Stuffola

May 31, 2006

Stupid Soccer Tricks

These are trying times for some Swedish feminists. The national soccer team has passed on the idea of publicly protesting the extra prostitutes (or sex slaves as the case may be) imported into Germany for the World Cup competition; women bosses in private and publicly traded companies has dropped from 32 percent in 2004 to 25 percent today (sorry, it's in Swedish); and the World Cup team from Paraguay is angling for babes.

That last item isn't such a big deal. But it is amusing that one soccer player's lame attempt to score with a Swedish photographer was the top headline of a Swedish paper this morning (thanks for the English translation, DN). It seems that a player from Paraguay was smitten with a female photographer for Dagens Nyheter (the Daily News). She is part of a reporting team that briefly interviewed some team members and then covered a game between Denmark and Paraguay.

According to today's paper, FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cup, employs "team liaison officers" to help national teams with various tasks, including translating media interviews. After the Denmark-Paraguay match, Paraguay's liaison officer, Manuel Hoffmann, reportedly called the DN photographer at 1 am to say a soccer player wanted to meet her immediately "to get to know her a little better" (translation is mine).

This strikingly original line failed to work any magic for the player involved (although DN managed to squeeze out a fair number of column inches about it). The photographer went back to sleep but wondered the next day (along with her fellow reporter and at least one editor) why the hell an official FIFA employee would help a soccer player chase women. The liaison officer refused to comment on the record but supposedly told one reporter that it was hard to say no to a player when a whole gang of guys were standing around. (Maybe it seemed easier to dial than face a beating with a cleated shoe.)

In the Swedish article DN helpfully points out that players are supposed to behave "for the good of the game" and that FIFA's Article 7 bans gender discrimination (although it's unclear to me how this qualifies as gender discrimination).

It also mentions that two Chilean players got shipped home after a training match against Ireland because women visited their rooms after the match. Guess the Paraguayan player is damn lucky the photographer turned him down instead of going to his room with a camera and a tape recorder.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2006

How to Comfort an American Wife

Say good morning to wife, the wife from Northern California who complained last night that her waist has been crimped by wool tights, long underwear, or long pajamas 24/7 since late October.

Blithely ignore fact that previous efforts to cheer her up about Swedish winter ended in near disaster. In bold, evasive maneuver, pick up morning paper just before she reaches it and read aloud from article on weather. Shield page so wife cannot read potentially alarming headline: “March May Be Coldest Since 1942.”

Point out, helpfully, that there has been only 78 days of snow and ice on the ground in Stockholm this year, nothing like the record 149 days of snow and ice during the winter of 1969. Notice wife wincing. This, add quickly, means snow started falling much, much earlier in 1969, not that there is potentially eight more weeks of ice and snow destined for Stockholm this year.

Point out, helpfully, that the average temperature this month has been a piddling -6.4° Celsius, nowhere near the record-setting -9.6°C average of the especially chilly winter of 1942. Skip over parts of article that mention long underwear, cold front over the weekend, and effect of ice layer on overall temperatures. (No point in reminding wife that ice build-up at back entrance of apartment building makes it impossible to fully open building door.)

Put on thick parka over warm clothes and kiss distracted wife goodbye. As you leave apartment, notice wife gazing out the window. She has spotted seagulls on the roof of the building across the courtyard. They remind her of the seagulls in San Francisco and the East Bay. The birds have been missing for months, and now they're back.

Your wife smiles.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Cybersquabbles in Sweden

Many things about Sweden remain a mystery to me. Here's one example. Earlier in the week a freelance journalist named Mustafa Can revealed the existence of a “secret” listserv that included journalists, psychologists, business leaders, politicians and literary celebs among its members. Can wrote the article with all the subtlety of the prose found in the latest bodice-ripper. The story in Dagens Nyheter was titled "Uber bullying on the net" and began like this (my translation): “Do you think hate is a fantastic feeling? Do you want to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else?”

You can tell that the article was written outside of the United States, because the answer to the second question would be self evident: Why yes, I would like to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else. The United States is a hotbed of private little cliques, it’s blanketed with country clubs and other private organizations that are all about feeling superior whatever more noble objective their rules and regulations proclaim.

But such is not the Swedish way. Swedes may discriminate against people born in other countries or who bear foreign-sounding names but they do not, and cannot, think of themselves as any better than anyone else. At least, not publicly. That all Swedes are equal, or are supposed to be, is deeply embedded in this culture. That's fine by me. That's one of the many things I like about this country. But I can't be shocked, or scandalized, or even especially horrified by the discovery that a composer and writer named Alexander Bard has maintained a private listserv called the Elite list for the past 15 years that supposedly devotes itself to sex-and-drugs gossip and welcomes new members with an e-mail that claims “the lowest common denominator for the members of the Elite list is their physical and mental perfection, … self-confidence, and interest in leading electronic discussions with other beautiful and interesting people with a large and healthy self-confidence.”

(Are we surprised that the guy who launched a list celebrating beautiful people is bald? Maybe Elite was meant to be a confidence-booster.)

Can wonders how well-known journalists can participate in an e-mail list with people they may cover as part of their work, a perfectly reasonable question. Since this story was published on Wednesday, one journalist has lost a job over her membership and Can got a nasty, nasty anonymous SMS threatening to make his life hell forever (I'm thinking that Bard guy and/or his minions must have no sense of humor whatsoever.) Meanwhile, most of the actual Swedish cultural and business elite--the bosses anyway--have yawned collectively and claimed a private e-mail list is not exactly a threat to democracy.

No, the electronic threat to democracy is not the Elite list. According to some, that dubious honor belongs to the anonymous mud-slinging e-mails trashing the head of Sweden's Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt. It doesn't really matter what the messages claim, except that they claim he's doing something illegal and were sent to journalists, among others.

Reinfeldt has told reporters the e-mail campaign is an attempt to influence national elections. Turns out he's right. The party in power, the Social Democrats, ‘fessed up that an unnamed official is behind the campaign, which is against party rules, and a really bad thing, yadda yadda yadda. The Local website is dubbing it "Sweden's Watergate." According to Dagens Nyheter, this is the first time electronic mud-slinging has surfaced in a Swedish political campaign.

Bet it won’t be the last. So-called whisper campaigns have become a well-entrenched, if disturbing, part of political campaigns the world over. Today's lesson: You can run but you can't hide. The least endearing aspects of human nature will find you wherever you go.

(Yup, I'm on an extended cliché tear. Holler if I 've missed any.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Stylish Seating

There were supposedly 60-plus colleges represented at the Stockholm Furniture Fair last week. The gorgeous seating below is the handiwork of first-year students at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Starting with the stool and moving clockwise, the designers are Mari Tosmin, Aap Piho, Ville Lausmäe, and Mari Rass.

I spoke to Kerli Valk, a third-year student, and demanded to know how the hell first-year students could crank out this kind of stuff in their first year. Valk seemed a bit bemused by my question and explained that the students spent their first semester working on a single project and the result was on display.

She also mentioned that there were 15 applicants for every opening in the four-year design program, which has a total of 40 students. So I'm guessing the people accepted into the program were pretty darn talented and experienced even before they set foot on school property.

The chair on the left is by Ketsia Suurväli, the chair on the right is by Irene Roos, and the circular wooden stool or sculpture (or toy--it was very popular with kids, Valk said) in the foreground is by Kertu Kaldaru.

The Stockholm Furniture Fair was the first time design students from the Estonian Academy of Arts has exhibited work outside of their country. I don't imagine it will be the last. I'll be honest--until now, I've never had the slightest desire to visit Estonia. But the work of these students makes me want to dash over immediately and see what else I've missed all these years.

I promised you a pic of the Save Our Souls design duo I blogged about recently. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson are standing against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. My apologies, SOS, for not making this pic smaller but I really wanted to show off your design. After all, who could resist this deceptively demure pattern of pink revolvers?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2006

Stockholm Furniture Fair: Bliss on a Stick

I went to my first Stockholm Furniture Fair yesterday. I don't know if all designers are nice or only the ones I've met, but I had a swell time and Apartment Therapy fans would cream their jeans over the nifty items on display.

There are too many cool things to mention in a single posting so today I will limit myself to reporting on a cheeky design duo called Save Our Souls. Johannes Carlström and Magdalena Nilsson, the two young designers behind this spanking new company, found inspiration in last year's global disasters, including Hurricane Katrina.

Yes, it is as weird as it sounds. As the company describes it, “Save Our Souls makes harsh, beautiful furniture with bitter-sweet aesthetic. The pleasant combined with the threatening and dark.” That’s an apt description. Later I’ll post a photo of the two designers against a backdrop of their Gunner wallpaper. It’s a subversively traditional, almost old-fashioned looking wallpaper with a repeating pattern in pink against a background of deep maroon. It takes a while to realize that the repeating image is a revolver. A revolver. I nearly burst out laughing when I got it.

The company showed four products: the wallpaper, a gorgeous black glass table (modeled on an oil spill), heavy, hanging black glass lamps (modeled on—you guessed it-oil drops), and a black bookcase I really love called "Fuckin Far From Ok" that has that phrase built into the shelves. If that's not modern life summed up neatly, what is?

To quote from the company’s statement (which I’ve cleaned up a tiny bit), “The greenhouse-effect is getting more severe every day with storms and hurricanes sweeping our world. The glaciers are melting. We produce. Consume. We buy more stuff than ever before and materialism is a way of life. We believe that almost every cultural worker has a dream of, if not saving the world, at least make it better or more beautiful. It's problematic to want to make new products. In fact very little new stuff is needed.

“What to do? Fold one's hands and pray, like sending out a SOS-signal, hoping for someone to rush out and intervene. Save Our Souls became the working name and we made a series of furniture that comments the world around us. This is not a moralizing sermon, we are just like anyone else, in fact we live happy lives in the industrial world. What we want to do is to use that silence between the catastrophes and remind ourselves. Instead of trying to forget, we put the light on the problems and make a visual experience of it."

Save Our Souls presented its new products in the Greenhouse, a special area of the Stockholm Furniture Fair devoted to new and young designers and design programs from colleges as far away as Tokyo. Few of the products displayed at the Greenhouse are in production, and many of them will remain prototypes. That's the nature of the business. But there was tons worth seeing, and I'll add more examples next week.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

Danish Newspaper Sparks Culture Clash

Good morning, class. Today's lesson is a thought experiment in the responsible exercise of free expression.

Let's pretend that the New York Times magazine wants to publish an article about the reluctance of some Catholic families to allow their sons to be alter boys in the wake of allegations that several priests in a particular parish sexually abused many children.

Next, let's pretend that NYT magazine's art director really liked to push the envelope, so he or she asks Andres Serrano to illustrate the feature article. The resulting photo, "Lube Priest," shows a half-empty jar of Vaseline, a full set of Rosary beads sullied by drops of some unknown liquid, a pair of size-6 Superman briefs, a crumpled black shirt with a clerical collar and a small photo of the Pope in an ornate gold frame.

The photo shows these objects in artful disarray on the floor as though they've been tossed there in a hurry. The foot of a bed, with a lump of twisted sheets, towers over this twisted still life in the background of the photo. Although we see only a fragment of the bed, it seems enormous and ominous and it overpowers the other objects. After publication of the article and illustration, some art critics hail "Lube Priest" as a masterpiece, others dimiss it as drivel and ACLU types defend the photo and newspaper by invoking the Constitution.

Since this is a thought experiment, your assignment is to imagine how Christians, Catholic and otherwise, might respond. Would they:

1. Salute the New York Times for fully exercising the rights of a free press by commissioning this illustration?

2. Personally regret the actions of the New York Times but support it publicly because of American respect and veneration for an independent press and press freedom?

3. Castigate the New York Times editors as atheist lunkheads and inundate them with sharply worded criticism, anonymous bomb threats, cancelled subscriptions, mass prayer protests on the sidewalk outside its building and other expressions of extreme outrage?

I suspect many people would choose number 3. I'm guessing a commissioned illustration with sticky Rosary beads, the Pope, a priest's collar and little boy's underpants would create a massive, immediate uproar. People would call for the illustration to be removed from the newspaper's web site, for the original to be destroyed, for the newspaper to apologize for its deeply offensive act and for the art director to be fired.

I would hope no Catholics expressed their anger violently. But some deeply religious anti-abortionists have killed doctors and bombed clinics, so I suppose it's both possible and indefensible.

In any case, I suspect Christians might explain why their anger is justified by saying something like this:

"In calling for an end to the display of this blasphemy ... people were not asking that their fragile sense of identity or boundaries be left undisturbed, but that their God be respected. ..."

Or they might say, if critics insisted on defending Serrano's art and its publication, something like this:

"To think a religious object can be extracted from its context and ‘purified,' ‘restored' or ‘improved' by doing to it something unthinkable among adherents of that tradition, is condescension. ..."

In fact, that's exactly what some people did say in response to Serrano's real-life "Piss Christ." And I'm thinking that outsiders, including non-Catholics and agnostics, understand why "Piss Christ" was deeply offensive to Catholics. And they would understand why Christians would be livid if the New York Times had specifically commissioned "Piss Christ."

Everybody with me so far? Good. Now, deliberately commissioning an illustration that a large number of people are guaranteed to find blasphemous and, thus, deeply offensive rarely occurs to editors but apparently it happens. An editor at Jyllands-Posten in Denmark heard about the difficulty a Danish author had in finding an illustrator for a children's book about Muhammad. Artists were afraid to illustrate the book for fear that they might be threatened. That's because images of Muhammad are considered blasphemous by most Muslims.

But Denmark isn't Iraq or Iran, so why the hell should Danish illustrators be too cowed to whip out a few editorial cartoons featuring Mohammad? I suspect the editor's thinking might have run alone that line and contributed to the newspaper's decision last September to publish an article about the issue, along with 12 caricatures of Mohammad it commissioned as illustrations.

This was not an especially wise move. Some of the illustrators now have guards. A boycott of Arla products has cost the Danish-Swedish dairy company millions. The newspaper has received bomb threats, Scandinavian citizens have been asked to leave certain areas, and it's possible that someone will die because of these stupid, stereotypical, offensive (one Mohammad has a bomb in his turban) and, yes, blasphemous images.

Several European newspapers have republished the images in support of the Danish newspaper, which issued on of those lame, Harry Shearer-ish type of non-apology apologies a few days back. Several other newspapers are under pressure to run the illustrations but have wisely refused. One British newspaper reader whined that the papers kowtowing to a misguided sense of political correctness. Hmm. Not everybody in the U.K. supports the monarchy but the mainstream papers don't run Photoshopped pictures of a nude Queen having sex with a servant. Is that political correctness? I don't think so.

There's an enormous cultural clash here. Westerners don't get it. Illustrations are no big deal to us. I've seen comments that Muslims should just "get over it." But that's like asking Britains to think it's okay if the London Times uses the Queen in some horrifying way or asking Catholics to be cool about a naked Pope and a poodle shown in Time magazine. Would we take such images in stride? I don't think so.

The New York Times piece on the controversy gives short shrift to the seriousness of the issue. "An international dispute over European newspaper cartoons deemed blasphemous by some [my emphasis] Muslims gained momentum on Thursday when gunmen threatened the European Union offices in Gaza and more European papers pointedly published the drawings as an affirmation of freedom of speech."

The New York Times reporter notes that he conflict "is the latest manifestation of growing tensions between Europe and the Muslim world as the Continent struggles to absorb a fast-expanding Muslim population whose customs and values are often at odds with Europe's secular societies." But not so fast. The Muslim population in Denmark is a lousy 4 percent. Maybe the Times could have mentioned that fact, but no.

The AP's Richard N. Ostling does a much better job of setting the controversy in context: "The spreading Muslim protests against newspapers that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad stem from the deepest religious roots. Islam forbids visual depictions of the prophet, and regards violations by Muslims as highly sinful and by non-Muslims as the ultimate insult. The prohibition is in part an application of the Koran's strict opposition to idolatry. ...

"The Koran does not specifically address artwork of Muhammad, and through history a few Muslims have painted him. But the ban has been virtually universal in all branches of the faith from its earliest days. ... Zahik Bukhari, director of Georgetown University's American Muslim Studies Program, says the cartoons, first published in Denmark, constitute a triple offense for Muslims: first by depicting Muhammad at all; second by treating him disrespectfully; and third because 'in the present circumstance it is a symbol of the clash of civilizations that they want to insult the prophet and the whole of Islam.' "

Last I checked, the practioners of a faith get to decide what's blasphemous and what's not blasphemous. That is not up to outsiders to determine, no matter how much we want to.

The Danish paper ought to issue a real apology, not a pretend apology. According to one of the illustrators who works in the paper's art department, the newspaper's editor is a jerk who was itching to be provocative. Well, the editor was provocative all right. Not smart, not thoughtful, not educational. Just provocative. And now Norway, Sweden, Denmark and their citizens get to pay the price. Thanks a fucking pantload, as Denise Caruso might say.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

Design Disappointment

Just got back from eyeballing the fashion-designer-decorated Christmas trees at the Birger Jarl hotel, which touts its design credentials with every drop of a press release.

"This is yet another interesting angle of our image, in which Swedish colour, form and design are in focus. The concept allows for many combinations of interaction between people, material and form," claims Marianne Hultberg, Managing Director of Hotel Birger Jarl, in a press release (I'd link but it's a PDF file). "It is especially exciting to be able to unite an old tradition with completely new concepts, to the delight of our guests and everyone in general," she says.

What a disappointment. It happens that I had an errand at Immanual Church, which appears to be part of the complex housing the Birger Jarl. It's not like I made a special trip, in other words, but my ten-year-old could have turned out something more interesting. A colorful, pulsating clump of mini trees made me think of America (except for the ceramic troll in front) but not, say, Design with a capital D. None of them did.

A couple were pretty, so that was something. (There's supposedly one dressed up as a Midsommar Maypole but I didn't spot it.) The Amnesty tree was worthy but dull, a real-life representation of the organization itself. (Hope one of the nice Amnesty volunteers doesn't come into my office right now and beat me to death with an Amnesty-logo-etched drinking glass, even though I deserve it.) One amusing tree was bedecked with tree-shaped air fresheners that had glossy fashion and ad pics glued on the back. But the display, on the whole, sucked. That doesn't make it an ineffective PR ploy, of course. The hotel was able to squeeze ink out of a variety of local newspapers and blogs so I suppose it paid off. But next time, hold a contest, make a big deal out of it and actually give the designers (by donating money to their favorite causes, perhaps?) a reason to feel more passionate about their creations.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

Snow Falling on Tech Dreams & Harried Parents

"What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work." Be balanced is the tenth rule of Evan Williams' rules for executives of Web startups. Finding balance, or at least trying to allow employees to find it, is excellent advice for all Silicon Valley companies, web-related or not. Over many years the Valley work ethic and the cell/pager mentality of constant access has dramatically transformed home life for many residents and not for the better.

"As information technology allows households and communities to become places of production, it also changes the way such social institutions think of themselves. Families and communities, like upgraded software can be 'refreshed' or 'reinvented.' Families can then become a kind of product. Finally, the pivotal assumption that work is done at a workplace and family life is lived at home is much too simplistic. Many forces, not the least of which is the technical ability to work from home, have blurred the domains. If time at the workplace does not really reflect the time spent working, how does that effect family leaves or the length of a work week?"

That's a rhetorical question from one of the anthropologists at the Silicon Valley Cultures Project. Dr. J.A. English-Lueck knows exactly what that does to the length of a work week and offers examples:

"John is a middle-aged product development manager at a high tech company in Silicon Valley. ... He tries very hard not to take too much work home with him, preferring to work late on site, but the international nature of his work means he is on the phone at midnight and at dawn. He is grateful for E-mail and voicemail since they can fit his schedule. Realistically, he thinks about work problems constantly, in his garden, and in his car. He talks about his work all the time with his wife and volunteers to install network servers at his daughter’s school on NetDay.

"Meanwhile, his administrative assistant, Sharon, complains that her work load is overwhelming, even to the point where she is expected to move furniture and take out trash. She is expected to learn new programs and upgrades on her own time. Both John and Sharon now take work and worry home. Sharon checks her E-mail and voicemail in the predawn hours before her children wake to prepare for any tasks that may need to be addressed immediately. She carries a pager and a cell phone so that she can stay in contact with her teenaged children after they come home from school."

The modern work grind is no news to most people but that doesn't make the challenge of balancing work and family life any less real or important. I haven't read Po Bronson's new book, Why Do I Love These People, but I'm always interested in the drama of families: what brings them together and what pulls them apart. When it comes to family life, is balance even possible?

I don't know the answer to that question, and I'm not sure I ever will. I can say that Sweden seems like a more promising venue to create a more balanced family life. Which does not mean the three members of my family hew to a party line on, well, anything. The snow has returned. My kid, ever gracious, muttered "I hate snow" and rolled back into the bedcovers when I delivered the news this morning. But I was happy then and I'm happy now. The grim winter lanscape has become a paradise of white and black line art punctuated by occasional flashes of color.

There may be something more beautiful than tree branches laced with fresh snow but, offhand, I can't think of what it might be.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2005

Stockholm: The Darkest Season

We had a lovely autumn but autumn is over. I took the photo above on November 7. On Saturday the first snow arrived, a glittery respite from the gray gray gray atmosphere created by the skeletal trees and the sun's stubborn refusal to rise at a decent hour and its unseemly haste to disappear entirely too early. Did I mention how gray it is? (And now the snow is melting. Yuck.)

The change in season means the national candle fetish is in full swing. This morning my kid and I munched our cereal by candlelight. I think it's the Swedish way of transforming an environment that could termed suicidally depressing into "cosy" and "warm." Swedes don't usually string up Christmas lights anywhere but on a tree. But I saw white Christmas lights everywhere during a February visit to Anchorage once and it was a swell idea. So this week I'll be stringing lights on just about anything not moving, so consider yourself warned.

With winter comes the need for winter boots, natch. The kid's boots are busted so we'll be buying new ones this afternoon. My old boots were fine--except for the zippers. The pull tabs were crap and disintegrated last season. (This despite the fact that in 1913 a Swede, Gideon Sundback, developed the modern zipper, the one with metal teeth. Where's the national pride in Sweden's rich zipper history?) Paper clips make lousy pull tabs, it turns out, and fall apart quickly but not before poking holes in your fingers when you pull up the zippers. Mr. Too Tall, my better half, suggested key rings. It will never work, I thought, but I tried it this morning and he was right.

There's an advantage to such wacky pull tabs. When you visit a friend and leave your boots in the hall (in the big pile of boots that are heaped in hallways in homes and schools all over Sweden this time of year), it's much easier to find them again on your way out. One time I had to find my boots in a collection of twelve or so pairs of black footware at a student performance and it was a bigger pain than you might imagine. Think black carry-on on an airport carosel of black carry-ons and you've got the idea. I'm ridiculously pleased that I won't have that problem now. Assuming the rest of the boots hold up!

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:36 AM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

Sony: Weirder and Weirder

Before the move to Sweden, I envisioned my kid embracing age-old Swedish traditions. I saw her in the woods, picking berries or mushrooms. In summer I imaged her splashing in the Baltic Sea while, in winter months, she'd skate across frozen lakes. Yeah, right.

The global sway of American pop culture had completely escaped my notice before the move. These days I get frequent reminders of it. The one this morning arrived in the form of earnest 11-year-olds swaying on stage while mumbling the lyrics to "Wake Me Up When September Ends" under the considerably more energetic direction of the spiky-haired music teacher at our elementary school. (You haven't lived until you've heard class 5A sing "twenty years has gone so fast.") I like Green Day too but jeez, whatever happened to "Du Gamla, Du Fria"?

Luckily Sweden isn't so Americanized yet that corporate execs here could secretly collect information from customer computers without expecting a jail sentence. Sony's probably big enough to survive this debacle (including lawsuits and more nasty PR) but what about First4Internet, the British company that provided both the flawed copy-protection software and the flawed uninstaller? To the glee of many, it appears that some of the free code used by First4Internet in the digital-rights management software it developed for Sony was used in a way that violated the terms of its copyright. As The Register put it, "The irony of a company using code from someone who circumvented DRM to develop an even nastier form of DRM - without even saying 'Thanks!' - will surely feature in geek trivia quizzes for years to come."

Confused yet? I have been so Andrew Kantor's column in USA Today is a gift of clarity about the degree of evil Sony has wrought. I understood that Sony's DRM format caused a security problem. But not the all-important fact that Sony's patch for "removing" the original software also created a security problem--among other failings. As Kantor explains:

"In order to get the patch, you have to provide your name, e-mail address, and other personal information to Sony. When you finally download the thing, it does the patch thing, and then it installs all sorts of new stuff that Sony doesn't tell you about. And it continues to send your listening habits to Sony and its partners, but now it has a bunch of your personal information too. But wait. Incredibly, there's more. The patch itself, it turns out, opens another big security hole."

Talk about criminal cluelessness. Sony first produced CDs that 1. secretly installed software on your computer, 2. secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to, 3. created a security hole in your PC and finally, 4. damaged the operating system if anyone tried to remove it. Sony's considered response to the outrage provoked by this news was first to deny there was a problem, then to demand lots of personal information before giving you a software fix that 1. secretly installed software on your computer that secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to and 2. created another, larger security hole in your PC.

No wonder I couldn't keep the story straight. It's pure Hollywood. And while it may be Sony's biggest screwup, it's not the company only screwup. "Sony's general incompetence when it comes to digital music boggles the mind," notes David Pogue. "First there was its 'iPod killer' music players, which were initially released without the ability to play a little file format called MP3. Then there was its disastrous Connect music store, whose design was so wasteful of screen space it was almost unuseable. And now the astonishing move to copy-protect all of its music CD's--ironically, in some cases, over the strident objections of the actual bands--with software that behaves like spyware."

As David points out, angry consumers aired their complaints in public forums like Amazon reviews, where they vowed not to buy affected CDs. Information Week went to town with this headline: Bloggers Break Sony. "There's a whole new set of rules that people have to live by," Factiva CMO Alan Scott told Information Week (Factiva just happens to make text-mining software to help execs track the gossip about their companies). "Whether it's blogs or user groups or NGOs, it's all about honesty and authenticity. This is just the latest painful example of a major company finding that the old tools and the old actions don't work."

Those old tools and old actions, also known as lies and lying, do work often enough. Just not this time. And as much as we'd all like to see these go away, I'm confident that in certain circles dissembling will always be in style. Even now I bet there's a bunch of executives nationwide using Sony's situation as a case study in crisis PR when it should be a case study in ethics. Sony's actions were wrong before they became public knowledge and they're wrong now. Too bad the company hasn't figured that out.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

October 24, 2005

Autumn Glory

It was zero (that would be 32 degrees for you Farenheit fans) when I woke up this morning just before 7 a.m. It was still dark because dawn didn't yawn into being until 7:45 a.m. So I dragged my Philips Bright Light gizmo out of storage and plugged it in for the season's first light session, then I pulled on my long johns and got dressed. Soon I'll be heading off to work, walking from the island of Kungsholmen, where I live, over Västerbron (West bridge) to Södermalm and my small office near Hornstull. (Supposedly there's a grocery store for singles in my work neighborhood. When I lived in the Marina district of San Francisco in the 1990s the local Safeway was supposedly a hot pick-up joint but the hype far outstripped reality.)

The photo above was taken near the end of the bridge, close to Södermalm. That view, and the one below, is part of what makes living here wonderous. Winter's icy grasp is inching closer. Soon the autumn finery will be gone from the trees. Beginning next week, with the passing of daylight savings time, Stockholm will be covered in darkness for far too long.

But not forever. In the meantime, I'll keep walking to work and enjoying the view. Now you can, too.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2005

Did H&M Bribe Reporters?

Eventually Sweden will be just as crass, commercial and consumerist as my beloved U.S.A. In the meantime, there are still a few pockets of resistance and a few quaint cultural differences. Swedish contestants in the multiple rounds of qualifiers for the Eurovision Song contest, for example, tend to wear the same expensive, sparkily outfit at every single event. Apparently they're not required, as American contestants would be by peer pressure if nothing else, to bankrupt themselves with a new costume for each appearance. That's so sane, so Swedish--you gotta love it!

One cherished national ideal is that Swedes are honest. And mostly they are. But not always, so newspapers report on the apparent exceptions (think bribery and corruption) with enthusiasm and zeal. That's as it should be. The hubbub over a recent press junket is intriguing. On October 6, Karin Olsson reported in Resume (a trade pub that covers Swedish media, marketing and PR) that homegrown clothing retailer H&M was being investigated for bribery because it paid for leading fashion journalists to view its fashion show in New York last April. H&M picked up the costs of this "luxury trip," as Resume calls it, which included a two-night stay in a supposedly swanky hotel, the flight and one dinner, which were worth about $2000 (15 000 SEK) per person. (A junket is utterly against the rules at many U.S. publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Others appreciate the help and don't bat an eyelash.)

According to Olsson (here's an English summary from a different pub), disapproving colleagues blew the whistle by contacting the head of some official corruption office. About 200 journalists from several countries flew in for the event. H&M declined to tell Resume how many of that total (including 15 Swedes) had their trips sponsored. Here's my English version of the Resume-H&M exchange:

H&M "We think it's completely wrong to talk about bribery. We made no demands. It's not in the interests of H&M to expose journalists to anything that can be considered pressure," says press spokesperson Annacarin Björne.

Resume But didn't you pay for the publications so they would write about the clothes?

H&M This is about giving all journalists an opportunity to travel given that so many publications have small budgets.

Resume Do you mean you only invited editorial staffs that were poor?

H&M It's up to every editorial staff to decide whether to take the trip. But we don't want to discuss this further given that there will be a preliminary investigation.

Olsson helpfully contacted the police officer investigating the case to see if a staffer at H&M or any of the jet-setting fashion scribes had reported a suspected crime. You know the answer: Nope. As Björne told Resume, junkets like this are "normal in this industry." And not only fashion. Press junkets are common in the travel and entertainment industries. Online scribes are also wooed now that Blogville is a regular stop on the buzz-building circuit. Tech journalists are often invited on free trips and radio pundits get free trips as well. (Earlier this year the Department of Defense chased airtime by underwriting a trip to Iraq, an especially savvy move now that opinionated blather is regularly mistaken for actual news reporting.) It's not just media types on this gravy train. Policiticians are intimately familiar with the pursuasive power of junkets, they've been taking them for years. Bureaucrats and judges, too.

Hmm, maybe Olsson and Resume were right to get their knickers in a knot. Is the entire U.S. power structure getting handouts, or does it just seem that way?

One of the Swedish fashion editors (she either went on the trip or sent someone else) said the freebie wasn't an issue because her publication wasn't going to write any more about H&M now than it did before the trip. She was saying that there is no actual conflict of interest if the publication's coverage isn't affected. Was H&M wrong to host the junket? Were journalists wrong to accept? Or is the problem not that reporters took a free trip but that readers won't know about it?

People have attempted to buy the attention of reporters about as long as there have been reporters. But rarely do they attempt to buy actual column inches. Publicity hounds are usually so besotted with the fabulousness of themselves, their company or their product that they're convinced that press coverage is inevitable. If they can get a reporter to sit down, shut up and listen to their pitch (or watch their demo or view their fashion show), they think a cover story is bound to follow. Often this conceit, while charming, is dead wrong.

(I'm never surprised when someone wants to buy my attention, only that they believe it's a cheap purchase. At Macworld we used to sling all the freebie T-shirts into a box. When the box was full, we'd take it downtown and give the shirts to homeless people, people who really needed them. In fact, we didn't want toys or meals or t-shirts, we wanted interesting, reliable info. That is, stories of interest to our readers. This is not news to any PR pro but it is a remarkably tough concept for some execs to grasp.)

Now I'm no paragon of virtue, and I'm not convinced there's an easy answer to every ethical question, inside journalism or out of it. Is it enough to disclosure real and potential conflicts of interest to your editor? Your readers? The planet? Should journalists disclose their conflicts more publicly than judges or senators and, if so, why? (Last time I checked, hacks weren't empowered to haul people into jail or enact legislation. Don't tell me we have a greater public trust than folks with true power.) And why do ideas about press disclosure seem to apply to writers and reporters but not to the editors who assign, shape, edit (often drastically) and approve the final published or broadcast story? It's a mystery to me.

What's your take? Anybody try to "bribe" you recently?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:49 AM | Comments (2)

September 22, 2005

Ringtone Marketer Must Turn Down Volume

I'm not a total luddite but I'm just elderly enough that I had no idea that there was such a thing as the Crazy Frog ringtone (based on "the sound of a revving moped"), or that it had a Swedish connection (it was "spawned seven years ago by a Swedish motorcycle enthusiast") or that in the U.K., at least, it was "the first ringtone to enter the pop charts, where it stayed in the No 1 slot for four weeks." So what's the marketing angle? Here's the London Times:

PARENTS claimed a victory over the Crazy Frog after the High Court upheld a ruling that will banish the annoying ringtone advertisements until after the watershed.The company behind the mobile telephone ringtone breached advertising restrictions by appealing to children without making clear the true cost of its products.

Almost 300 people complained that Jamba!, based in Germany, did not make clear that its mobile phone services were offered on a weekly, subscription basis rather than a one-off payment. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found that children had unwittingly run up large phone bills and ruled that the commercials cannot now be shown before 9pm.

The Crazy Frog advertisements were shown on 40,000 occasions during a single month on British television. The post-9pm restriction is intended to place it outside of children’s viewing hours. ... The ASA had previously criticised the commercials for their failure to make clear that the £3 weekly charge was not for one ringtone but a weekly subscription. The watchdog has found that the on-screen warning “16-plus and bill payer’s permission” was insufficient to stop children subscribing to the service via text message.

Not fair, whined the company:

Jamba!, which has sold 11 million Crazy Frog ringtones, argued that its advertisements were not aimed at children and produced evidence that the target purchaser of a Crazy Frog ringtone was aged between 18 and 29.

The company said that a ringtone was “a fun item, of no harm to adults or children, and no more expensive than many small items on which a child may spend pocket money”. But the ASA said that the characters had a “strong appeal” to children and that “peer pressure”, and a No 1 Crazy Frog single, had exacerbated the phenomenon.

Jamba! is appealing the ruling. Meanwhile, says the Times, "the telecoms watchdog Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services ... fined the company that supplies the Crazy Frog ringtone to Jamba! £10,000 for sending out unsolicited text messages for a premium-rate auction."

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

The Swedish National Day Is Not June 6th

On this day, the longest day of the year, the sun rose at 3:31 am. The sun will set at 10:09 pm. And if Swedes weren't as addicted to three-day holidays as Americans, we'd be picking wildflowers for our hair and eating herring and singing drinking songs today. Instead, we'll do it on Friday, the official Midsommar Afton. And on Saturday my small family of three will get on an airplane and arrive in the U.S. in plenty of time for the flag-waving parades of the fourth of July.

This year the Swedish government removed one holiday from the calendar (the day after Easter) and added a new holiday on June 6th. That's the day in 1523 that Gusav Vasa became king. In 1916 Swedes began celebrating it as national flag day but it wasn't a stores-closed, everybody-go-home kind of deal. But then in 2004 the Justice Department got the dumb idea to make it a red-letter day and the politicians went along with it and the general populace went, "what? Are you serious?" But by then it was too late.

As an immigrant rapper/poet on a TV program noted last night, Midsommar is the true national day of Sweden, when everybody thanks their good luck for being Swedish and when it rains, as it often does, nobody goes inside but stays outside to celebrate nature and their good fortune in being Swedish. Midsommar is *the* holiday in Sweden. Christmas is swell, easter is fine but Midsommar is what makes you Swedish. It's the most inclusive holiday imaginable.

Last year I watched, just before the rain started, a large group of people of all ages dance around a Midsommar pole at a big public celebration. Some folks were wearing folk costumes. Most had on jeans. There were a few youngish punks with outrageous hair and aggressive tatoos. And they were all happy (me too) and holding hands as one does to dance around the pole in time to the live music provided by a small but hardy group of players. Outside of the politicians who voted for a national day and the marginal group of Neo-nazis who assemble every year on June 6th to march for white rights, virtually nobody in this country gives a shit when Gustav Vasa became king. Because Sweden already has a national day, no matter what the politicians decreed, and I'll be celebrating it on Friday with a bunch of herring, a box of strawberries and a few schnaps. Just like everybody else.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2005

Stockholm Style: Furniture, Food, Nightlife

Stockholm's new Street market includes art exhibits that even harried parents have time for (above).
Among the wares: the Swedish version of Handiwipes, flat square sponges with attitude (below).

My former neighbor David Sanger, a professional travel photographer and web geek, was in town recently and somewhat dumbfounded by the hordes of (often drunk) graduates packed into the back of enormous trucks with equally large sound systems. Each graduating class rents one or more trucks or buses. After the graduation ceremony they hop on a vehicle and cruise the city while drinking frightening amounts of alcohol (or pretending to) and blasting innocent bystanders with continuous, ear-splitting pop. "I thought Swedes were quiet," David said. Not during graduation week. Because the ceremonies are staggered, the revelry goes on for hours and hours over days and days.

Fortunately for David, there's plenty more for a travel pro to cover. From the famously glittery Berns to the attitudinal Nordic Light to the music-fixated nightclub/hotel Lydmar to Grill, the dining-on-furniture-you-can-buy collaboration between two veteran chefs and a furniture company. Saturday we hit Stockholm's new Street market together. I was intimidated by David's mass of steroidal camera equipment but I took a few hobbyist pics anyway. (It was a little like cooking dinner for a chef: possible but painful.) Södermalm used to be working class and still is in part. But it's also the youth-fueled art and design center of the city. The fledgling market, which perches on the very edge of the island, is an entertaining mix of trash and treasure, a perfect weekend outing for tourists and locals alike.

Speaking of locals, Petrus sends along this bit of self promotion: "FORM US WITH LOVE presents two brand new furniture products; the first one as flat as the second one is flexible." Don't know Petrus? Me neither but I'm a sucker for pitches from Swedish designers, even if their company has an impossibly hokey name. “Bendable Interior Objects (B.I.O) does not come in a flat package, it is the flat package. B.I.O is an unconventional interior concept in aluminium," Petrus writes. “Group of trees is a flexible and sound absorbing room divider for public rooms that brings the outdoors indoors."

Don't imagine birds would ever mistake them for the real thing. But I like 'em.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 11, 2005

Check Out Swedish Band Pineforest Crunch

While looking for office space last fall I met Åsa Eklund. It was strictly hit-and-run. I'd seen her ad for sharing office space, quickly realized the groovy-but-dark space would probably not work for me and rushed out. But not before she loaded me up with a bunch of CDs from her band, Pineforest Crunch, and a few others. Turned out that she ran a small music company. (I moved in elsewhere. It didn't work out. So much for my instincts.)

Once I got home and started listening, I realized Ms. Eklund was not only a mini-music moghul but also a wonderful singer. (And no, her voice is *not* an icy cold embrace, what bullshit.) I'm listening to Panamarenko, from 2001 (I especially like the first song, Situation Endless). Others like the CD too. So check it out. You know, before the planet gets too warm to enjoy Pineforest Crunch or anybody else.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 19, 2005

Swedish Luxe

Thanks to Lagerlings for the photos above and below. The real estate firm is handling the sale of a condo in this building, a condo that appears to be the most expensive on the market in Stockholm. This place has six rooms, five terraces and an indoor pool (that it includes a sauna goes without saying). The exterior gives little clue to the sleek minimalist mansion within. I prefer modern to minimal but the bath tower below makes me swoon. If you must torment yourself with thoughts of the unattainable, click on "Hem Till Salu" (yup, homes for sale). Then click on "Läs mer" to the right of the first photo. Finally, click on the "Fler Bilder" button on the lower right for more pics. The cost? A mere 35 million SEK, equivalent to just over 3.8 million Euros and just under 5 million bucks.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 31, 2005

A Eurostyle Motel 6 Without the Luxe

One of the highlights of our road trip was staying in Malmö at a place our child called a freeway hotel, which is close enough. In Malmö, as in many European cities, it often feels as though a traveler can choose to stay in a hotel or choose to eat but not both. There are hostels with family rooms but those aren't always downtown and are often booked. So when hubby stumbled on a hotel that charged a piddling 330 crowns per night per room, I was thrilled. (Have you noticed that not once, in any of the recent corporate-excess scandals, has the phrase "freelance writer" appeared near the word "overpayment"?)

Formule1 was quite the experience. In Sweden it has hotels in Malmö, Stockholm and Göteborg. The global chain is part of Accor Hotels, which encourages customers to "listen to your dream," even if it involves, say, "unashamed indulgence." Formule1 caters to the lower end of Accor's clientele, people dreaming of vermin-free lodging. It was about as luxe as a minimum-security prison, minus the tennis courts, and difficult to get into because we didn't have an actual reservation (thanks, honey) and so couldn't use our credit card to get the magic 6-number code that let us into the hotel and our room. A living, breathing employee was on hand to register guests only between 5 pm and 7 pm and then made a reappearance in the morning hours to supply an institutional breakfast of rolls, margarine, jam, honey, cheese, coffee and tea, which could not be taken into our rooms but must be consumed while we sat on small hard black stools, which did not swivel, at a U-shaped orange Formica-like counter. Did I mention it felt like a prison?

All rooms are identical and sleep three (assuming rock-hard foam mattresses send you to dream land), thanks to a brutal design efficiency. There's a long bunk bed affixed on one side of the room, above the head of a double bed. On the left side of the double bed is a ladder leading up to the bunk. A clothes rod with hangers runs between the ladder and the wall. On the far side of the double bed, in the left corner, is a sink. On the right corner is a shelf, a chair, and a small wall-mounted TV. The vertical fluorescent light fixture built into the bunk support *did* swivel but was weird and annoying. The room had an automatic lock opened by punching in the right code on the number pad outside but no inside lock, which was creepy. Hmm, did I mention it felt like a prison?

Since the room was almost exactly the same size as our tiny cabin in the woods (16 square feet, maybe), we could cope. The sheet story was mysterious. Instead of having two sheets, each bed had a single, double-length sheet that was folded over. Another mystery: The double bed had one single weird, long pillow instead of two. And then there were the toilets and showers down the hall, seriously plastic modular units that screamed porta potty. A pair of green and red lights above the toilets let you know if the units were occupied. You didn't flush manually; unlocking the door triggered the flush mechanism, which the signage suggested was some kind of fabulous self-cleaning system.

Which is not to say I hated Formule1 entirely. My favorite part was the many notes and signs taped to the front door in Swedish and English. The best, in Swedish, had a drawing of a little dog with a huge camera in its face and said, "Don't pound on the door, you're being videotaped." And because it was clean and because it was cheap and because the kid thought the place was adorable, god help me I may even go back some day.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A Eurostyle Motel 6 Without the Luxe

One of the highlights of our road trip was staying in Malmö at a place our child called a freeway hotel, which is close enough. In Malmö, as in many European cities, it often feels as though a traveler can choose to stay in a hotel or choose to eat but not both. There are hostels with family rooms but those aren't always downtown and are often booked. So when hubby stumbled on a hotel that charged a piddling 330 crowns per night per room, I was thrilled. (Have you noticed that not once, in any of the recent corporate-excess scandals, has the phrase "freelance writer" appeared near the word "overpayment"?)

Formule1 was quite the experience. In Sweden it has hotels in Malmö, Stockholm and Göteborg. The global chain is part of Accor Hotels, which encourages customers to "listen to your dream," even if it involves, say, "unashamed indulgence." Formule1 caters to the lower end of Accor's clientele, people dreaming of vermin-free lodging. It was about as luxe as a minimum-security prison, minus the tennis courts, and difficult to get into because we didn't have an actual reservation (thanks, honey) and so couldn't use our credit card to get the magic 6-number code that let us into the hotel and our room. A living, breathing employee was on hand to register guests only between 5 pm and 7 pm and then made a reappearance in the morning hours to supply an institutional breakfast of rolls, margarine, jam, honey, cheese, coffee and tea, which could not be taken into our rooms but must be consumed while we sat on small hard black stools, which did not swivel, at a U-shaped orange Formica-like counter. Did I mention it felt like a prison?

All rooms are identical and sleep three (assuming rock-hard foam mattresses send you to dream land), thanks to a brutal design efficiency. There's a long bunk bed affixed on one side of the room, above the head of a double bed. On the left side of the double bed is a ladder leading up to the bunk. A clothes rod with hangers runs between the ladder and the wall. On the far side of the double bed, in the left corner, is a sink. On the right corner is a shelf, a chair, and a small wall-mounted TV. The vertical fluorescent light fixture built into the bunk support *did* swivel but was weird and annoying. The room had an automatic lock opened by punching in the right code on the number pad outside but no inside lock, which was creepy. Hmm, did I mention it felt like a prison?

Since the room was almost exactly the same size as our tiny cabin in the woods (16 square feet, maybe), we could cope. The sheet story was mysterious. Instead of having two sheets, each bed had a single, double-length sheet that was folded over. Another mystery: The double bed had one single weird, long pillow instead of two. And then there were the toilets and showers down the hall, seriously plastic modular units that screamed porta potty. A pair of green and red lights above the toilets let you know if the units were occupied. You didn't flush manually; unlocking the door triggered the flush mechanism, which the signage suggested was some kind of fabulous self-cleaning system.

Which is not to say I hated Formule1 entirely. My favorite part was the many notes and signs taped to the front door in Swedish and English. The best, in Swedish, had a drawing of a little dog with a huge camera in its face and said, "Don't pound on the door, you're being videotaped." And because it was clean and because it was cheap and because the kid thought the place was adorable, god help me I may even go back some day.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack