

• Metafilter loves lolcats.

• And finally, I found the tags and descriptions that people used while bookmarking the post on del.icio.us to be delightful.

Okay, I've been mumbling about the threat of monoculture for months now, but what's really gratifying is how much attention the idea has gotten in many of the year-end roundups that are saturating the press. Even better, the people who've been thinking about this a lot longer than me are doing a great job of explaining the ideas.

The New York Times Magazine's "Year In Ideas" issue had a few nods to the importance of cultural diversity online; Homophily is a great piece from Aaron Retica, pegged to Nat's post on O'Reilly Radar from back in October.

This year, other academics have cited homophily in elucidating everything from why teenagers choose friends who smoke and drink the same amount that they do to “the strong isolation of lower-class blacks from the interracial- marriage market.” Researchers at M.I.T. even published “Homophily in Online Dating: When Do You Like Someone Like Yourself?” which showed that you like someone like yourself most of the time, online or off. So much for “opposites attract.”

In the same issue of the Times Magazine, Steven Johnson covered Digital Maoism, Jaron Lanier's long-time meme (first introduced in his Edge essay) which shows the dangers of a tyrannical majority in many situations. (Steven also contributes a cogent assessment of Web 2.0 for Time.) Jaron's argument is summarized succinctly:

But all the hype over the powers of the so-called hive mind was bound to provoke a reaction, and in May of this year, it arrived in the form of a thoughtful — though controversial — essay by the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier. “What we are witnessing today,” Lanier wrote on Edge.org, “is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective. Numerous elite organizations have been swept off their feet by the idea. They are inspired by the rise of the Wikipedia, by the wealth of Google and by the rush of entrepreneurs to be the most Meta. Government agencies, top corporate planning departments and major universities have all gotten the bug.” Lanier dubbed this newthink “digital Maoism.” Against this collectivist mythos, Lanier tried to carve out a crucial space for the insight and creativity of the individual mind.

Jaron shows up in Time's year-end YouTube lovefest, too. "Beware the Online Collective, he exhorts:

One of the most wonderful things about the rise of the Web and other Internet-based communication schemes is how anti-mob they have been. I was in heaven 10 years ago watching millions of people build web sites for the first time as a form of expression. I'm just as excited today when I run across a creative web page, MySpace site, YouTube video or whatever. There are zillions of people out there who are developing themselves, reaching out to others, becoming more creative, better educated, and richer than they otherwise would have been.

...

So what's wrong with this pretty picture? All too many entrepreneurs seem to think that if you reduce the human element, the scheme will become more efficient. Instead of asking people to create videos or avatars, which require creativity and commitment, just watch their clicks, have them take surveys, have them tweak collective works, add anonymous, unconsidered remarks, etc. This trend is lousy, in my opinion, because it encourages people to lose themselves into groupthink.

All well worth the read. Now we just have to see which meme naming will win, "homophily", "digital maoism", or "monoculture". Because all that's missing so far is a Long Tail-style name for the idea for it to really take off.

Jason describes the blog commentor's gaze, a rumination on how people who act unreasonably on the web fit some parts of the scientific definition of a psychopath.

For what it's worth, I was mostly just venting (posts that I write on weekends are almost always lunacy, generally speaking) but Jason aptly describes my true feelings on the subject:

I don't think most of the people that demonstrate antisocial behavior in comment threads are actually psychopaths or sociopaths (there is a difference) in real life. Rather, interacting via text strips out so much social context and "incidental information" that causes some people to display psychopathic behavior online and fail to develop an online moral sense.

The question now, of course, is how we can give people more social cues when they're interacting online. A few of the comments on my post, from Don Park and Ben Benner, do a good job of addressing this issue to some degree, as well.

Four years ago, I didn't know anything about diamonds. Then I posted one ill-tempered rant about how annoying and even offensive I found the advertising for the diamond industry. And I'm not easily offended.

I was immediately drawn into a conversation that I didn't know existed, and through emails, comments on this blog, and many other conversations (often with total strangers) I learned a lot more about diamonds. I still don't appreciate their aesthetic, but I am delighted that a lot of people are educated enough that if they do like diamonds, they consider where they were sourced. Friends of mine got engaged recently, and got a Canadian diamond without a second thought -- especially romantic when you have Canadian family members.

And now it seems like we've reached a moment in popular culture where the sourcing of diamonds might actually become a topic of a public debate. Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond opens next week, and the starpower of Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Honsou, and Jennifer Connely can't help but raise awareness of the issue and inspire some people to do some exploration of diamonds.

So, a few links to various resources I found useful:

• Diamonds are for never: The first post I ever wrote about diamonds, it's still one of the most popular posts I've ever written and regularly gets random new people coming in from Google to join the debate.

I know what you're thinking. "It's not that bad." It's just a joke, and I'm taking it too seriously. But how can you look at a list on the industry's own marketing website and see "Of course there's a return on your investment. We just can't print it here." and not be aware that they're selling, along with war and market dominance, dysfunction.

• Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? The Atlantic's seminal 1982 story about the diamond industry, which was one of the first resources to inspire people to rethink the marketing and sourcing of diamonds. Not as early, but also influential, was The Diamond Empire, Frontline's 1994 look at the industry.

• The One Sky campaign and Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring. There's obviously an agenda on that second link, but both sites, especially the One Sky site, contain some valuable information if you're interested.

• Ask MetaFilter often has threads tagged diamonds or diamond. The general slant of these threads is anti-diamond, but there is good information and debate to be found there.

• The resurgence of the diamond debate in popular culture first started gaining prominence with last year's release of Kanye West's Diamonds from Sierra Leone. A brilliant single, an even better remix featuring Jay-Z, and a beautiful video -- it was the perfect conversation starter. The Zwick film of course also features an IMDB profile and an educational site.

• And finally, one last not-safe-for-work link, poking a little fun at DeBeer's print ad campaign, which is where I started in the first place.

If you follow pop culture, it's been almost impossible to miss Michael Richards' astounding racist flame-out and subsequent requisite soul-searching televised mea culpa.

If you're a long-time reader of my site, you can probably guess my take: This is another example of the impedance mismatch between white and black culture in regard to social standards in public settings. Put more succinctly, Michael Richards lost his shit for the same reason white people always get mad when black people talk at the movies. It's about control, and who sets the standards, and clearly Richards is someone who gets filled with rage when he's not in control.

Now, to those of us who aren't black or white, this stuff is usually just an academic argument. It's a source of amusement, or maybe even a source of hope that someday while everyone else is arguing over this, we'll get some hispanic and asian people on TV or even into the White House.

But the fundamental issue here is that there's a significant tradition in many African American communities to see entertainment venues as a forum for interaction, as a place for dialogue and conversation inspired by, or even directly in response to the performance. Whether it's call-and-response in church or at a hip hop show, it's not merely acceptable to be talking or reacing, it's expected. Would showtime at the Apollo be as fraught without that expectation?

Conversely, a lot of white culture places an expectation on respect for the performance. There's a standard of reverence for the person on stage, or the film being screened. And there's an underlying sense of value: Hey, we all paid to be here, so be quiet!

Both positions are completely understandable, completely defensible, and valuable in their context. Hell, I usually feel both motivations at once when I go to events. But they're largely incompatible, and are especially hard to reconcile in a context that's weighted by the history and tension of race.

So, when a white comedian is heckled by a black audience member? It's a threat to Richards' values, and he reverts to the worst, most violent response possible: Lynching. I like to think of myself as jaded, but I was still astounded that Richards literally referenced lynching as his very first response to the challenge from the audience. For those arguing (probably correctly) that there are racist tendencies buried in us all, I'd like to offer a correction: This shit was not buried in Richards, it was sitting right there at the top of mind.

The eye of pop culture will move on to something more scandalous, or something more comfortable than confronting racism. But there is still a desperate need for people in America to understand the various cultural norms that inform their expectations of behavior, and to start embracing that variety.

Still curious about this? I wrote about white and black folks at the movies over four years ago:

My experience has been that white people at a movie see black patrons' interaction with the screen as being rude or inappropriate, and that black audiences see the white objectors as mostly frustrated by the fact that a black person has control over their ability to enjoy a movie in the manner to which they're accustomed. They're both right, of course.

Shortly after that, more movie stuff:

America, wake up... not everyone acts the way you do, and not everyone has the same expectations, wants, and desires that you do. If it's an orchestral performance, then shut the fuck up. If it's a funk concert, then get off your ass and jam. Somewhere in between? Then figure it out. But don't expect that everyone around you will arrive at the same conclusion.

Some other relevant links:

• Jay at hip hop music offers The Definitive "Racist Kramer" Post with some great additional links and commentary.
• Dan Charnas asks, Are you really that surprised? with some perspective on Richards' role in Seinfeld:

The construct for “Seinfeld,” like so many other comic teleplays and films, is a monochromatic world where White People are central, and people of color — if they appear at all — are simply used as accessories, as added “color” for a scene.

• I recycled the same snowclone in this post's title in my earlier ruminations on Digg, for no reason at all.

• And I rambled on about monoculture for almost a month, yielding such obvious assertions as "the greatest threat to cultures today comes from not intermingling".

A month ago, I began a series of posts outlining some common themes:

• Any system faces danger when it becomes a monoculture
• Diversity offers many broad-ranging and sometimes unexpected benefits
• There are many parallels between biological systems and technological networks like social software on the Internet.

In this context, "Web 2.0" isn't an overhyped and under-defined buzzword, but rather an umbrella term describing all of these kinds of social software that make use of Ajax-style design patterns to serve a useful, meaningful purpose.

Today, most individuals and companies making social web applications are existing in a monoculture that robs them of the broad perspectives, influences, and understanding necessary to create a community that's sustainable over the long term. In short:

The lack of diversity in Web 2.0 poses a life-or-death threat to its viability.

If the success and influence of the social web is to continue, we must make it a priority to include the cultures and communities that we've been ignoring, overlooking, or excluding. A failure to broaden our view will ultimately be fatal if uncorrected. How could this be true? To start, let's look at some of the ideas that inform this view, taken from a variety of disciplines including astronomy, biology, sociology and even cooking.

Some Background

No community can thrive without the perspectives of outsiders, especially if it's trying to serve those outsiders. The key to getting good results is understanding the importance of the variety of cultures available. We've all seen that communicating using all the tools of social media can make people's lives better. The reality is, those benefits can apply just as much to one's professional life as to one's personal life.

But the thing that strikes me as equally important is remembering that even the most powerful, influential, or pervasive lines of business are always in a tenuous position. You can have the power of the legal system at your hands, or the ability to talk to almost everyone in the country at home or in their cars, and still end up in a defensive position if you're not able to have a dialogue with your community.

In the real world outside of Silicon Valley, people are busy solving problems that we often overlook, trivialize, or deliberately ignore. It's instructive to be immersed in a culture outside of the one where we create new technologies. For us, encouraging everyone to take advantage of social media is a fundamental necessity.

Hundreds or thousands of years ago, the greatest danger that faced societies was the introduction of a foreign culture's physical threats... the greatest threat to cultures today comes from not intermingling. Whether it's expressed in agriculture ("hybrid vigor"), or in the context of a cocktail party (being a "social butterfly"), making an effort to avoid cultural isolation is rewarded by making an individual or a society more healthy. That's not to mention the bonus potential of additional opportunities, higher potential for recognition, a larger market for trade or commercial interests, and a broader audience for communication of messages.

In biology, species with little genetic variation -- or "monocultures" -- are the most vulnerable to catastrophic epidemics. Species that share a single fatal flaw could be wiped out by a virus that can exploit that flaw. Genetic diversity increases the chances that at least some of the species will survive every attack. Building an industry around a monoculture places the entire economy in danger from unanticipated threats. And it's only the adoption and embrace of a broader range of cultures that can help an industry protect itself from that danger, or sustain itself when facing a downturn.

It leaves me struck that something as big as, well, the whole world can look fragile if you step back far enough to really look at it. And a work that took enormous resources to support, unbelievable imagination to create, and true courage to execute can seem downright ordinary once it becomes ubiquitous.

The Good News

So, are we doomed? I don't think so. It turns out, this kind of groupthink or myopia is actually pretty common, or at least common enough that it can make the news today. From this morning's Washington Post, Shankar Vedantam's article says:

While the instinct for homophily in politics and other areas seems hard-wired, technology may be fueling our nature. Cable television and the Internet have allowed enormous numbers of people in distant areas to form virtual groups that are very similar to what you see in the office cafeteria.

...While there is nothing wrong with being around others who are similar to yourself, both Smith-Lovin and Small said that people and organizations pay a price for homogeneity. In politics, for example, the fact that people rarely have friends with different views makes it difficult to seek common ground or to examine one's positions closely.

So why all these words? Is a post with pics of a petri dish, a pizza pie, and a planet going to help? Well, the truth is, telling people to be more inclusive just because it's the right thing to do just plain doesn't work. I'm hoping that explaining that our self-absorption presents a mortal danger is enough to get people to do the right thing out of enlightened self interest. Fortunately, some people have already made some great steps forward.

When I wrote about what it's like at the Web 2.0 conference last year, I had despaired somewhat, thinking things could never change. Today, they still mostly haven't. But while I was complaining again, some other conversations popped up that started to give me a little bit of hope. "Be the fucking role models the situation calls for." "monocultures produce monotonous culture." "We should be learning from it and improving ourselves, not using the rhetoric of the past to brush off criticisms we're just too lazy or unwilling to deal with."

The people who are most likely to be threatened or insecure about the embrace of diversity are recognizing not just the opportunity of a broader view, but the necessity of it. Sometimes good ideas do rise to the top. All of us who've been in groups that were outside the monoculture have been aware of this danger, but now those on the inside are aware as well. That's real progress, and real cause for optimism.

The truth is, we need to fight monoculture for the same reason many of us abhor DRM, or fight sterile GMO crops, or argue in favor of Creative Commons licenses. The tools of expression, of communication, must be able to reach everyone, they must be able to bear fruit for those who would reuse or recontextualize them, and they must be available for anyone to expand on or build on.

The people in our communities who are most likely to make an unexpected leap, or to add value that we didn't anticipate, are the people who we aren't even making part of our communities. And it's not too late to include them. But if we keep thinking that diversity or rejection of monoculture can wait for version 3.0, we're dooming all of Web 2.0 to fail.

Resources

Most of the content for this post came from my own earlier posts on these topics over the past few weeks. See:

• A Very Small Planet: Covers Jack Schmitt's remarkable "Blue Marble" photo of the Earth, also seen in this post.
• Pizza Requires Culture talks of Jeff Varasanos' amazing, obsessive pizza recipe, from which the pizza photo above is taken. A key to his success is in understanding various yeast cultures.
• Lawyers, Broadcasters, and Bloggers ... Oh My! Talks about some of the audiences outside of the tech world that I've been trying to talk to.
• Hit the Road is about creating events for non-technical professionals to learn about social media online.
• The Threat of Extinction previews Steven Johnson's Ghost Map, as well as a host of other books about plague and epidemics. This also inspired me to include Jack Mottram's petri dish photo, which is Creative Commons licensed.
• Revising the Software Monoculture gives an update on Dan Geer's seminal look at software monoculture.
• Monoculture Considered Harmful gives some background on the boll weevil infestation that devastated the cotton monoculture of the American South.

The upcoming release of Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map served as a useful prompt for Steven's list of the best books about plagues in the Wall Street Journal.

Steven's list includes titles such as Plagues and Peoples and The Hot Zone, which I've heard of but never read. My own preferences for discussions of catastrophic plague outbreaks lean more towards broad cultural analysis, so I have to mention two titles. Guns, Germs, Steel is one of the best books I've ever read, and beyond its discussion of the importance of germs, it gives readers an entirely different framework for thinking about the evolution and competition of cultures. Another title which I haven't finished yet but am thoroughly enjoying is 1491, which offers a unique perspective on pre-Columbian America. (Author Charles C. Mann has also actively participated in the book's Amazon forum as well, which is great to see.)

The HIV pandemic and the threat of malaria or SARS or ebola or avian flu all show that germs can still be a significant danger today. But what's interesting to me is that there's been such a dramatic change; For those of us in the developed world, something like smallpox isn't an everyday concern, let alone a mortal danger. So the looming threat of genocide due to a viral danger is mostly something we can read about as voyeurs without actually being terrified.

My interest in these books isn't purely morbid, though. Hundreds or thousands of years ago, the greatest danger that faced societies was the introduction of a foreign culture's physical threats. I think these books are deeply instructive in a modern context, though, because the greatest threat to cultures today comes from not intermingling. Whether it's expressed in agriculture ("hybrid vigor"), or in the context of a cocktail party (being a "social butterfly"), making an effort to avoid cultural isolation is rewarded by making an individual or a society more healthy. That's not to mention the bonus potential of additional opportunities, higher potential for recognition, a larger market for trade or commercial interests, and a broader audience for communication of messages.

For most of history, peopled feared outsiders because they really could pose a mortal threat to an existing culture. Now that the situation has reversed, we have to have put just as much energy into reaching out from within our monoculture, not just because of our desire to be inclusive, but also for the health of our own culture. I see examples of this every day, especially from parents, as they choose not to let their children use antibacterial soap or start to explore the increase in asthma or allergies among children. In each of these cases, getting exposed to the germs we used to strive to avoid is necessary to keep healthy.

So, are there any great plagueographies that I'm missing? This honestly isn't a topic that I know very well, and I'd love to learn more about what research is being done.

It's worth taking the time to really enjoy this amazing recounting of an effort to duplicate the recipe for Patsy's pizza. It's great for a few reasons: Good food is always worth taking the time to explore, chronicles of geeky obsessiveness are what the web was created for, and of course the history of New York Pizza is a source of endless fascination.

The part that really got me, though, was how much of the quality of a pizza was determined by the yeast cultures used in the dough. Jeff covers this well:

There are lots of kinds of yeast in the air in your kitchen right now and one of them will set up shop eventually in your flour water and begin growing. What will it taste like? Well, it's like setting a trap for an animal and waiting for dinner. It could be a pheasant. It could be a rat. You have no way of knowing. Do yourself a favor and skip this part and just buy or obtain a known high quality starter...

I've seen many bogus things about the use of starters. A classic is that you can start a wild culture by setting out some flour, water and baker's yeast and the baker's yeast will 'attract' other yeasts. This is alchemy. It's like saying I put out dandelions and they attracted peaches. It makes no sense. Another myth is that you can get the same flavor out of packaged yeast as you can out of a sourdough culture if you handle it right. This is also alchemy. Can you get parsley to taste like thyme if you handle it right? These are distinct organism, like spices, that all have a different flavor. If you use a starter, and you should, then learn from Ed Wood.

The Ed Wood that he refers to is Dr. Edward Wood, a pathologist who realized while working in Saudi Arabia that he wanted to master the history and variety of sourdough yeasts that people all over the world use to make dough. sourdo.com is the home for his book, a source for buying starter cultures, and a fascinating testament to his passion for a subject most would consider arcane.

I've been trying to master a good New York-style pizza at home for years. It's been steadily improving, but still nowhere near the level of even the average brick-oven place in the city. So what did I take away from the recipe? The key to getting good results is understanding the importance of the variety of cultures available.

And naturally, I was going to send the link to Adam for Slice last night, but this morning it was already up on the site. That guy knows his stuff, too.

...and you put links in your browser, and that's what makes the web work.

• Last October, Reason published an interesting look at bloggers' overreactions and even downright misrepresentations of an attack at the University of Oklahoma.

• Michael Fitzgerald has a nice piece in CIO about starting a business blog. I'm in there, briefly, but it's worth reading anyway.

• Prince is going to play halftime at the next Superbowl. Farkers (surprisingly!) rejoice.

• FAQs and Walkthroughs for New Super Mario Bros. I've got three stars, I've done Challenge Mode... now I'm just wandering around looking for things to do.

• Data structures as culture. I love this stuff: "Microsoft emphasizes tree problems because their culture puts a high value on the kind of mental gymnastics often necessary to solve such problems, while Apple emphasizes hashtables because its aesthetically-oriented culture prizes their combination of zen-like simplicity and seemingly impossible speed."

• The Chicago Tribune published a list of the 50 best magazines a while ago. I love magazines, so I have nothing but objections to this list, but I'd say that Baseline is a glaring omission.

• Are The Oaktree and The Bird the same dance? Could be! If only Morris had someone to hold up a mirror to his dancing, so he could judge.

The current bane of my existence? Spoiler queens. "Don't tell meeeeee!" they shriek. You know you've got one, too, someone who insists that the world will end if they know the end of a movie or TV show or book or sporting event in advance of their consumption of the media product, sometimes even when it's not a product they have any intention of consuming.

Here's a tip for all of you who go around with your eyes covered and your fingers in your ears, lashing out with unfettered vitriol against the normal conversations of people around you: You already know how the goddamn movie ends. Think you don't? Well, we can provide a guide and perhaps you'll develop the ability to extrapolate simple conclusions from extremely obvious setups.

Is this an American film in broad release? Does it feature (1) actors whom you have heard of, (2) explosions, (3) breasts, (4) cars, or (5) music? Then, I hate to break it to you, but THE GOOD GUYS WIN. There, I fucking said it. THE GOOD GUYS WIN. That stupid Honey movie with the hot chick who shouldn't be dancing hip hop but somehow is and has to win the contest in order to save the orphanage or whatever? I have not seen this film, indeed I'm fairly sure I have the details wrong, but I can tell you this: She saves the goddamn orphans. Sure, her parents are against the fact that she's parading her body around like a filthy whore, and the town doesn't think she can scrape together the talent and focus to put on a show that's good enough to raise the money, but hey whadaya know. The good guys win.

Cold Mountain. Haven't seen it, ain't gonna see it. But it's about the Civil War. And guess what? The good guys win. I don't care how many Oscars they're bucking for in that crapstravaganza, the South does not come out of this one alive. Sure, you lose some good people along the way, and somehow I think it's supposed to be a love story, but I'll tell you what, the Union wins and everyone goes home after the war.

Haven't seen the new Lord of the Rings movie yet? Well, here's some details you already knew: There's lots more running around and fighting, more goblins and trolls and unicorns and all that shit, and then the fucking good guys win. I know, I know, you're thinking "You mean my 40 hours of loyal slobbering over bad dialogue isn't rewarded by seeing a piece of jewelry destroy the entire fictious universe?" but alas, it is so. Don't get me started on the fact that the "bad guys" are the brown people from the East who are riding elephants, carrying scimitars, and wearing turbans. The books were written by a British guy, let's not forget.

I can't understand how people get into the denial mentality that gets them so fixated on spoilers. The new Star Wars movies were another good example; We've known what happens to Darth Vader for twenty years and people are still trying to make sure they don't "find out". (Hint: Good guys win.) I think it relates to how people see life and death in general. I mean, it's the ultimate spoiler: You, along with every person you know, and every person you've ever known, are going to die. I hate to be the one to break it to ya. At least I didn't tell you how you were going to die.

So there's a question that always comes up in my mind. If these people can't enjoy a book when they know how it turns out, how do they enjoy their lives? I mean, you're going to end up donated in pieces to science or planted in the ground or burned to ashes. Me, I'm hoping for a little bit of each. But that's not keeping me from liking the story along the way. In fact, it probably makes me enjoy it even more.

Therefore, I insist that Spoiler Queens of the world officially get over it. Now. Stop nellying about with blinders on, pouting and bitching when the inevitable, hackneyed, predictable ending to your literature, your films, your life comes along. I hate having to keep ruining endings for people, ("They hit an iceberg, and the ship sinks and they die. Then dinosaurs come down on space ships and eat their corpses.") but it seems the only humane thing to do to these people. The rest of us are busy enjoying the trip despite the fact that we've seen all this bullshit before and we know how it turns out.

For those of you who live in the United States or are familiar with its culture, imagine a place that starts with a political and social system that's identical to today's United States, but has a few significant differences.

In this place, most people speak more than one language. Almost no one owns a car, even the millionaires. Many people don't even know someone who owns a car. There's no Wal-Mart, no Target, no Home Depot.

People regularly and willingly use mass transit to get around for the few things they can't approach on foot. Almost every neighborhood has the basic amenities in walking distance, like a hardware store or dry cleaner or drug store, and they're almost all mom-and-pop operations, not multinational chains.

The people in this place, in addition to being well-educated on average, are extremely friendly, showing a repeated willingness to talk to and greet strangers, and an eagerness to educate tourists or visitors on the customs and rituals of their home. Their cultures are an extremely varied mix of cultures, backgrounds and identities, pervaded with an astonishing level of tolerance and respect.

There's also a deep ethic of civic-mindedness. Average citizens are not just aware of, but actively engaged in efforts such as city planning and zoning laws and the design and preservation of public spaces. Architecture is valued and protected by well-organized, well-financed groups, often consisting of canny partnerships between public, private, and corporate concerns. New urbanism is an understood goal, not just a theoretical ideal.

And this society exists within an unparalleled environment of artistic and entrepreneurial innovation. Constant reinvention paired with startling new creations. Music, dance, theater, film, sculpture, writing, and any other manner of expression all functioning at levels unsurpasssed anywhere else in the world at almost any other point in history.

So this place? It's where I live, Manhattan. New York City. That's why I write about the city with such reverence, and why it exists as a living, breathing character in my life and in the lives of every New Yorker. It seemed like something I needed to remind people about, if they're interested in reading what I have to say.