Listening to The Hour, featuring Michael Calce, aka famous script kiddie (another i learned today) mafiaboy, lead me to the smart cow problem:

"The smart cow problem is the concept that when a group of individuals is faced with a technically difficult task, only one of their members has to solve it. When the problem has been solved once, an easily repeatable method may be developed, allowing the less technically proficient members of the group to accomplish the task.

The term Smart Cow Problem is thought to be derived from the expression: "It only takes one smart cow to open the latch of the gate, and then all the other cows follow."[1]

This has recently been applied to Digital Rights Management (DRM), where, due to the rapid spread of information on the Internet, it only takes one individual's defeat of a DRM scheme to render the method obsolete."

The guy behind 538 was at the Colbert Report last night –> how-to predict the elections with a baseball algorythm

This is why you don't need good creatives, just good trainees….

Today's most successful marketing campaigns can be attributed to an understanding of past Cultural Movements that not only reflected the zeitgeist of the nation, but also helped to define it. The innovative Microsoft small-business accounting campaign achieved a year's results in three months. Frito Lay successfully launched a totally new brand called True North. The propulsion of Target into the highly competitive big-box retail market, the launch of the Toyota Scion, Apple's resurgence as a category leader - these successes were not the result of solely traditional advertising tactics.

These brands are leaders that have learned how to make the most out of cultural shifts. People today desire a bigger, more expansive view of the world that reaches deep into our local environments and personal histories. These brands continue to reach people by capitalizing on and even igniting the tinder of a grassroots movement, then heating it to a roaring blaze with the science of marketing.

The Creator Class. It’s a focus on multi-skilled creative minds who feel they can turn their hand to multiple product and service offerings, often challenging they way established industries operate.

"chool dances have traditionally been structured around mating rituals, dating back to a point in time when parents encouraged teens to go on such structured dates in order to find the ideal partner. This is no longer the era in which we live. [...] Decades ago, teen dating turned into a different kind of ritual, one driven by status and validation and decoupled from pair bonding. While not having a date had long been stigmatized, the cost became purely social rather than marriage.

…What’s happening is not a radical shift in teen friendship practices. It’s about the collapse of an outmoded, outdated mating ritual. It has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with social norms relieving unnecessary pressures that no one liked anyhow. Teens aren’t going date-less because friendship is suddenly more important. Teens are going date-less because it’s socially acceptable and teens haven’t wanted the pressure to have a date for decades."

More on the same thing…

"In a study published earlier this year, professors at Duke University and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, explored whether exposure to brands — exposure that we’re not even conscious of — had an effect on actual behavior beyond just purchase decisions. In one study, subjects looked at a screen that displayed a series of numbers and kept a running sum. Interspersed between the number-flashing were images of either Apple or I.B.M. logos, which came and went faster than the conscious mind could pick them up. A separate preliminary study had found that Apple’s brand is widely associated with creativity, and that was what this follow-up research was really about."

that exposure to brands overall can have a significant effect on our performance in many aspects in life.

“The trick is, the first time you wore the warm-up parka,” it wouldn’t have any effect, he says. “Because you’d realize, Oh I’m being ridiculous.” Wear it often enough, though, and you’ll probably stop ruminating about it. “Below the level of conscious awareness, you’d put the jacket on, and what’s activated in your mind is maybe Michael Phelps going very fast,” he continues. “And those things could actually kick up your motivation to go faster.”

Here's how it works: visitors’ heart rates will be monitored by two heart rate sensor sculptures, and will activate two hundred theatrical spotlights, which in turn create "a pulsating matrix of light across the central Oval Lawn of the historic park." Hey MSPC, how about pumping Jose Gonzalez's cover of Heartbeats while all of this is going on?