Author Archives: caitlinburke

This Is Dumb

GM has sent a memo to Chevrolet employees telling them to stop using the term “Chevy,” because they seem to think it’s diluting their brand.

“When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding,” the memo said. “Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Yes. The memo mentions “Coke.”

From Saving Chevrolet Means Sending ‘Chevy’ to Dump

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UPDATE this afternoon: The policy is already reversed.

The Ugly American

Basically a rodent, with a different tail. Flying rodents, that’s all they are. Good for nothing—apart from shooting.

Well, and paté.

Ernie Gordon, children's author, feeds a red squirrel

Some people may find this equally true of red squirrels, but red squirrels have acquired a groundswell of support in the wake of their endangerment from aggression and squirrelpox thanks to the gray squirrel, a Victorian import from North America. Britain has adopted a policy of working to stem the tide of gray squirrels—which dramatically outnumber red squirrels, and have completely displaced the reds in most of England—hoping that control will enable the reds to bounce back as they slowly develop resistance to squirrelpox.

Watch Nutkin’s Last Stand, a POV documentary.

Delicious Tursiops

“What do they feel like?” asks the blond woman in a purple and black wet suit who wears the Madonna mike. “A hot dog!” chirps a small girl in a pink dress. And it’s true, I think, brushing the top of a gaping snout as I dangle my limp fry over the deep, pink throat guarded by a snapping jaw of needle-teeth—they do feel very much like a hot dog.

Orion article about dolphins, mainly charting the pursuit of them by idiosyncratic neuropsychologist John C Lilly.

Movie Review of the Day

Children of the Damned : I saw this in a drive-in theater, the El Rancho between Kent and Renton, way back when I was about six years old. Ah, the drive-in — the whole family bundled up into the station wagon, Mom making bags of popcorn to bring with us, playing on the swings in the dusk before the movie started, those clunky old speakers we’d have hanging from our car window, and of course, Dad would fold down the back seat so we kids could lie down in blankets and sleeping bags and watch the show. That’s the way to do it. I don’t remember much about this movie — creepy alien kids with psychic powers, glowing eyes, and British accents being born in and taking over a small village — and I didn’t see the ending at all, because in the middle of the movie my mother went into labor and we had to leave. We kids went home, the parents went away, and next thing you know, I’ve got a baby brother named Mike. Whose eyes, fortunately, did not glow.

More at Pharyngula, although movie reviews are not the usual content there.

The Leroy Stick

I am a big fan of BPGlobalPR.

GET WELLS SOON!

It sprang to life on May 19th with a quiet message: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to come.” It’s been faithfully maintained since, and the writer has been invited to give PR advice to readers of the Guardian:

6. Be willing to laugh at yourself! After I spilled a salad on my lap, I immediately tweeted about it.

@BPGlobalPR: Eating at a very expensive restaurant and spilled salad dressing on my pants. Not sure how to tackle this.

And now the writer has given an interview in a substantially more serious vein:

Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto[n] and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.

I can’t help but admire BP for hiring Cheney’s publicist, though, I have to admit. But then, that is exactly the kind of sensitive and responsible approach we can expect from a company whose CEO claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean”.

Yessir. Heckuva glob, BP.

Why Books Are the Length They Are

The corsetting of the modern novel to fit between the tight constraints of binding costs and price elasticity of demand will be unstrung, or replaced by bras, or some other over-stressed metaphorical construct.

Charlie Stross discusses logistics of mass production and the potential of electronic delivery, part of his “Common Misconceptions about Publishing” series.

In Touch with the Inner Wildcat

Are you one of the many cat owners who has a “chitterer”? My current cat just gazes in helpless abandon at birds outside, but most of the cats I’ve had made a clicking chittering call. There’s disagreement about what this means, from the side effect of an anticipatory jaw movement to a deliberate “bird call” to sheer frustration.

In margays, though, it’s an explicit imitation of prey. It probably helps that tamarins have some calls that overlap with cat sounds. As Laelaps explains, because vocalizations can be used to mark territory, “a monkey or other prey animal that thinks it is coming over to tell a competitor to buzz off may instead come face-to-face with a margay.”

Coated in oxytocin

I’ve said it before, and the evidence is mounting: the iPad is coated in oxytocin, a hormone that has been linked to orgasm, social recognition, pair bonding, anxiety, trust, love, and maternal behaviors.

“After a 13-hour wait, it’s like giving birth,” he said after emerging from the Apple store.
“You’re in labour for 13 hours and you’re tired and exhausted, you’re hot one minute then you’re cold the next, and you’re in pain, but then there’s the ecstacy when you have this little thing in your arms.” —iPad goes on sale as Apple faithful flock to Britain’s stores