Last week someone sent me a link to a video for GoldieBlox, a toy company, that features toys for kids (and parents) jaded by the Princess theme that has taken over the toy industry in this country for that past few years.
I had never heard of the company before, and it was a serendipitous discovery, because of what I have been working on with my students –a Rube Goldberg idea. More about this in a moment.
While most girl’s toys have been Disney-fied, Goldieblox’s products are engineering-inspired. One of their blog posts (titled “An Apology To My Future Daughter”) gives you the reason d’être:
“I apologize that I’m going to have to lie to you. I’m afraid there is a 99.99% chance you won’t grow up to be a princess. I’m afraid I would rather you become an engineer…”
So back to the video, an advertisement, nonetheless, which communicates sans words why science and engineering could be fun for kids, Levers, pulleys, wheels, ramps..all made from everyday objects to create something fantastic. The storyline is about kids who are bored with Princess-saturated television, and go on to create a contraption that uses everyday objects in the home to… turn off the boring fare on TV! If Disney’s princess-fantasy machine has numbed parents’ toy choices, Goldieblox’s ‘Princess Machines’ tries to reverse the trend.
No voice-overs required.
However, another communication issue flared up. Not about toys or machines, but about copyright. In November Beastie Boy’s filed a lawsuit against the use of its song (parodied), “Girls.” That’s a whole other communication issue worth unpacking since it is involves ‘fair use’.
My guess is that the band would drop the charge, once it realizes the bigger picture –beyond a viral ad -of empowering girls.
It won’t help, once the rest of the media begin to see story angles such as “Why Beastie Boys Isn’t pro Girls.”
THOMPSON talks of Ambient awareness as if it were some rare gift that comes with augmenting (saturating?) our brains with feeds and Tweets. He calls it “the experience of knowing what’s going on in the lives of other people — what they’re thinking about, what they’re doing, what they’re looking at — by paying attention to the small stray status messages that people are putting online.”
The Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to employees that they may be violating their non-disclosure agreement if they click on a link to a Washington Post article.
I’ve met Gerard Braud, when I sat in a workshop he conducted some years back. He’s a reporter’s reporter, who knows the ins and outs of working ina newsroom.
When Obama, fresh from his speech in New York this week (the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial dinner, where both Obama and Romney delivered great one-liners, 
Sure, it gave the president a stick to poke at his challenger, who has been gaining ground.
I was looking up author, David Carr, after using a quote from him in my previous post. His is a fascinating story captured in his book, 
