Battlestar Rhapsody

This is awesome in and of itself. But it's got more pop-culture references than you can shake a stick at. That makes it super awesome.

Menu Mind Games

New York Magazine has a pretty neat article on how restaurants structure menus to drive customers to choose one thing or another.

Puzzles, anchors, stars, and plowhorses; those are a few of the terms consultants now use when assembling a menu (which is as much an advertisement as anything else). “A star is a popular, high-profit item—in other words, an item for which customers are willing to pay a good deal more than it costs to make,” Poundstone explains. “A puzzle is high-profit but unpopular; a plowhorse is the opposite, popular yet unprofitable. Consultants try to turn puzzles into stars, nudge customers away from plowhorses, and convince everyone that the prices on the menu are more reasonable than they look.” Poundstone uses Balthazar’s menu to illustrate these ideas.

1. The Upper Right-Hand Corner
That’s the prime spot where diners’ eyes automatically go first. Balthazar uses it to highlight a tasteful, expensive pile of seafood. Generally, pictures of food are powerful motivators but also menu taboos—mostly because they’re used extensively in lowbrow chains like Chili’s and Applebee’s. This illustration “is as far as a restaurant of this caliber can go, and it’s used to draw attention to two of the most expensive orders,” Poundstone says.

2. The Anchor
The main role of that $115 platter—the only three-digit thing on the menu—is to make everything else near it look like a relative bargain, Poundstone says.

3. Right Next Door
At a mere $70, the smaller seafood platter next to Le Balthazar seems like a deal, though there’s no sense of how much food you’re getting. It’s an indefinite comparison that also feels like an indulgence—a win-win for the restaurant.

4. In The Vicinity
The restaurant’s high-profit dishes tend to cluster near the anchor. Here, it’s more seafood at prices that seem comparatively modest.

5. Columns Are Killers
According to Brandon O’Dell, one of the consultants Poundstone quotes in Priceless, it’s a big mistake to list prices in a straight column. “Customers will go down and choose from the cheapest items,” he says. At least the Balthazar menu doesn’t use leader dots to connect the dish to the price; that draws the diner’s gaze right to the numbers. Consultant Gregg Rapp tells clients to “omit dollar signs, decimal points, and cents … It’s not that customers can’t check prices, but most will follow whatever subtle cues are provided.”

6. The Benefit Of Boxes
“A box draws attention and, usually, orders,” Poundstone says. “A really fancy box is better yet. The fromages at the bottom of the menu are probably high-profit puzzles.”

7. Menu Siberia
That’s where low-margin dishes that the regulars like end up. The examples here are the easy-to-miss (and relatively inexpensive) burgers.

8. Bracketing
A regular trick, it’s when the same dish comes in different sizes. Here, that’s done with steak tartare and ravioli—but because “you never know the portion size, you’re encouraged to trade up,” Poundstone says. “Usually the smaller size is perfectly adequate.”

On Being Secretary

Meeting Of The Diplomats

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

NewsweekBy Jon Meacham

Two of the most prominent secretaries of state in recent history sat down with NEWSWEEK's Jon Meacham to discuss their relationships with their respective presidents and the difficulties of managing diplomacy during wartime.

Excerpts:

Meacham: What has surprised you most since becoming secretary of state?

Clinton: Well, probably the intensity of the work. It's just a 24/7 job. It sounds almost banal to say, [but] it's a really big world out there, and the United States has responsibilities practically everywhere. And the nature of the challenges we're facing are not only bilateral and multilateral, but they are transnational. One of the biggest challenges for me personally is to keep trying to present an affirmative agenda, not a reactive one, because you could end up being kind of an inbox secretary of state. You are never off duty. Because you land, you begin to work, and you go the next place and you land and begin to work. When you come back, your inbox is a foot high.

Kissinger : That is very comparable to my experience. I had been national-security adviser before I became secretary of state. So I saw the issues that reach the White House and the issues that reach the secretary. The issues that reach the White House are most frequently strategic, while as secretary of state, as Hillary has pointed out, there are as many constituencies as there are countries with which we have relationships. So at the end of every day you almost have to make a decision-whom are you going to insult by not dealing with his or her problems? [Clinton laughs.] Because there's no possible way you could get through. It's a job that requires 24-hour attention.One of the problems of government is to separate the urgent from the important and make sure you're dealing with the important and don't let the urgent drive out the important. Another challenge one has as secretary is that I think it's the best staff in town, but it's also the most individualistic staff ...

Clinton: Mm-hmm.

Kissinger: ... in town. With so many constituencies, to get them to work toward a coherent goal is a huge assignment for the secretary.

Clinton: It is.

Kissinger: Even though I had been in the White House for four years before, I didn't realize the magnitude of it until I actually got to the seventh floor [of the State Department].

Clinton: I would add to what Henry said that in addition to the urgent and the important, you try to keep your eye on the long-term trend lines because what is neither urgent nor important today might become one or the other by next year or the year after. And that's a whole different set of skills that is required. I'm always reaching down into the building and saying, "What are we doing on energy security and independence? What are we doing to work with Europe so that they will come up with a common policy through the EU on their own energy needs? What are we doing on food security?" There were riots last year. You look at changing climate patterns, migration patterns. Food is going to become more and more of an issue. What are we doing on pandemic disease with the H1N1 danger, with the problems that global health presents? An area that we're beginning to pay attention to, which is not in the headlines, is the Arctic. With the melting of the ice, with sea lanes opening that were never there before, or only-seasonal lanes becoming more all-weather, with five countries ringing the Arctic, which is an ocean, not a land mass like Antarctica. With Russia saying that they are going to have an expedition next year to plant their flag on the North Pole. With Canada saying, "No, you'd better not." This is an area that we have to pay real attention to, but it's not an area that I get called about by reporters or have to answer questions about at the White House yet. So there's a matrix of issues. It is exactly how I think about it: the urgent, the important, and then the long term.

How important is the relationship between the secretary and the president?

Clinton: Oh, I think it's critically important. First of all, it's critical to the formulation of policy and the giving of advice and having the perspective of diplomacy and development at the table when decisions of moment are made. Speaking for myself and I think other secretaries with whom I've spoken, including Henry, it is such a key relationship that you really have to invest time and effort in it. I work closely with not only [national-security adviser] Jim Jones but also [Defense Secretary] Bob Gates. But at the end of the day, it's that sort of funnel; the tough decisions end up in the Oval Office. And you can't just walk in and say to the president, "Here's what I think you should do." It takes a lot of thought and effort. I meet with the president one-on-one once a week. I'm in other meetings with him with the national-security team. It's a constant conversation.

Kissinger: I fundamentally agree-the relationship of the president and the secretary is absolutely key. The State Department has a tendency to insist on its prerogative that it is exclusively entitled to conduct foreign policy. My view is that when you assert your prerogatives you've already lost the bureaucratic battle. I saw the president every day when we were both in town because I felt it was absolutely essential that we thought along the same lines. I was lucky. I had extraordinarily close relationships with the two presidents I served. In fact, if one looks at the history of the secretaries of state, it's rare. If they don't have a close relationship, they don't last.

Clinton: What I have found hardest to balance is the amount of travel that is expected today. One would think that in an era where communication is instantaneous, you would not have to get on an airplane and go sit in a meeting. But, in fact, it's almost as though people are more desirous of seeing someone in person.

Kissinger: Because they have to have explained to them what is really being thought, which you can't put through cables.

Clinton: You can't. And because press coverage, with all due respect, often raises fears and anxieties that are not rooted in any decision process. People sit around in capitals all over the world reading tea leaves, trying to make sense of what we're doing. We have to go and meet and talk and listen, and it is a challenge to manage all of the relationships you have to manage when you're on an airplane as much as I am these days. But that's why having the trust and confidence of the president means that you can do the travel, check back in, report back in without worrying that you're not on the same page because you've talked at length about where you're headed before you go.

I think that, of course, countries make decisions based on their own assessment of their national interests. But part of what you can attempt to do when you've developed a relationship is to offer different ways of looking at that national interest, to try to find more common ground. And it's going to be a more likely convergence if the person with whom you're talking feels that they've already developed a personal understanding of you and a personal connection with you. And I've spent, as Henry has, an enormous amount of time just building those relationships. Because it is all about having enough trust between leaders and countries so that misunderstandings don't occur, but also on the margins, there can be a greater appreciation of the other's point of view.

Kissinger: The difficulty here is in the relations between countries. Very often there arises a gray area where the national interest is not self-evident or [is] disputed, where there is sort of a 2 percent margin of uncertainty. It's very important to establish relationships before you need anything, so that there is a measure of respect in negotiations once they occur or when a crisis develops. When you travel as secretary, one problem you have is that the press comes with you and wants an immediate result because it justifies their trip. And sometimes the best result is that you don't try to get a result but try to get an understanding for the next time you go to them. I don't know whether that would be your experience.

Clinton: It is exactly my experience.

What is the role of theory and doctrine when you are behind the desk or on the plane?

Clinton: Well, Henry's the expert on theory and doctrine. I'm someone who thinks that it could help provide a framework and direction and lessons from history. There are patterns that can be discerned, but the ingredients for every single challenge that you face are not cookie-cutter. You have to be able to be creative and agile and responsive and have enough instincts to recognize the opportunities when they arise and then retrospectively fit it into a doctrine is what I would probably say [laughs].

Kissinger: Because I started life as a professor, I was concerned with doctrines and theory. But professors have a hell of a time getting their concepts relevant to a contemporary situation. They don't always understand that as a professor, you have all the time in the world to write your book. As a professor, you could come up with absolute solutions. As a secretary of state, there is almost no solution that you could achieve in one blow. You could only achieve it in a series of steps.

You are both wartime secretaries of state. You have nothing to compare it to, but what complications do you think warfare adds to diplomacy?

Clinton: Well, I can only speak from the experience we've had this past year where President Obama inherited two wars and had to make some early fast decisions that were waiting for him, not of his making. I give him high marks for taking the time and putting in place a process for us to examine the assumptions and ask the hard questions. Because the war in Iraq is winding down, but as the war winds down and our military troops leave, the State Department and USAID [United States Agency for International Development] are expected to assume even more responsibility. I'll give you one example: the military has been doing the police training in Iraq. They have a lot of resources to do these jobs. Not only tens of thousands of bodies but all kinds of equipment and flexibility in funding streams that are not part of the experience of the State Department or USAID, and I'm having to accept the responsibility, which is going to be handed off. That's a very daunting undertaking.

In Afghanistan, we were all part of the lengthy analysis to determine the way forward. And on both the military and the civilian side there was a conclusion reached that military force alone would not be successful. Perhaps it's an obvious conclusion, but it is one that raises a lot of questions that then State and USAID have to answer. It is so much easier to get resources when you are in the Defense Department than it is when you are in the State Department and USAID. So a huge part of your budget becomes Iraq, Afghanistan, and then the civilian assistance going into Pakistan. In a time of budget constraint like we're facing now, it's just much more difficult for us to get the resources that we're expected to have, but the responsibilities still remain. So, it's the tension of the stress that comes with any kind of wartime situation, because when our young men and women in uniform are put in harm's way, increasingly so are our civilians because they are expected to go right out there with the military. If we say we're going to work on agriculture in Afghanistan, the agronomist is there the next day after the fighting stops. So it adds to the complexity and the sense of responsibility.

Kissinger: I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.

Clinton: Right.

Kissinger: Nobody has more at stake than the administration in office. But if you look at the debates we had on Vietnam, Iraq, and so forth, ending the war became defined as the withdrawal of forces and as the primary if not the exclusive exit strategy. But in fact the best exit strategy is victory. Another is diplomacy. Another is the war just dying out. But if you identify exit with withdrawal of American forces, you neglect the political objective. In such circumstances you trap yourself in a position in which the administration in office gets assaulted for insufficient dedication to ending the war, [and] it has to do things that can be against its better judgment. We often found ourselves there.

This is my attitude toward the administration on the war, whether I agree with every last detail or not. The second point that Hillary made is about the civilian side of it, and there is a third element, which is the war will have to find, at some point, a diplomatic outcome. There has to be something that recognizes what the outcome is, in the name of which it can be defended. The disaster after Vietnam was that we would not support what had been negotiated. Whatever emerges in Afghanistan has to be supported, and it needs a legal framework internationally, and that couldn't exist yet. I would think that it's a big challenge that the secretary faces. But the debate ought to be in that framework and not "Do we want to end the war? How quickly can we end the war?" I take it for granted that the administration wants to end it as quickly as is at all possible. Why would they not?

In the popular mind, I think there's sometimes a sense that there's diplomacy and then there's military force. There's a hawk-dove simplicity. What would be the message you would want voters and Americans to have in their heads as they are evaluating Afghanistan, Iraq, the negotiations with Iran going forward?

Clinton: I want people to know we may be sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but we're also intensifying our diplomatic and political efforts and doing what we can alongside the people of Afghanistan to deliver results in terms of better services for them, all of which are part of our strategic view of how you reverse the momentum of the Taliban. So it's all connected. It's not either/or any longer.

Kissinger: Whenever one creates a diplomatic forum, one has to understand that there has to be a combination of rewards and penalties and that the other side will make its conclusions on the basis of benefits and risks. One has to be able to construct that, and one should never put a poor negotiator in the room and say, now you will start making compromises. Create the impression of endless willingness to compromise and you almost invite deadlines. That's the challenge we now have in North Korea and have had in North Korea for 10 years. In this sense, diplomacy and foreign policy and other elements of political activity have to be closely linked and have to be understood by the negotiators. That's why Hillary has the most exciting job in the government.

Clinton: But it's also more like a conductor than a soloist.

Obama-larity.

The Awl has come up with some very witty things to say about the White House Flicker stream. I'd check it out of I were you and I wanted to laugh. But maybe you hate humor. Whatever, I don't judge anybody for anything.



The American Enterprise Institute had a whole conference on Obama ceding cultural hegemony to Maeve Beliveau, daughter of Director of Advance Emmett Beliveau.

And this one's for CW:



“Baby… delicious, delicious Japanese baby.”

HIV in Glass

Luke Jerram makes glass sculptures of diseases (that's HIV there) to demonstrate that most diseases are actually clear.

These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena. Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks' beauty and what they represent, their impact on humanity. The question of pseudo-colouring in biomedicine and its use for science communicative purposes, is a vast and complex subject. If some images are coloured for scientific purposes, and others altered simply for aesthetic reasons, how can a viewer tell the difference? How many people believe viruses are brightly coloured? Are there any colour conventions and what kind of 'presence' do pseudocoloured images have that 'naturally' coloured specimens don't?

The Top 10

Foreign Policy stories you may have missed this year.

Animation without Animation

Cool.

Disney buys Marvel

Yes, You're Old.

Proof.

The decade according to 9-year-olds from allie garcia on Vimeo.

Probably the best end of decade concept I've come across.

I can't tell if this is real...

or action figures.

Hulkamania from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Making Publicly Funded Data User Friendly

Ready to be pissed?

David Cross, Will Arnett and Spike Jonze are on a TV show together. But only in the UK.

Thank you internets.

Street Fighter

Time Machine Cheat Sheet.

Full version HERE. Put this in your time machine so you can steal everyone else's discoveries and inventions, just helping you to conquer the world.

Burns Wins!

Apparently, in New York City's recent Mayoral election, which Bloomberg won by spending something like $1800 a vote (or a total of $85 million or some such,) Montgomery C. Burns won a majority of the write in candidates. Sure that just means 27 out of 299, but still. Excellent.

Even the Beards Were Better

Sigh. Nostalgia.

Steely Who?

From Letters of Note

You, Me and Cousin Dupree

July 14th, 2006: You, Me and Dupree, a film both produced by, and starring, Owen Wilson is released in cinemas.

July 17th, 2006: The following open letter is posted on Steely Dan's official website, and is addressed to Owen Wilson's brother, Luke. In it, the band - with tongue firmly in cheek - claim their song Cousin Dupree has been 'ripped off' by Owen's film.

July 28th, 2006: Owen Wilson releases the following statement in response, in which he jokingly refers to another of Steely Dan's songs, Hey Nineteen...

"I have never heard the song 'Cousin Dupree' and I don't even know who this gentleman, Mr. Steely Dan, is. I hope this helps to clear things up and I can get back to concentrating on my new movie, 'HEY 19."

Transcript follows.

Source

Transcript

The Residential Suites at Longworth
"Where Value is King -- And So Are You!"

Corpus Christi TX

Hey Luke -

Hey man - it's, like, Don and Walt, we're the guys from Steely Dan, the group, we won those Grammies that time, maybe you recall? You know, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"? "Reelin' in the Years?" "Hey Nineteen"? "Babylon Sisters"? Right, that's us! So how's it going?

Cool, we hope. We both really liked that "Bottle Rocket" movie that you and your brother did. We both thought it was way rocking! - even though the end was a little sad, you know, the overall thing was so great. In fact, it's the only movie that you and your brother did that we can really agree on, the two of us... we usually like the same kind of things, but not always exactly the same things, if you can get to that.

Anyway, the reason we're writing, aside from the fact that there's no show today and we're stuck in this dump in Corpus Christi - well, man, something kind of uncool has come to our attention and we've got to, like, do something or say something before the scene gets out of our control and something even more uncool happens. This doesn't involve you directly, man, you seem pretty cool, even when you're playing some pretty bogus parts in bad movies all the time, we realize that it's not entirely your fault and that you're entitled to have whatever low standards you want in terms of what's cool to get involved with for the, you know, bread or whatever.

It's your little brother Owen C. that's the problem. We realize what a drag it is for you to have people coming to you about his lameness all the time and we're really sorry to be doing the same thing - believe us, usually that's not what we're all about. But it so happens that your brother has gotten himself mixed up with some pretty bad Hollywood shlockmeisters and that he may be doing, like, permanent damage to his good creds and whatever reputation for coolness he may still have - let's face it, 'Bottle Rocket' was a ways back already.

What we suspect may have happened is this: some hack writer or producer or whatever they call themselves in Malibu or Los Feliz apparently heard our Grammy winning song "Cousin Dupree" on the radio and thought, hey, man, this is a cool idea for a character in a movie or something. OK, so the "cousin" idea was no doubt eliminated so as not to offend the Fundamentalist ticket buyers in the Flyovers. Nevertheless, they. like, took our character, this real dog sleeping on the couch and all and put him in the middle of some hokey "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" ripoff story and then, when it came time to change the character's name or whatever so people wouldn't know what a rip the whole thing was, THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW FUCKING NAME FOR THE GUY!

Anyway, they got your little brother on the hook for this summer stinkbomb - I mean, check the reviews - and he's using all his heaviest Owen C. licks to try and get this pathetic way-unfunny debacle off the ground and, in the end, no matter what he does or what happens at the box office, in the short run, he's gonna go down hard for selling out like this and for trashing the work of some pretty heavy artists like us in the process. You know the first fucking thing you learn, right? Instant karma is a fact, Jack. So your spaced out little bro is generating some MAJOR harsh-ass karma for himself by fucking us over like this - I mean, we're like totally out in the cold on this one - no ASCAP, no soundtrack, no consultant gig (like we got from the Farrelly Bros. when they used a bunch of songs in their movie, "You, Me and Irene" or whatever). No phone call, no muffin basket, no flowers, nothing.

And Luke, think of yourself, man. Do you want to go down as the brother of the Zal Yanovsky of the 21st century? Maybe this reference is a little obscure for someone of your generation (X? - Y? - ZERO?), but it would be worth your while to look it up in some counterculture encyclopedia or something. Because being the New Zallie's brother is definitely NOT A GOOD THING to be.

OK, then. So not to worry, man. Check it - whatever redress we get from the suits at the studio, that's strictly between our badass attorneys and theirs - we wouldn't even think for a Hollywood minute of getting Owen mixed up in all that bullshit... After all, Donald even liked "The Big Bounce". Really!

But, hey, Luke, man - there is one petite solid you could do for us at this time - do you think you could persuade your bro to do the right thing and come on down to our Concert at Irvine and apologize to our fans for this travesty? I mean, he wouldn't have to grovel or eat shit or get down on his hands and knees and ask forgiveness - we don't want him to do anything he's not comfortable with - but he would have to cop to the fact that what he and his Hollywood gangster pals did was wrong and that he wishes he had never agreed to get involved with this turkey in the first place. He just tells the audience and the band and the crew that he made a bad mistake and that he's sorry - is that so fucking hard? What the hell, you're his big brother. If you lean on him a little bit, I'm sure he'll do the right thing. You don't owe him anything, after the way he and Gwynnie Paltrow double-timed you in "The Royal Tenenbaums". So you just tell him - he'll come down to Irvine, apologize on stage, then we'll load him up with cool Steely merch and he can party with us and the band. Otherwise, if this business goes unresolved, there are some pretty heavy people who are upset about this whole thing and we can't guarantee what kind of heat little Owen may be bringing down on himself. When negative energy like this attaches itself to someone because they allow themselves to get involved in stuff that is not spiritually aligned for them on all levels, there can sometimes be some very harsh trips that go down. Your bro may be creating an extremely retrograde reality matrix for himself with his whole sellout moviestar game and there may be some righteous dues to pay, amen.

For example, there's this guy who works for us sometimes, he's not necessarily the kind of folks you want to know or hang with, but, if you happen to get in a barfight or some kind of hassle in a foreign country, he's your best fucking friend in the world. You guys must go to the movies a lot - you know what a Navy Seal is, right? Well, this dude's like that, only he's Russian. This particular guy - of course, he's a big fan of ours, but he may not have even heard of "Bottle Rocket" - hardly anybody has - I mean, one time we saw this guy, WITH HIS BARE HANDS, do something so unspeakable that - but, hey man, let's not even let it get that way, you know? Let's just help Owen C. do what's right, let's play past this particular screwup, and then he can get back to his life and his family and his beautiful moviestar-style pad or whatever, none the worse for wear, and with some groovy new tee's and hoodies and maybe a keyring or a coffee mug in the process. Alright? Well, alright!

Regards & etc. Don and Walt

P.S. Tell Owen to bring his bongos if he wants to sit in --

P.P.S. We're now seeing that according to Wikipedia, Owen is older than you are. But you seem a lot more mature somehow... don't you?"

My Six-Pack has a Face

Anyone know who the dude on the left is?

This is why all the superheroes live there.

Poor Hollywood. You have such an inferiority complex.

World Flag

Kottke had this up the other day:
What the world needs is a great flag, a flag of pure bliss. Here's one of the intermediate steps to the finished product; it's an average of all the world's countries' flags weighted by population.

LOSE

Comcast buys NBC.

Donut Seeds

Thanksgiving on Hobart Street