First, the pros -

1. Burning somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 calories per hour. This adds up quickly and is more than I initially thought. One of the first things I noticed after making the switch is how much hungrier I am when I get off work.
2. Weird looks from coworkers, especially in week 1.
3. Feel more productive and focused on tasks. It’s likely a product of being in a more active position. That and I think better standing up.
4. Freedom to pace around, which also burns calories.
5. Feel less glued to my desk than before. It’s faster and more convenient to walk down the hall for things.
6. Extra desk space underneath the lectern part of the desk.
7. Cheap to make the switch. You only need an extra 14″ of height, and I rigged mine out of spare materials lying around the office. Having a slight tilt to the raised desktop is key.
8. Easier to collaborate with others in the room. The monitor is at everyone’s eye level, and no one has to lean over to see.
9. Improved posture. I slouch when I sit. I also slouch when I stand, but standing all day has improved it a bit.
10. Office chair now used for things like my laptop case, hat, and coat.

A few cons -

1. Uncomfortable shoes are more noticeable, and my Dr. Scholl’s gel inserts were money well spent. A couple of female colleagues have pointed out that standing desks won’t work so well if you wear heels.
2. Tiring at first if you’re used to 40 hours a week sitting, but I got used to it by week 2.
3. Harder to hold the phone receiver with my shoulder while I’m typing. I find myself sitting to take phone calls.
4. Need a better champion for the cause than Don Rumsfeld.
5. Many things in my office like my desk drawers and the giant file bin next to my desk were designed specifically for seated access.
6. My raised desktop isn’t that large, so not as convenient when I have to hand write notes. Who hand writes notes at this point, though?

IdeaRobber’s been a little sparse lately and will continue to be until I’m out of thesis world in May. Looking forward to picking up the writing pace this summer. Thanks for reading.

Is it important to veer away from the masters to develop one’s own style?

I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. The thing that almost made me weep, he said, “I was so happy when this young person took from me.” Because that’s what we want. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice.

And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. And Balzac said that in his book: It makes me so happy because it makes me immortal because I know that 200 years from now there will be people doing things that somehow I am part of. So the answer to your question is: Don’t worry about whether it’s appropriate to borrow or to take or do something like someone you admire because that’s only the first step and you have to take the first step.

How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?

We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.

I’m halfway through day two, and I can already tell a big difference.  I’m finding myself constantly shifting my weight from one leg to the other.  It may not burn many calories, but over the course of 40 hours a week and 2,000 a year, it adds up.  I tilted my keyboard platform forward like I’m standing at a lectern, which I’ve found is much more comfortable for typing.  As far as adjusting to working while standing, I’ve always been a pacer, so I really don’t mind ditching my chair.

Here are some pictures of my new setup:

The top of the monitor is right at eye level, and the keyboard and mouse are at a height where my elbows can just hang naturally.

I found the keyboard platform in a storage closet.  The two towers are actually Sharper Image personal heater/air conditioners that we bought back when the office was having AC problems, but they haven’t been used in a while.  Gaining some extra shelf space for books was a nice bonus.

The mouse platform is an old file bin that I turned on its end, and I used a binder clip to attach it to the platform for added stability.  My phone fit perfectly underneath.

Here’s the view from the side.  The monitor is sitting on a file container with a couple of reams of paper on top.  The keyboard platform had a 1″ backstop on it already, which worked perfectly to give it a slight tilt forward.

Check out that Lifehacker post for images of other standing desk setups.

The Pujols talks have some similarities to the recent Derek Jeter extension in that both players have value to their organizations extending well beyond on-the-field statistics.  Pujols had the third best-selling jersey of 2009 according to MLB (Jeter was #1).  In 2010, Sports Business Daily rated Pujols as baseball’s 2nd most marketable player, just behind Jeter.  As the face of the Cardinals franchise, it’s more difficult to put a dollar value on things like Pujols’ impact on season ticket sales, but the impact is there.

What separates Pujols and Jeter is the difference between valuating a career at its peak versus one in decline.  The Yankees were looking more at Jeter’s value as a brand, and the decision to extend his contract had more to do with his value as a leader and as an icon than it did with his hitting.  At the age of 31, Pujols is in the prime of his career and likely has many more years of high production left.

One approach to retaining Pujols would be to include a percentage ownership stake in the team.  Like Stan Musial and Ozzie Smith before him, Pujols is an icon of the city.  A stake in the team would provide him with income and influence well beyond his playing career.  While the other baseball owners would likely hate this precedent, it would be immensely popular with fans.

Part of the societal appeal of sports is that they are much closer to true meritocracies than what we see in the business world.  Athletes can’t buy homeruns or a higher batting average, and regardless of whether someone is born into wealth or poverty, success is primarily a measure of performance on the field.  Pujols’ value extends beyond his numbers, and his contract should be designed with that understanding.  If Pujols were a top-performing attorney or a corporate vice president, making him a partner would be a sensible next step.  Why should it be any different in baseball?

I’m unconvinced that plagiarism is an epidemic partly because the data cited tend to be enforcement numbers.   An increase in enforcement isn’t evidence of a change in the number of infractions.  This is the same fallacy the DEA often uses, citing the number of drug arrests as evidence that drug use is on the rise.  Survey data of students are arguably a better metric for instances of plagiarism as opposed to data from teacher surveys, which the British Association of Teachers and Lecturers used in 2008.   Teachers have a strong bias around plagiarism numbers because of the increase in enforcement and the greater availability of tools to catch plagiarists, including sites like WriteCheck.com or simple Google search verification of suspicious passages in student assignments.  Catching a plagiarist was considerably more labor-intensive before the Internet, so it makes sense that teachers were more likely to let suspicious passages slide rather than do the many hours of library digging it could take to confirm a suspicion.

Another factor to consider is that while students have more tools to enable plagiarism, their incentives to cheat are arguably lower than they were before the Internet.  The potential gain must be weighed against the risk and consequences of getting caught.  Napster, for example, allowed people to easily download the equivalent of thousands of dollars worth of music purchases with little or no risk of repercussions.  When combined with the general social acceptance of file-sharing, it’s  no wonder the site took off in popularity.  “Epidemic” is a fair label for file-sharing, especially as it was practiced in the early 2000s.  The incentives for plagiarists just don’t line up as well.  A one-second Google search by an instructor is often all it takes to catch an offender, and the punitive measures are serious – often an automatic F for a course or even expulsion.

As for the essay mills, Dan Ariely conducted an informal study with another Duke professor where they ordered 12-15 page research papers on the topic of cheating from four different sites at a cost of $150-216 per paper.   All four papers they received were chock full of citation errors and incoherent sentences.  None would have received a passing grade in a university course, and two of the four were 35-39% copied from other works according to WriteCheck.com.  Ariely requested a refund from the two essay mills at fault, which he didn’t get.

As of this writing, anyway, teachers have a considerable upper-hand.

“Beach Boys threaten Katy Perry over ‘California Gurls’? No lawsuit Just Yet.” – CBS News

“Beach Boys versus ‘California Gurls’ in Court?” – Time

It’s a good rule of thumb is to be skeptical of every news story containing a question mark in the headline, a deceptive technique Jon Stewart once dubbed “The Cavuto” after it’s serial use by Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto.

It’s troubling that media outlets would imply that the Beach Boys themselves are up in arms over Perry’s song.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and the Beach Boys have been vocal in distancing themselves from the spat.  A spokesman for Mike Love said that any action was entirely up to Rondor, and both Love and Brian Wilson have said that they like Perry’s record.

As to the substance of the complaint, no one with a functional set of ears could confuse the two songs for one another.  According to Rondor, Snoop Dogg’s single utterance of the line “I really wish you all could be California girls” constitutes copyright infringement.  Here are the two songs in question.  What do you think?  Does Rondor have a point?

Beach Boys – California Girls

Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg – California Gurls

Considering I blog under the handle “IdeaRobber,” you can guess where I fall on the issue of sampling.  To me, the ethical line is all about attribution.  If I lift a paragraph from another person’s work and pass it off as my own, that’s plagiarism.  If I put quotes around it and cite the source in a footnote or a bibliography, it’s good research.  Schools train students to read others’ work and cite it as a way of learning to write.  The research paper is a standard academic exercise all the way through graduate school, and with good reason.  So why is it that when this same research methodology is applied to video or music, it raises red flags and allegations of copyright infringement?

When a musician uses a sample or a sonic quote, it’s tough to argue that any potential money is being stolen from the original creator.  Quite the contrary – it’s free marketing.  Most people would have never heard of Rick James had it not been for a remix by MC Hammer, and the latter version drove sales for the original.  Sampling is a large part of the history of jazz.  Just as teachers of writing want students to read Hemingway and Salinger, my music teachers told me that the best way to learn jazz bass was to listen to Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Mingus, and any other great jazz player I could find.  We learn to play by quoting the greats.  I’ve blogged before about The Real Book, an illegal fake book of jazz charts that musicians of my generation use for jazz gigs.

As an exercise for a course I’m taking, I compiled a mash-up documentary about the issue of file sharing – or “file stealing” depending on whom you ask – using mostly segments of existing YouTube clips.  It’s an issue I’m passionate about, and I do think there are reasonable points to be made on either side.  I empathize with musicians who have worked hard and feel their livelihood is being challenged, but I also think that it’s counterproductive to criminalize a generation of kids and drive the behavior underground.  The business model for professional music is changing, in some ways for the better and in others for the worse, but we can’t roll back the clock and pretend the changes aren’t happening.

My other motive in editing a mash-up documentary was to push the limits of fair use without actually breaking the law.  The credits at the end are extensive to provide what I feel is proper attribution.  Enjoy up until I get a cease and desist letter or Vimeo removes it.

“Life After File Sharing: A Mash-Up Documentary” (click to open in a separate window)

“The court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement…This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other.”

It’s been a weird lawsuit that featured haggling over what data Google had to release and accusations that Viacom was uploading copyrighted content onto YouTube from public wifi spots.

An appeal is likely.  In an emailed statement quoted in the Wall St. Journal, Viacom replied: “We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed…After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis.

2. “Noitulove” (0:51) – Guinness ad created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.  Title is “evolution” spelled backwards.  This won the 2006 Grand Prize at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

3. The Original Human Tetris Performance (2:38) – Created by Guillaume Reymond

4. Clay Chess Match (1:55) – Created by Riccardo Crocetta

5. White Stripes: The Hardest Button to Button (3:38) – Directed by Michelle Gondry, 2003. Fell in Love with a Girl is another good choice for Gondry/Stripes/stop-motion, but I’m going with Hardest Button since it’s been parodied on the Simpsons. Gondry also did the Stripes videos for The Denial Twist (with Conan O’Brien) and Dead Leaves & the Dirty Ground.

6. A Combo Work by Blu and David Ellis (8:11) – Graffiti stop-motion that watches like a combination of Banksy, Monty Python Animations, and Bill Plympton.

Here’s a Wikipedia list of other short films and music videos that use pixilation animation.