Joel Stein is Plagiarizing Me

Okay, the title's not really true, but there are some amazing similarities between Stein's recent piece in Time and my last feature in Stanford magazine. First of all, they're both about Brian Wansink and his work on the psychology of eating at Cornell University, and since mine came out about a month ago and Stein is a Stanford grad and probably gets the alumni magazine, it's reasonable to assume that my article influenced him, and may have even introduced him to Wansink and his research.

And then there are the little parallelisms in syntax and phrasing. I tell a story about Wansink deceiving theater-goers into eating stale popcorn, and then revealing the trick, and say, "And Wansink took delight in pointing this out to them." Stein tells how Wansink fooled professional bartenders trying to pour same-sized shots into different-sized glasses, and then surmises, "All of this delights Brian Wansink."

Me describing Wansink: "...with his high brow, rimless glasses and mischievous smirk, [he] looks a little like a high school chemistry teacher."

Stein describing Wansink: He "has all the nerdlike characteristics you'd expect from a mad professor."

Elsewhere, I note the charming congruence in the fact that his wife studied the culinary arts at France's Le Cordon Bleu; so does Joel.

Despite what you might think so far, I'm not mad. You've heard the old trope, imitation is the sincerest form of blah blah blah. And I know that Stein isn't a plagiarist - I've met him, he's a decent guy, and journalism is a giant echo chamber anyway - we all get our best ideas from things that other people have already written. So color me flattered. Nice piece, Joel. Now thank me by taking me to lunch.

Eat Me

A new article, this time in Stanford Magazine, about Brian Wansink's research on the psychology of eating. He's a fascinating man and passionate about his subject. Read the article to find out why we eat more M+M's when they're sorted by color, or get drunker faster with short, wide glasses.

At the zoo

Exactly a week ago, I was at the Gramercy Rose Bar, a very fancy Ian Schrager lounge in the Gramercy Hotel. On one wall, a Julian Schnabel print. On another, a Damien Hirst mosaic comprised entirely of butterfly wings. Chattering scenesters shot pool and talked about each other from across the cavernous room. They sipped $18 cosmos; Brad and I stuck with $9 beers.

We sit down with friends of friends of friends, and I get to talking with this Texan banker at CSFB. He had long, slicked hair and a gradually ascending brow line - he could have been an oilman instead of a risk management specialist. At one point he says, "When I look at my grades from Texas A&M, I can't believe I am where I am now." (Presumably, I was meant to take this as a statement of good fortune - his grades were bad, his job is good. Not the other way around.) But the money quote came a bit later, when he eventually asked me what I did for a living.

"Wow!" He exclaimed after I answered. "A real live journalist!"

Murdoch Wins

The inevitable has happened. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not overly upset. He'll inject capital, and is probably smart enough not to mess (too much) with a good thing. I fear most for the Journal's China coverage, but there's no point in worrying now. Besides, I have a soft spot for the billionaire tyrant. His is such an epic personality. And he seems to be having fun.

A new article

I have a new article in Newsweek, this time on the Darfur tragedy and some engineers/scientists that are putting their skills to use to make life a little more livable for the region's 2.2 million refugees.

A couple links for more information:

A 10-minute video on the life of refugees.

The website for the BDS project.

Stupid News

What's with news outlets not getting with the technological big picture? I went over to the Washington Post homepage today to look for that 20,000-word series on how evil Dick Cheney is. (Answer: Very Fucking Evil.) I used the WP's internal search and typed "dick cheney angler." (Angler is his Secret Service codename and the title of the series.) Surprise surprise, the series, which is probably the biggest and most important thing the Post will do all year, didn't show up in the first ten results. You get a lot of related blog posts, interview transcripts, and sidebars, but not the piece itself. I eventually went to Google and typed in the same thing. The first result was the one I was looking for.

I've complained, in private and on this blog, about the awfulness of Newsweek's website. News outlets everywhere are purposefully, almost willfully losing readers and site hits by employing sloppy user interface. How hard is it to get search, that most basic of web features, right?


Related: Check out this amazing video from the TED conference, which demonstrates new image management software. This is how we'll be reading newspapers online very soon, I predict. It'll probably take over interface in general. Couple that with iPhone touchscreen technology, and soon we'll have whole walls that are touch-sensitive computer screens. Rad!

Finally, my new time-waster at work is reading future obits. It's common practice in journalism to write obits ahead of time for notables that are likely to croak soon. We've already got ones in the system for Osama bin Laden and Fidel Castro. The one about Fidel is particularly interesting, since the writer goes so far as to predict the medium of announcement ("...we heard this morning from the state-run news service...").

Yes, yes, it's been a while since I've posted anything. Whatev. Like you care anyway.

But to make up for it, some gifts:

1. My beastly reporting on the Endangered Species Act.

2. Ira Glass talking about storytelling. If you don't know who Ira Glass is then a) you are like me circa January 2007 and b) visit the site for This American Life and start catching up.

3. This photo.