Nobody's Business

The New Yorker Looks Behind the Dikes

Ian Buruma, on assignment for the New Yorker, visits the Netherlands to report on Dutch society in the aftermath of Theo van Gogh's slaughter. I was rooting for Buruma to do well. After all, he covers a topic that's close to my heart, as regular readers of this blog know; and besides, like every other effete Northeastern snob, I am by secret oath required to love whatever the New Yorker publishes. And I usually do.

Not so this time. Buruma's article is merely OK. It's marred by a certain disjointedness, but more so by a few shoddy, uninformed passages such as this one:

"Certainly, Bolkestein [a prominent politician who sounded early warnings against radical Islam, RvB] is a sophisticated thinker, and the refusal to take his arguments seriously had the unfortunate result that church and bar — 'kerk en kroeg,' as the Dutch say — fell into the hands of demagogic politicians such as Pim Fortuyn. A flashy dresser and an openly gay man, Fortuyn was an unlikely hero in this ultra-bourgeois country, but his message that foreign intolerance could no longer be tolerated, and that it was time to restore bourgeois order by kicking out those foreigners, made him wildly popular."

This is an unfortunate characterization of Fortuyn, whose strenuously argued and often complex opinions are reduced to a ridiculous caricature here. If this is all the space he is afforded, at least get the basic facts straight. Fortuyn felt that the numbers of new immigrants allowed into the country needed to be scaled back, probably by half. He most certainly did not run on a platform of "kicking out those foreigners."

Or is the phrase "those foreigners" Buruma's reference to the intolerant ones, in particular? Hard to say, and the ambiguity is troubling. It leaves the impression that Fortuyn was just another Jean-Marie Le Pen or Jörg Haider or David Duke — a closet neo-nazi with a penchant for Blut und Boden fantasies. That really doesn't do this mercurial libertarian agitator justice. In fact, painting Fortuyn this way, whether through sloppiness or malice (my money's on the former), amounts to the character assassination of someone who can no longer defend himself; Fortuyn was, after all, gunned down in broad daylight by a radical ideologue who declared himself a friend of Islam.

In Buruma's defense, his article turns out to take the threat of Muslim fundamentalism seriously — in a Pim Fortuyn/Theo van Gogh kind of way, no less.

"Now the turbulent world has come to Holland at last, crashing into an idyll that astonished the citizens of less favored nations. It’s a shame that this had to happen, but naïveté is the wrong state of mind for defending one of the oldest and most liberal democracies against those who wish to destroy it."

Brinkswrap Revisited

There's customer-unfriendly, and then there's customer-hostile. A few days ago I wrote about package design. More specifically, I excoriated the plastic retail hulls that have been proliferating for a few years now. The industry refers to them as clamshells, but I've dubbed them brinkswrap (that's shrinkwrap with the over-the-top protective properties of an armored truck). The post struck a chord with one reader of this blog who took a shine to the new name.

"Brinkswrap has been a longstanding frustration of mine. My daughter got a digital camera for Christmas — and a nice cut on her hand from the brinkswrap she had to break through to get to the camera. My wife got a couple of nice knives from her father. They were packaged together in brinkswrap. As I fought through the brinkswrap to get to them, I noted the irony of how much easier it would be to get through the brinkswrap if I already had the knives I was trying to get to."

Touché. Dante forgot to create a special circle of hell for these manufacturers and designers. Nevertheless, maybe we can squeeze them in somewhere. I'd put them between the apparel makers who sew scratchy brand labels onto the inside collars of their shirts, and the inconsiderate rotter who designed those maddening multiple seals on CD jewel cases.

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UPDATE: Turns out that the Wall Street Journal has a piece about brinkswrap today (although they don't call it that. Maybe next year). The headline is darkly amusing: "The Puncture Wound I Got For Christmas." One buyer of a PalmOne PDA found her pricey new device sealed in one of the clamshell torture devices. She was unable to rip the packaging open, so

"...she hacked off the top with scissors and struggled to pry the two sides apart — also impossible. Finally, she cut a circle around the entire perimeter, only to slice her middle finger on a jagged plastic edge. Elapsed time: 10 minutes."

The article details how some manufacturers are beginning to pay attention to this insanity (probably in part because they fear the inevitable lawsuits, though the paper doesn't explore that angle). Hewlett-Packard is using thinner, easier-to-cut plastic packaging for its inkjet cartridges. PalmOne introduced 'cut here' marks on the clamshell, though that still seems inadequate to me. But these companies are in the minority. Despite pissing off customers everywhere, and sending some to the emergency rooms to get stitches,

"...tough-to-open plastic packaging is soaring in popularity among manufacturers and retailers. One of the chief reasons is that the unwieldy packages make it harder to steal ever-smaller electronic gadgets."

Noted, and I feel their pain, but that's no reason to throw all known rules about brand-building out the window and start alienating customers like no tomorrow. Instead of trying to earn people's loyalty every step of the way, why would a manufacturer treat all of them as if they were thieving scum? The mindset is a nasty cocktail of two parts laziness and one part sheer stupidity. Add a dash of we-don't-give-a-shit, and stir.

Beauty versus Terror

The new issue of Harvard Magazine is out, featuring an interesting, well-balanced ten-page profile of controversial Islam specialist Daniel Pipes. Inevitably for a scholar who is said to wage “hand-to-hand combat” against a “totalitarian ideology,” Pipes is frequently asked to argue that he is not a racist or an Islamophobe. He is adept enough at answering the implied charge:

“Not being a Muslim, I by definition do not believe in the mission of the Prophet Muhammad; but I have enormous respect for the faith of those who do. I note how deeply rewarding Muslims find Islam as well as the extraordinary inner strength it imbues them with. Having studied the history and civilization of the classical period, I am vividly aware of the great Muslim cultural achievements.”

Well, he's not the only one. The abundant beauty of Islamic art hits me deeper, more forcefully, than most Christian art does. As for contemporary composers and musicians, I'll take Anouar Brahem, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou Ndour or Rabih Abou Khalil any day of the week over Amy Grant or Marvin “what's in a name” Sapp. Decorative art? I visited the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal, back in October, and although the whole eclectic collection was impressive, the Islamic art section just floored me — especially a display of centuries-old lamps so intricate and gorgeous I felt the blood rush to my head. When I found myself in Istanbul years ago, I loved the Hagia Sophia, but I was downright awed by the Blue Mosque. And I find more wonder in one chapter of Khaled Hosseini's novel than in all of Dan Brown's put together.

I'm also with Pipes one hundred percent when he says that

“It's a mistake to blame Islam, a religion 14 centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam, a totalitarian ideology less than a century old. Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution.”

Read the whole thing.

Billions and Billions Served

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article about the force-feeding of girls in Arab culture, an old habit that's, well, fed by the belief that plumper women are more suitable for marriage. Key quote:

>> Jidat Mint Ethmane grew up in a nomad family in this impoverished nation [Mauritania] in the western Sahara. When she was 8, she says, her mother began to force-feed her. Ms. Ethmane says she was required to consume a gallon of milk in the morning, plus couscous. She ate milk and porridge for lunch. She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk, followed by a pre-breakfast feeding at 6 a.m. If she threw up, she says, her mother forced her to eat the vomit. Stretch marks appeared on her body and the skin on her upper arms and thighs tore under the pressure. If she balked at the feedings, her mother would squeeze her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable. "I would devour as much as possible," says Ms. Ethmane. "I resembled a mattress." <<

Known as gavage (after the French term for force-feeding geese to produce foie gras), the practice survives mostly in Mauritania. But the article argues that obesity is increasingly fashionable for women all over the Arab world, no force-feeding needed; and that the percentage of fat females in the Middle East and Northern Africa is now higher than in the U.S.

Note to Pentagon strategists: Granted, it takes a little longer, but perhaps lots of supersized Happy Meals could succeed where blunt force has not.

The Extent of the Disaster

To bring the effect of the seaquake disaster back to a dimension we can understand, consider this BBC news quote on the situation in Thailand:

>> Bejkhajorn Saithong, 39, told Reuters news agency he was searching for the body of his wife at the Ban Khao Lak Hotel, where body parts are jutting from the wreckage. "My son is crying for his mother. I think this is her. I recognise her hand, but I'm not sure," he said. <<

Also this, in the New York Times:

>> The realization began to emerge today that the dead included an exceptionally high number of children who, aid officials suggested, were least able to grab onto trees or boats when the deadly waves smashed through villages and over beaches. Children make up at least half the population of Asia. <<

Please give.

Unleashing a Tsunami of Giving

Who says that journalists are cold and calloused? This just in from my colleague and friend Todd Pitock:

"The suffering caused by the Asian tsunami is apocalyptic. One of the terrible things about tragedies of this scale, though, is how they obscure the depth of individual suffering. Forty thousand, fifty thousand. It's too large a number, and the overload of grief is threatening. It could almost make your mind and heart shut down — or make you decide to shut it out and not pay attention to what's happening.
 
As heartbreaking as the situation is, there is another aspect to the story that I've found terribly disheartening, which is the so far appallingly weak response of the U.S. government to offer assistance. Although I hope our leaders come through, it is nothing less than a scandal, this token offer of $15 million of aid in the face of such an awful catastrophe. Stuck overseas on September 11, I was deeply moved by how people responded to us in a time of profound suffering. In contrast, I often feel as if we as Americans tune out the rest of the world. I don't, for example, think we held candlelight vigils anywhere after the Bali bombings — though the world held them for us after September 11. I am all for being patriotic, and I agree that charity should begin at home. But we also should remember our common humanity." 

Indeed. Below are links to some of the worthiest charities that are providing relief in South East Asia right now, and they need your help. I'll be heading over to make a donation as soon as I'm done posting this. Todd says to be sure to note that your aid is intended for the tsunami victims. International Federation of the Red Cross | Médecins Sans Frontières | Oxfam | Save The Children | Unicef | World Vision
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UPDATE: The U.S. has more than doubled its original aid pledge and it looks  like there are more federal funds on the way. That's more like it, though this AP article reveals that as things stand currently, Thailand and India will each receive just $100,000 in U.S. disaster aid. More is needed. Please give what you can.

Candy Conundrum

My two-year-old daughter is learning to deal with the challenges of delayed gratification. Told this morning that she could have just one piece of candy from her Christmas stash, she chose a single Herschey's Kiss over the candy bars that — sizewise at least — must have been more enticing. So there's hope.

As it is a parent's prerogative to walk that fine line between teaching a child a life's lesson and messing with her head for the hell of it, I explained that if she never eats the candy at all, she'll always have something to look at and feel happy about. With hindsight, I thought that was pretty Zen of me.

Then again, I've been known to scarf down a foot-long tube of Pringles in under five minutes. So when she gets old enough to charge hypocrisy, I'm going to have to invoke that special stipulation used by parents across the globe and throughout time: the 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do' clause. Praise be to whoever came up with that one.

Package Design: Death to Brinkswrap!

The other day I received a name-brand electric shaver and a beard trimmer. Each comes in see-through retail packaging. In fact, the items were encased in clear hard plastic that contains a dash of Kryptonite or something, because it's insane how difficult these clamshells are to open. A pair of serious household scissors will do the job, but at the expense of sore fingers and at least a couple of minutes of hard labor that will have sweat pouring from your brow (and, if you're like me, words pouring from your mouth that would give Michael Powell the vapors).

I'd like to coin a term for this kind of over-the-top packaging: Brinkswrap. Rhymes with shrinkwrap, but it gets its name from the company that's synonymous with armored trucks.

The frustration of buying anything in brinkswrap is worsened by the realization that you now possess this product and it should be yours to do with as you wish. After all, it was paid for, it's legitimately yours, and yet the joys of ownership are waning before you've even liberated it from its stiff, forbidding cocoon. Post-sale, even with your money now fattening the manufacturer's bottom line, the corporate package designers are still treating you as if you were trying to avail yourself of the five-finger discount. (And that's not even considering that we all know that the now-useless plastic hull — so thick you could hurt someone with the ragged cut line — will most likely end up in a landfill, joined by millions upon millions more like it.)

The New York Times has a good op-ed piece about brinkswrap products and their ilk, accompanied by some playful graphics of a toy that has to be freed from a block of concrete with a hammer and chisel.

Me, I've written about advertising, marketing, and design hundreds of times, and I consider myself a fairly savvy consumer. But I'd never pondered one reason author Henry Petroski gives for the packaging trend:

"Once .... the packaging has been cut, ripped and torn apart, many people would be embarrassed to return the toy."

And that's what manufacturers want: fewer returns. Seems obvious now.

On the other hand: Don't they also want to keep customers from grumbling? Don't they want to make the ownership experience a positive one from the get-go? Better yet: Couldn't they make opening the package enjoyable, a tactile and esthetic pleasure that, in the consumer's mind, strengthens the rightness of the buying decision? I'm on my third iPod (because I keep upgrading to more capacious models), and I marvel every time at how joyous it is just to open the box it comes in. With its packaging alone, the iPod communicates the exact opposite of the plastic-armored commodity MP3 players that are functionally somewhat similar but simply Not the Real Thing. The packaging of Apple's player says that here's a company that thinks and cares about the end user — at a moment when I haven't even touched the actual product yet. I'm hard-pressed to come up with other brands and products that consistently reach that level of design excellence.

Most manufacturers are too myopic to grasp that they're in business to serve customers through every step of the process, from providing top-notch pre-sale information to telling buyers how they can safely dispose of the product once it has reached the end of its life. Package design has a big role to play in all this. Improving it is not the same as catering to hifalutin design snobs; it is simply smart business. Think about it: Apple often manages to sell its products at a premium, which suggests that the packaging (which is clearly a part of the brand's, um, Gestalt) contributes to its profit margins. Done right, everyone wins. It's a lesson that other makers of consumer products might want to take to heart if they know what's right for their bottom line — and for my poor, battered fingers.

Tsunami to Hit U.S.?

No, not the one that just killed more than 50,000 people in South-East Asia. But here's a 1999 article that explains why our own western seaboard is hardly immune from walls of water moving at up to 500 mph — almost the speed of a jet airliner. Granted, the photo illustration is perhaps a bit too James Cameron, but the article itself, by Krista Conger, seems level-headed enough.

>> The Monterey Bay Canyon, less than a mile off the shore of Moss Landing between Santa Cruz and Monterey, has sides sloping sharply down nearly two miles. Such steep drop-offs create ample opportunities for underwater landslides. Additionally, Monterey Bay itself is bisected by two faults, the Monterey Bay fault and the San Gregorio fault. In 1998, the California Division of Mines and Geology upgraded the San Gregorio to a Class A fault after comparing seismographic history in the region with recent movements detected along the fault line. The upgrade underscores the potential of the fault to rupture and cause an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 or greater. <<

And there's another tectonic threat that has U.S. seismologists worried.

>> Less than 200 miles off the shore of Washington and Oregon lies the largest active fault outside of Alaska, the Cascadia subduction zone. Stretching about 1,000 miles from Eureka, California, to Vancouver Island in Canada, it is exactly the kind of fault scientists expect to cause a tsunami. Scientists estimate that a wave generated from a Cascadia rupture would reach the shore within 20 minutes. Bruce Jaffe, a seismologist with the U.S.G.S., believes he has found evidence of a huge tsunami which devastated the northwest coast of the United States 300 years ago, as a result of a rupture in the Cascadia fault. <<

Scientists believe that the ruptures occur in 400- to 500-year cycles. So,

>> ...the danger to Washington, Oregon, and California has been building for the past 300 years. Evidence suggests that when the stress on the fault is finally released it could trigger an earthquake of magnitude 8 or 9. <<

That's a stunning sledgehammer of a quake. The big one that hit close to Sumatra today, sending giant waves crashing into Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, among other places, measured 8.9, making it the world's worst in four decades.

Of course, daredevils with a death wish aren't panicking — they're keeping their surf boards ready. Officials in Hawaii are still a bit freaked out by the memory of 400-plus surf enthusiasts showing up on the beaches of Oahu ten years ago, trying to catch a killer wave. To  prevent a repeat, a public-safety DVD has been distributed through Hawaiian surf shops this fall. The message is sure to get lost on this guy.

Egalité and Fraternité (Forget Liberté)

Any criticism of someone else's religion can make you a criminal in Australia. England has the same harebrained idea. The latest nation to adopt a law against hurting people's feelings is France. Key quote from the Guardian article:

>> The French parliament yesterday definitively adopted legislation that could lead to year-long jail terms for anyone found guilty of insulting homosexuals or women. ... The law puts anti-gay and sexist comments on an equal footing with racist or anti-semitic insults, allowing French courts to hand down fines of up to €45,000 (£30,000) and jail sentences of up to 12 months for "defamation or incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence on the grounds of a person's sex or sexual orientation". <<

That sound you hear is Voltaire spinning in his grave.