The only thing we ever do.

                                                             Asgard: remarkably dull, considering.      The late film critic Roger Ebert described 2011's Thor as: "a failure as a movie, but a success as marketing". Indeed, with the talent involved and the basic interest from the fans of the comic it was never going to be a particularly difficult sell. Yet it was rubbish. It lacked almost anything of interest. Dull scene after dull scene ponderously dripped into the expensive production barrel which was then dutifully scraped.      However, clearly a lot of people enjoyed it and Ebert also pointed out how well the film was doing on Rotten Tomatoes , so why ...

                                      Wherever you're going I'm going your way.                                              The murky brown waters of the canal near Yokohama Station contain a lot more action than the casual observer might at first notice. There`s the usual carp, but also some pied wagtails and the odd duck. Crabs claw a living from the concrete banks and very occasionally a lost frog will attempt the survival course of rusted bicycles and dead umbrellas.                        ...

    When I first came to Japan I worked in Ofuna, a city about fifteen minutes from Yokohama by train. I would get the train back to Yokohama every evening,  Occasionally, an Anglo-Australian expeditionary force would reconnoitre such points of interest as the "Pub and Snack" whose neon sign promised familiar comforts.  Remarkably, this venue completely failed to contain a dart-board and a jar of pickled eggs on the counter. Instead, it seemed to be some fiendish kind of Japanese device for removing a substantial amount of money from foolish pockets for very little entertainment in return. Wiser but poorer, we were.     All part of the normal learning process when moving to a new place, of course, but what would baffle me for over a year was nothing more complex than the station's escalator.     Here's Ofuna Station and its escalator in 2013:                ...

     50% of communication is, most basically, asking and checking ( most usually referred to as: Bela Lugosi ) .         In schools, how often are students graded on their ability to ask questions? How often are they tested on their ability to check? Clearly, the usual education systems see no real value to communication as they ignore half of what it takes for it to be most effective.         Here's Bela with some interesting ideas about life:                 Why is asking and checking so vital to communication? Because communication always works like this:                                                 ...

http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810/       In 2008 the Obama campaign won Advertising Age's Marketer of the Year award. Apple and Nike were among the giant corporations whose marketing campaigns were deemed by professionals in the industry to be less effective than Obama's.       Marketing  is generally defined as "the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service. It is a critical business function for attracting customers."       It is clear that when marketing is "communicating" it is the kind of communication where asking and checking are discouraged. We receive information that is designed to give us a particular idea. And so, when Obama promised "hope" and "change" people tended to wave their flags and weep rather than asking: "hope for what ?" or " what kind of change?". The campaign ...