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Ever see one of those corporate-sponsored “fact” articles about how our manufacturers have gone “green” by reducing the material used in the production of the cans, bottles, tetrapaks, cartons, etc. that we all consume and dispose of every day? I recall an info-graphic showing a comparison of the construction and wall-thicknesses of soda cans over the years. The techniques used to produce the cans could easily be seen to be a better use of raw materials, more streamlined, etc., the weight had come down, the number of parts for each container has been reduced, the “Laverne & Shirley” style assembly line was made redundant, and cans, bottles et al themselves are lighter, stored better, have a full recycling life behind and in front of them, and have been seen by most people as a model of what could be done by marrying modern industry with a full undersdtanding of Earth Stewardship.

New! Improved! [Profit Margin!]

We’re paying the companies to make those improvements, with every instance of their product we buy. And when we recycle the container that we have used, we are effectively being paid way less than minimum wage to procure the raw material used to make the cans, back to the companies that will sell the product back to us, time after time after time.

Then we need to look at what we are actually purchasing in these containers. Such clever designs these days. all the ribbing, which adds to the strength and rigidity of thinner, more ergonomic containers. Drip-free caps. Splash-proof containers.

Waste? What’s that?

How much of the contents of your purchased consumable can you actually get out of the container? Do you dispose/recycle your containers with 1% of the contents sticking to the insides? Half a percent? That’s nothing, right? To you, and me, it’s nothing. We’re going to eat it, drink it, wash with it, spray it, etc. Even spill it. But for every drop you can’t use because the design of the container ensures you can’t empty it, that’s probably an additional 2 or 3 extra purchases per person per year. How many tubes of toothpaste does your family go through in a year? In a 100 ml tube, I’ll bet that the average person throws away 5%, because it’s impossible to get it out of the tube. Multiply by years, and total customer base, and you’ve got additional sales based on the idea of actual consumption being somewhat less than the promise of consumption, by my estimate of an additional half to 2 percent. Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s the typical sales commission for a Financial Planner, or a sales guy at your local massive furniture warehouse. I really would find it hard to believe that the priority for packaging design has “ensure contents can be consumed completely” is in the top 5 on the brief. Or even in the top 20.

This has got me a bit peeved. I strongly believe that humanity has got to take better care of the resources we have on this one, small planet. My kids wear a lot of recycled clothes. We ALL don’t need a car, a lawn mower, bicycles, etc. Most of us use these things a very small fraction of the time, yet we all seem to “need” them, because sharing is just too inconvenient. So why are we all paying the corporations that sell us this stuff for the privilege of reducing their value-chains through our training to help them with their waste?

Service Charges Galore

It’s not just physical goods either. Notice the service charges on your bank statements? Those weren’t there 15 years ago. Banks have reduced physical presence, invested in cheaper, faster and more distributed information infrastructures. Their costs have gone way, way down since the invention and mass-rollout of ATMs and on-line banking. Yet we are all paying more than we used to for the privilege of using these services as a “convenience fee”. Effectively, you’re paying extra to reduce the overheads for the banks. Does this seem reasonable?

The corporations claim that the costs per customer are tiny, and that someone has to pay for supporting all the services we all have access to. Does this mean that we have more services available to us than in our parents’ time? I don’t think so… My parents seemed to have more free time back then than I do now. Then again, CEOs only earned 50 times what the average employee did back then, instead of the 500 times of today. All that money’s gotta come from somewhere…

OK. this is the first film review I’ve posted here. Silly me; with my interests, why shouldn’t I review films? Oh, and if you care, a caution in advance. Here be spoilers. If you haven’t watched the film, and want to experience it for yourself first, you’ve been warned.

From the first scene you knew you were in for a turn-it-to-11 Shock & Roll experience. There was no hope in hell that the first five minutes of this film were going to be anything but: set-up, oh, OH, to bad, to worse, to even very badder, and then badder still, until the ultimate disgust and revulsion could possibly be intimated on the screen—these people who can do this are not just monsters, way worse than animals— they are demons. Um, I’m speaking about the characters here, right?

I thought initially that the brushes used for this high-concept venture  were perhaps a little broad—did the people who green-lit this thing actually READ the script, or just have assistants (all of them under 25; never ask someone that young for advice about movies or dessert. You’ll end up with an insulin reaction and a sour taste in your mouth. And maybe cavities.) pitch them a synopsis? But then, the creators did match the treatment with the colour palette—green, grey, clays, blues, graininess, more texture than should have been necessary, especially on BlueRay—and the sound design. Thumping, heavy. For those credits junkies out there: did you catch how big the Foley team was? And that score… telegraph much? I missed the sound of the scene changes from the original Batman show.

Production design; I know you wanted to do a comic book movie, but shouldn’t someone have done some research? Just a little? And you, Mr. Scriptwriter dude—c’mon; Marcus Aurelius? Ever hear of a Triumph? Didn’t you WATCH HBO’s Rome? I did like the cinematography, but Geez. What’s a DP to do when they only want certain kinds of a look? And never, ever trust a Director with anagramatous names.

So we, oh so horrifically, establish the grievous act that provides the momentum for the plot. Cut to justice rolls a few months later, and we can see the needs for a balance & alignment due to seriously overdone boy-racer tendencies of those Marios and Michaels who lead the red stallion of Team Justice through the Steeplechase of the legal labyrinth to the goal of balance, restitution, and closure for people, society, and the survivors. OK, THAT was purple prose. Maybe Ultraviolet? <G>

If a man has a plan to make it all better later, what’s to say that the decisions he makes to get to the position of executing his grand plan won’t be the grit that prevents the execution of the final vision? And a perp that makes a deal gets to shake hands with the DA in front of cameras? I thought they already established that Jamie’s character was a real operator?

So, then we move on ten years. TEN YEARS? Like that? Wap in the face with the parallel dialogue with the kid; yep that facial fuzz on our hero really speaks about moving on and up.

Batman imagery: shadows, Gerard working on a Leonardo Da Vinci style flying machine, then slipping his clothes off for the expected appearance of the arresting officers, to strike yet another Da Vinci pose as the symbol for man. We hear from the oh so useful 5^th business explaining to our hero why and how the anti-hero, the dark avenger, this unholy spawn of Bruce Wayne and The Punisher, does what he does, and that there’s really no stopping him. Supervillain/arch-vigilante? We can see the genetics mesh in the later gadgetry, Batcave allusions, smouldering near insanity, etc.

Jamie Foxx’s protégé; 10 years later and she’s still this unsure of herself? Man, in a city like Philly we are supposed to believe that this woman, lawyer, assistant prosecutor, hasn’t grown at all in a decade, and she’s still on the job? I call BS. She would have been eaten alive long before the segue was over. And what about her slapping Jamie with the Ovaries card? “I’m not going to have choice forever, and I want to know that I gave “it” up for something I can believe in.” OMG!

You may recall the totally unnecessary scene before the police confrontation, where our aggrieved proto-nemesis is fiddling with something that looks remarkably like a Da Vinci flying model, while, incidentally, the play of light across Butler’s body, and the curved framework behind him, invoked the very obvious ghost of Batman? The Dark Avenger? Well, the next obvious Da Vinci symbol for me has got to be the naked man drawing, spread-eagled inside a circle. That’s what I would bet the design was, and what was represented on the story boards. You know. Batman—Bruce Wayne—Renaissance Man—Leonardo— Get where I’m going with this? Do you think that was discussed at production & design meetings? Of course it was.

Colm Meaney, what were you doing in this film? Was the mortgage due? When you and Gerard are glaring at each other in the interrogation room, was your motivation “You Scottish bastard!” Was Gerard’s “You Irish Prick!” “Your accent’s shite!” “No, yours is shiter!”

How the bloody hell did our dramatically-dead, mooning ovaries assistant have a contact so useful as to get copies of Bruce’s… I mean Dudley’s… I mean Clyde’s… expenses!!! And then we’re going to match those expenses (Look! The Numbers Match!) to the properties Clyde’s holding company registered in Panama has acquired around the Philly area (and I thought the rest of the country, I can’t remember). Oh, and did this move the story forward, or did it just reveal how clever our anti-hero is? I forget again. Or maybe they didn’t explain that part. It’s pretty tough getting the fine lines in when your painting your movie with a 4″ edging brush.

Did you get a load of those syringes in the execution scene? You wouldn’t have had to put anything but coloured water in them to kill someone; there must have been an extra 3 litres of fluid in the guy’s blood vessels. That alone could have killed him. Nice vein effects, though. But of course, we needed the agony, the long, shocking painful screaming & writhing (pissing and shitting himself too, but perhaps over the top for our director, or maybe he just didn’t think about it?).

Jamie gets to hit somebody; wow, that’s the law for you. And the gun at the end? And the outstmarting, by Jamie & Colm? And the Judge getting killed by her own cell phone? After giving a 2-sentence synopsis of the Bush Administration’s respect for the rule of law and Jurisprudence?

Oh, I’m betting this film made money. And that makes me sad.

I expect that some would like to see this topic die, but I just saw a very effective communication and decision-making excercise, complete with real data behind it, happen in less than 4 hours.

Neil Gaiman is a long-time Twitter user (Really! he doesn’t have an admin assistant filling in for him) who often posts more than 15 messages a day. He isn’t trying to sell anything; his tweets aren’t carefully crafted, focused 140-character mini-campaigns to get followers to buy his books or go see the movies or plays so he will receive yet more royalties.

He basically (or so it looks to me) just shares things about his life to anyone who cares to know. Kind of like what you do when you’re kicking back with a beer and some friends on a Saturday afternoon get-together.

OK, he’s a VERY successful writer, who has more than a half-million followers, and he can put a sentence together. But I would estimate that less than 20% of his posts relate to promoting his works. The rest are about people he knows, things he likes to do, people he wants others to know about, and just kind of random stuff. I do exactly that (except I don’t have a speaking schedule that I want to remind you of), as do most of you. Usually via e-mail.

Why Gaiman’s example from today as a case for the benefits of Social Media’s importance, is that he seems to care an awful lot about certain causes, like free and open education, and logical and reasonable copyright, and is an enthusiastic proponent for people using the technologies available to the limit of their ingenuity (assuming that no-one really suffers as a result).

This morning, Gaiman posted a request to any teachers following him, or for followers to ask any teachers they knew, whether they would prefer to get a DVD of his recent The Grave Book, or just get to the multimedia via a website (search Twitter for #TGBDVD). The end of the story is that he got a very solid response back from his followers, which enabled him to go to his publisher (Harper Children) and tell them that 97% of teachers who responded wanted a DVD to be available.

A quick perusal of the tagged messages revealed loads of information that wouldn’t be obvious, like “websites can go away, and so would the media available from them” “I would BUY the DVD” and “My school’s firewall wouldn’t let the content through.”

I wonder if such insights were discussed at the production and distribution meetings at the publishers? My guess, from experience working at publishers, as well as other content “producers”, is that they would have been worried about the costs of copying DVDs and the additional distribution hassle. The numbers (as they see them) come first, the customers after. And, what the customers actually want usually comes as a complete surprise to the “content providers”.

So, with Mr. Gaiman’s presentation of a significant percentage of the marketplace, in less than 1/2 a day Harper Childrens has flipped from distributing the multimedia version of this book on web only to also distributing DVDs, possibly even for additional revenue (and profit. It’s WAY cheaper to burn a DVD that it is to print & bind a book).

The target market community was polled at a very high sample rate about their preferred means of acquiring product. The product creator did it himself, with virtually no overhead. Is it so difficult for the “content providers” to wrap their heads around the possibilities available? This affects everything about product and service. And it shouldn’t take long before the early adopter curve tops out and everyone gets on the train. Be prepared. We will all be affected.