12.04.09 I’m Dreaming of a Live Christmas

This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is a Norway Spruce from Easton CT.  It stands 76 feet tall and weighs 10 tons.  That’s big, and it’s certainly beautiful.  But some of you may be asking:  how much environmental benefit was lost in bringing THAT thing to Manhattan?

Funny you should ask.  It is estimated that an average-sized mature tree can absorb 13 lbs of carbon annually, and an acre of trees absorbs about 2.6 tons.  That’s interesting, because each person produces about 2.3 tons of carbon per year.  So 1 person ≈ 1 acre of trees.  Then, if you consider that the United States contains approximately 2.6 billion acres of land, you can see how much potential we have for absorbing carbon.

Let’s take this for a holiday spin.  If each family in the United States planted a live Christmas tree this year, the total yearly carbon output of the country would be immediately reduced by 5%.  In addition, the Forest Service estimates that, over a 50-year life span, each one of those trees would produce $31,250 worth of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycle $37,500 worth of water, and control $31,250 worth of soil erosion.  The benefits are even better in urban locations.  City trees that shade buildings and cut down on air conditioning are as environmentally beneficial as 15 trees planted away from buildings.

With that in mind, should the Rockefeller Center folks consider bringing a live tree to Manhattan?  Only if they’re willing to deal with a root ball some 40 feet across.  But for the rest of us, a live Christmas tree may be a good idea.  A little heavy to be sure, but entirely manageable.  Just remember to keep it well-watered, and don’t keep it too long in the heat of the house.  And, if you live in the north, you may want to go dig your planting hole now, before the ground freezes.

Consider it a Christmas gift to the environment.  Dig, baby, dig.

11.20.09 Squashed

It’s the great pumpkin shortage, Charlie Brown!

The town of Morton, Illinois is without question the pumpkin capital of the world.  Morton grows more pumpkins than any other place in the world.  Each September, the local Chamber of Commerce proudly rolls out the Morton pumpkin festival, which draws approximately 60,000 visitors.  This year’s event featured dozens of rides and attractions, art displays, a pumpkin parade, and even – big news! – a visit from the Budweiser Clydesdales.

However, the mood this year was decidedly sober.  Even a rousing musical set by the Coco Loco Band, a Jimmy Buffett cover act, couldn’t raise the mood of the town or hide the obvious missing element of this year’s pumpkin festival: there were hardly any pumpkins.  That’s because, for the second year in a row, wet conditions caused the vast majority of Morton’s pumpkin crop to die on the vine.  It’s the worst pumpkin performance that the folks in Morton have ever seen.

Sad news indeed, but it’s just a few bad harvests, right?  Certainly nothing to be too concerned about…until you realize that Morton is home to the sole pumpkin processing plant for the Libby’s division of Nestle.  And Libby’s commands a ridiculous 85% share of the market for canned pumpkins and pumpkin pie filling.   Making the little town of Morton almost solely responsible for filling 90 million pumpkin pies each year.  This isn’t a shortage, it’s a pumpkin famine.  If you love pumpkin pie, your Thanksgiving has been, um, squashed.

Just another sad item in an ongoing season of shortage.  But cheer up, even in times like these, there are bright spots. Unusually cold weather in Washington, Michigan and New York didn’t impact their crops, as many had feared.  In fact, many areas are producing bumper harvests.  So give a thought to the folks in Morton, and consider yourself lucky.  You can still stuff yourself with as many apple, blueberry and cherry pies as you can eat.

Happy Thanksgiving.

11.13.09 Friday the 13th

Attention paraskevidekatriaphobiacs: it’s worse than you think…

The Gregorian calendar was first rolled out in 1582, and was fully adopted by Europe in 1752.  In order to make the calendar align almost perfectly with the orbit of the earth around the sun, the Gregorian calendar uses 400-year cycles, each cycle containing 97 leap days to keep things perfectly adjusted.  The 97 leap days fall in all years divisible by 4, BUT NOT those divisible by 100, UNLESS divisible also by 400.  (For example, the year 1900 was not a leap year, but the year 2000 was.  In fact, the year 2000 was the first year since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar which followed the “divisible also by 400” rule.)  Each 400-year Gregorian cycle therefore contains 146,097 days (365 X 400 + 97).

Those 146,097 days are chunked into 20,871 weeks that each contain 7 days, while at the same time being chunked into 4800 months that contain either 28, 29, 30 or 31 days. One would think there would be a perfect statistical correspondence between days of the week, and dates of the month.  But then, one would be failing to account for the raw power of PURE EVIL!

Looking at the dreaded 13^th day of the month, it has a fondness for falling on a certain day of the week.  In any 400-year cycle, the 13^th will fall least often on Thursdays and Saturdays (684 times in the cycle).  Monday and Tuesday get off easy (685 times).  And Sunday and Wednesday are a little creeped out (687 times).  Ah, but Friday – insert scary music here – Friday is friggin’ freaky.  It gets to be the 13^th more than any other day of the week (688 times).  That’s an increased probability of, like, .0002%.  Yikes.

So, it’s Friday the 13^th.  Big deal.  What you REALLY have to be concerned with is the fact that the entire cosmic deck is stacked against you.  Have a nice day.

11.06.09 Title Gluttony

When the Yankees won the title on Wednesday night, their fans said (with barely a straight face), “Whoa, we’ve had to wait almost a DECADE for this.”  Meanwhile, every other baseball fan said (with a sour face), “The Yankees, again?”  To truly understand this dynamic, let’s look at some history, and do some math.

The Yankees have been the Yankees since 1913.  For the past century, they’ve played in a league that had, on average, about 20 teams in it.  Thus, they have had a mathematical expectation of winning the title once every 20 years or so.  If you do the historical math on the Yanks, they SHOULD have won the title 4.8 times, as opposed to the 27 they’ve actually won.  This gives them a “title gluttony factor” (or TGF) of 5.625, meaning they win the championship 5.625 times more often than they statistically should.

To put that in perspective, consider the Red Sox.  With a slightly longer history, the Bosox SHOULD have won the thing 5.4 times, and they’ve done it 7 times.  Giving them a paltry TGF of 1.2, meaning they’ve won it only about as often as they should have.  In fact, the only other teams with long histories and a positive TGF are the St. Louis Cardinals (10 titles in 109 years, TGF = 1.83) and the Baltimore Orioles (3 titles in 56 years, TGF = 1.3).

Moving a team helps.  The Dodgers are a greedy bunch, with a TGF of 1.9, but only if you ignore their previous life in Brooklyn.  Similarly, the San Francisco Giants are at 1.9, the Atlanta Braves are at 1.7, and the Minnesota Twins are at 1.5.  The Oakland A’s have been extremely greedy, winning 4 titles in only 40 years, a TGF of 2.5.

Other than these 9 teams, no modern team has won the title as often as they should have.  Except for one fabulously successful franchise.  Can you guess who?  They have won the title only twice.  But, since they play against 29 other teams and have only been in the league for only 16 years, they hold a garish TGF of 3.5.  Which means the only baseball team which can compete with the Yankees for title greed is….

the Florida Marlins.

10.30.09 Candy Classic

It’s hard work making a simple icon.

Imagine you’re a factory worker in Cincinnati way back in 1880.  It’s mid-summer, there’s no air conditioning, and the temperature inside the plant is well over 100 degrees. You’re dressed in a heavy leather apron.  You’re handed a 45-pound pail of boiling hot white liquid.  Walking backwards, you have to carefully fill a set of metal molds exactly 1/3 of the way to the top.  Next, you go back to where you started, and grab a second 45-pound pail of hot liquid, this time colored orange.  Again walking backwards, you fill the same molds to the 2/3 mark.  And then, to complete the process, you go back to the start, get a third 45-pound pail of yellow liquid, and, walking backward, fill the molds right up to the top.  The full molds are taken away, you’re given a fresh empty set, and you repeat the process.  About 50 times a day, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Thus was born candy corn.  It was first made by the Goelitz Company of Cincinnati in the 1830’s.  The company barely survived an economic panic in 1893, moved to North Chicago in 1912, and was so successful there that it couldn’t keep up with demand.  Then came the Great Depression, and candy corn prices dropped from 16 cents a pound to just over 8 cents.  The market rebounded after World War 2, but in 1975 a spike in sugar prices forced the company to close the Chicago plant and relocate to California .  Soon after, the company became enormously successful making Jelly Bellies, especially once Ronald Reagan took office.

Today candy corn is still made the same way (though now by machines and computers), and with the same basic recipe of sugar, water, egg whites, coloring and flavoring.  Each piece has 6 calories, 1 gram of sugar, and no fat.  There are other flavors and color varieties, but the original tri-color version remains the standard.  Candy corn is an almost entirely American institution and is virtually unheard of outside the U.S. and Canada .  Most of it comes from just two companies, Goelitz of California and Brachs of Texas.  Over 6 billion “kernels” are made each year, weighing in at over 20 million pounds.  And it’s only purpose in life is to celebrate Halloween:  more than 90% of all candy corn eaten this year will be consumed in the next few days.

Which is why today, October 30, is National Candy Corn Day.

10.23.09 He Scores Again

Earlier this month, when the International Olympic Committee was about to announce the location of the 2016 Summer Games, a very famous man flew to Denmark to help his country’s bid.  This man, a descendant of slaves and a national icon, made an impassioned last-minute plea.  The IOC heard him out, and agreed.  They awarded the games to Rio de Janeiro and the man – Edison Arantes do Nascimento – broke down in joyful tears.

If you want a quick primer on the distribution of world power, just check out a list of previous Olympic venues.  The United States has hosted 8 games, more than any other nation, and North America has hosted 12 games in all.  Europe has hosted 30 games in over a dozen of its nations.  Japan has hosted 3 times.  Australia, essentially an outpost of the United Kingdom, has hosted 2.  And China and Korea have each hosted once.  No nation from either South America or Africa has ever hosted an Olympiad.

Until now.  When the announcement that Rio would host was made, over 50,000 residents – known as cariocas – spilled out into the streets.  They unveiled a banner half the size of a football field that read, “Rio Loves You.”  And what a party it promises to be: the Olympics in “the Marvelous City,” the home of Carnival!  Opening and closing ceremonies and the finals of “the beautiful game” will take place at the Estádio do Maracanã.  There will be volleyball, sailing, and other water sports along Copacabana Beach.  Biking and running in the shadow of Christ the Redeemer.  Even the marathon will be festive, ending at a stadium called “the Sambadrome.”  Opa, caipirinhas all around!

And the whole thing will be kicked off by Edison Arantes do Nascimento, who will almost certainly be chosen to light the Olympic torch.  You may know him better as Pele, the greatest athlete of the past century.  On that day in 2016, when he performs the final act in his miraculous sporting career, Pele will be 75 years old.

10.16.09 Word!

Today is both National Boss Day AND World Dictionary Day!  And so with serendipity comes etymology.

The Middle English word for “lump” is “boce.”  From that we get “boss,” or protuberance. It’s common on plants and animals, and also in architecture meaning “stud” or ornamental projection.  There’s a boss which forms the hub of a propeller on a boat.  Which you may need if you ever cross a “boss of water,” meaning a river’s head or a reservoir.

You can take a boss and hit other things with it, also known as “embossing.”  Makes for a nice ornamentation.  In bookbinding, the addition of a boss adds protection to the edges or front cover.  Plumbers faced with an irregular surface may need to boss some metal to conform with it.  Masons may carry their mortar in a boss, not sure why.

A young bull who has a boss-like horn on his head may want to emboss the rear end of a farmer with it.  Such a young calf is known familiarly as a “boss,” “burse” or “buss” (who may or may not become a stud).  Perhaps distantly related to this is the Scottish use of boss to mean “hollow” or “empty.”

Does this mean you work for an “empty-headed bull”?  Not necessarily.  That variant of boss comes from the Dutch, “baas,” which means “master” but not “owner.”  It became popular in colonial America to mean leader of a business or a political machine.  Or even just someone you don’t really know but want to show respect to, know what I mean, boss?

And what about things that are really cool?  Such things tend to stick out in your mind. Which makes them pretty boss.

So, boss, here’s to Boss Day, and hoping you work for a boss boss, and not some bossy buss.

8.21.09 Cross Your Words, Hope to Print

OK, this August weekend you’re gonna take a run at the NY Times Sunday crossword.  Good luck with that.  But have you ever thought about creating one?  Herewith an insider’s guide to getting one published:

1. The grid must 21 squares by 21 squares and symmetrical, so that if you turn it upside-down, it looks exactly the same.
2. The maximum number of answers allowed is 140.
3. The black squares should not comprise more than 16% of the puzzle, and should never completely isolate a section of the puzzle.
4. No letter should be in one word only; each letter should be part of both a DOWN and an ACROSS word.
5. The inclusion of rarely-used letters of the alphabet is strongly encouraged.
6. “Themes should be fresh, interesting, narrowly defined and consistently applied throughout the puzzle.” The “themed answers” should be placed symmetrically in the puzzle and must be the longest answers in the puzzle.
7. Answers should reference a cross-section of interests including geography, history, art, music, mythology, etc.
8. Don’t use partial phrases of more than 5 letters, words of “uninteresting obscurity,” uncommon abbreviations, or rarely used foreign words.
9. Never let two particularly hard or obscure words cross.
10. “The New York Times looks for intelligent, literate, entertaining and well-crafted crosswords that appeal to the broad range of Times solvers.”

To increase your chances of getting accepted by puzzle master Will Shortz, include words related to Arabian horses, Indiana, Tudor architecture and Arts and Crafts.  And go heavy on cultural references and riddles.

BONUS ADVICE:  The inclusion of “enigmatologist” may generate fortuitous repercussions.

7.10.09 Smiling Science

What came first, the happy or the smile?

Charles Darwin wanted to know.  He proposed a theory that facial expressions don’t just reflect one’s emotions, they may in fact cause them.  In 1862, a neurologist named Guillaume Duchenne took up Darwin’s challenge and tried to find a connection between the act of smiling and the feeling of happiness.  He isolated and examined the facial muscles one uses while smiling, and noted the differences between an authentic smile (for example, the downturn in the outer edges of the eye) and a “forced” one.  Though he never found a scientific link between smiling and happiness, he set the benchmark for further study; modern neurologists refer to a “Duchenne smile” as one which appears genuine.

Scientists wrestled with the problem for a century with no success.  Then, in 1989, Stanford psychologist Robert Zajonc reported that, when test subjects were asked to pronounce the long letter “E” (unknowingly mimicking a smile) and then pronounce the long letter “U” (a pout), they felt better after the “E” and worse after the “U.”  Other studies involving simulated smiles reinforced Zajonc’s conclusion.  Conversely, subjects who only looked at other people smiling felt no better.  So how does the mere ACT of smiling make one feel better?  Zajonc hypothesizes that, when one smiles, the tension in the facial muscles constricts the carotid artery, reducing the amount of blood going to the brain.  This cools the brain, and doctors have long known that “a cool brain is a happy brain.”

Do you buy it?  Can you really force your face to make you feel happy?  Who knows, but these days we can all use whatever help we can get.  So, as marketers, we recommend you consider the following this weekend:  Have a Coke and a Smile.  Grab a McDonald’s Happy Meal and Put a Smile On.  Remember, There’s a Smile in Every Hershey Bar.

By Monday, you’ll be fat and diabetic, but scientists project you’ll probably be OK with that.

7.31.09 Rock With the Animals

The quickSilver staff is headed out this weekend to the All Points West music festival.  Our plan is to dance around like monkeys.

Here’s why:  researchers at the University of Kyushu Japan have reported that chimpanzees, like humans, have an innate appreciation of music.  Using an orphaned chimp named Sakura – who had never before heard music of any kind – as a test subject, researchers played two sets of music.  The first set was two short pieces of German classical music, with all the notes played correctly.  The second set was the same pieces, but with all the G notes altered to G-flats and the C notes to C-flats.  Sakura was given a string which she could pull to repeat any of the music that she heard.  Across numerous sessions, Sakura consistently pulled the string more often to repeat “consonant” pieces versus “dissonant” pieces.

This is the first evidence that music appreciation exists beyond humans.  Multiple studies have shown that all humans, regardless of cultural background, have a consistent recognition of musical patterns.  But animals just didn’t seem to get it.  Birds can tell the difference between different song sequences, but they show no preference for one over the other.  And research with other types of primates has not uncovered any musical appreciation.  We’ve long suspected that music soothes the savage beast, but Sakura is the first non-human to offer any proof.

We think more research is needed.  If animals can understand human music, we wondered how well do humans understand music about animals?  So at All Points West, our plan is to listen carefully when Coldplay rocks out on “Animals,” MGMT plays “Of Moons, Birds and Monsters,” and Echo and the Bunnymen offer up “Bring on the Dancing Horses.”  We’ll watch how human beings respond to these pieces.  We’ll jump in there and dance around ourselves, to see if we can deduce anything significant.  We’ll take careful notes and let you know.

It’s not that we’ll enjoy this, you understand.  We’re doing this for science.