An Ad Man Who Hates "Mad Men"
George\r\n Lois: Well, I started in advertising, after the High School of \r\nMusic and Art, that was all, that was basically my graphic arts \r\ntraining, as far as I'm concerned, it was, you know, it was four \r\nincredible years. I then went to Pratt Institute and I met my future \r\nwife that first day of school, and I was nuts about her. And I realized \r\nafter one or two, after a week of Pratt that they weren't anywhere near \r\nas the High School of Music and Art, but I stuck it out, because I \r\nwasn't about to leave her. And I went through the first year and then \r\nthe second year, I didn't quite know what to do, and I knew the school \r\nwas so awful. But I went to my first classes at the second year, and \r\nagain, I ran into another great mentor, a teacher by the name of \r\nHerschel Levit, and he looked at my, and he saw what I did for him and \r\nhe said, "George, why are you, why are you in school?" And I said, "I'm\r\n trying to make a living, you know?" And he said, "No, no, get out of \r\nhere, you're not going to learn any more here," and he gave me a piece \r\nof paper with a woman's name—a woman art director, which was very unique\r\n back then—who had an art studio, and she sent me to him the next, and I\r\n went there the next morning and I left school in the, in my second, \r\nbefore my, actually my second year started. And she did promotion and \r\nadvertising, et cetera, it was a great, great first job because she was a\r\n superb designer. What happened was I lost my exemption in the army, it \r\nwas during the Korean War, and I got drafted and wound up going to \r\nKorea, came back alive... and she wanted me to be a partner with her, \r\nand I didn't want to. And she said, "What do you want to do?" "I \r\nreally want to work at CBS Television," because it was a really dynamic \r\ntime in corporate imagery and corporate design with the great Bill \r\nGolden at the head of it, they had just done the CBS eye, et cetera. So\r\n I went in at CBS and it was incredible atelier of design and \r\nadvertising. But somehow, it wasn't the big, it wasn't the big time \r\nadvertising, you know, worked on products, et cetera.
And from \r\nthere, and so I left there, you know, and Bill Golden said to me in '53 \r\nor '54, whatever it was, '54, "George, you can't go out there, it's a \r\nworld of, the ad world is terrible, they're all Philistines, they're all\r\n hacks." And he was right, you know, he said, "You're not going to be \r\nhappy there, they're not going to appreciate your talent." And I said, \r\n"Well, I," well, somehow, something drove me to do it, and ... the job I\r\n went to was pretty awful, and a lot of stories... seemingly apocryphal \r\nbut actually true... when I kind of acted up in my first agency and \r\noverturned a desk, etc., did some kind of crazy stuff.
After that\r\n I went, and I worked with some of the great, other great pioneers in \r\nadvertising, and advertising designer, Herb Lubalin and I worked, then I\r\n went to Doyle Dane Bernbach and worked for Bill Bernbach and Bob Gage. \r\n And again, I did something insane: I left Doyle Dane, I went to Bill \r\nBernbach and I told him I was leaving to start the second creative \r\nagency in the world, because Bill Bernbach had started the only creative\r\n agency in the world. And the reason he started it, it was based on the\r\n fact that he had worked with Paul Rand early in his career and somehow \r\nhe understood that if you worked with good, terrific graphic designer, \r\nespecially one who was prolific and could write like Paul Rand, that you\r\n could do better advertising if you worked, if the art director could \r\nwork, could conceive advertising with the writer... up to that time, \r\nbasically all advertising was, the art director sat in his room with his\r\n thumb up his ass and waited for the creative director, for the \r\ncopywriter to come in and throw him a piece of paper and say, "Make a \r\nlayout." You know, "Lay this out," and the layouts were, you know, \r\nthese typical, awful, you know, unambitious layouts.
So I left \r\nDoyle Dane Bernbach and when I left Doyle Dane Bernbach, Bill Bernbach \r\nsaid to me, "George, you don't know what's out there." You know, the \r\nthey could, and he literally said that Doyle Dane Bernbach was basically\r\n a creative freak, that somehow they were miraculous, a group of people \r\nthat somehow together could forget a great advertising, and it couldn't \r\nhappen again, not in this Philistine world. But I started an agency \r\ncalled Papert, Koenig, Lois, with two writers actually, and we were \r\nsuccessful almost immediately, almost immediately. And then after a \r\ncouple, one, two, or three years, coming out of my agency were two other\r\n agencies, you know, Carl Ally and a guy named [...] and then another \r\nguy left my agency and started, went into business with Mary Wells and \r\nstarted, Wells Rich Greene, and before you knew it, by the mid '60's, \r\nyou know, I realized that I had triggered, with starting that second \r\ncreative agency, I had triggered something called the creative \r\nrevolution in advertising. And it became the golden age of advertising,\r\n I mean, the '60's and '70's, basically was the golden age of \r\nadvertising, in advertising.
Question: How true is the\r\n show "Mad Men" to the atmosphere back then?
George Lois:\r\n The producers of "Mad Men," you know, think I hate their show, which is\r\n true. You know, when they first started the show, before it premiered,\r\n I got a call from one of the producers and he said, "You know, we're \r\nlooking at, we're shooting, we're doing little spots with the people who\r\n were the original 'mad men,'" he said, "Of the period. And, you know, \r\nwe're shooting it," and he named four, five, or six people. I had never \r\nheard of a couple of them. "And whoever we talk to mentions your \r\nname." I said, "Time out. You're doing a show on the advertising of \r\nthe '60's and you never heard my name?" He said, "Oh, no, we've heard \r\nyour name." I said, "Bullshit, you never heard my name." "Well, \r\nokay." I said, "If you want to know what happened in the '60's, if you \r\nwant a real understanding of what happened in the '60's, I did a book in\r\n 1972 called 'George Be Careful.'" Which is basically, you know, my \r\nstory about growing up in New York and, you know, growing up in the New \r\nYork School of Design, I became one of the wunderkinds of the New York \r\nSchool of Design, and how I started, you know, the second creative \r\nagency in the world and how that became the creative... it's all about \r\nthe '60's, etc." And I called it "George Be Careful" because when I was\r\n a kid, you know, I remember the hand of God coming into my bedroom, you\r\n know, it was Michelangelo’s hand, and it said, "George, be careful," \r\nand my mother, my mother told me, that George, all my life, my mother \r\ntold me "Be careful." My father, my sisters, my coaches in sports, you \r\nknow, my, when I went into the army they're telling me to be careful. \r\nAnd then when you go into advertising, that's when everybody tells you \r\nto be careful, you know? Anything, you know, anything unusual, anything\r\n over the top, anything edgy, you can't do that. So "George, Be \r\nCareful" was my anti-slogan. "And if you wanted to know anything about \r\nthe advertising of the '60's and the advertising world of the '60's, \r\nread that book. Goodbye." You know, and was saying fuck you... and he \r\ncalled me back a couple days later, I had told him to go get the book at\r\n Amazon because it was out of print. He called me up a couple days \r\nlater and he says, "Oh, Jesus, wow, we could have done the show on \r\nthat!" I said, "No, shit," you know, because that was the '60's, \r\nanybody who knows anything about the media world, anything, you know, \r\nanything about it, when you mention the '60's and you mention \r\nadvertising in the '60's, they don't think, now they think of "Mad Men,"\r\n of that dumb show. Before that they thought of it as a heroic age, of \r\nreally, of the age that I was talking about, about... leaving Doyle Dane\r\n Bernbach was a giant part of it obviously, and then with another three \r\nor four agencies after that kind of came out of my agency, that was the \r\nmost heroic age in media communications since the twelve apostles.
Recorded April 5, 2010.
The '60s "was the most heroic age in media communications since the twelve apostles," but the AMC show doesn't really get it.
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‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8a72dfe5b407b584cf867852c36211dc"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may finally be solved
Meteorologists propose a stunning new explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle.
One of life's great mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle might have finally found an explanation. This strange region, that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes.
FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
- SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) started as two separate bills that were both created with a singular goal: curb online sex trafficking. They were signed into law by former President Trump in 2018.
- The implementation of this law in America has left an international impact, as websites attempt to protect themselves from liability by closing down the sections of their sites that sex workers use to arrange safe meetings with clientele.
- While supporters of this bill have framed FOSTA-SESTA as a vital tool that could prevent sex trafficking and allow sex trafficking survivors to sue those websites for facilitating their victimization, many other people are strictly against the bill and hope it will be reversed.
What is FOSTA-SESTA?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="723125b44601d565a7c671c7523b6452"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WBaqDjPCH8k?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) and FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) were signed into law by former President Trump in 2018. There was some argument that this law may be unconstitutional as it could potentially violate the <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/" target="_blank">first amendment</a>. A criminal defense lawyer explains this law in-depth in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoWx2hYg5uo&t=38s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this video</a>. </p><p><strong>What did FOSTA-SESTA aim to accomplish?</strong></p><p>The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims. FOSTA-SESTA started as two separate bills that were both created with a singular goal: curb online sex trafficking. Targeting websites like Backpage and Craigslist, where sex workers would often arrange meetings with their clientele, FOSTA-SESTA aimed to stop the illegal sex-trafficking activity being conducted online. While the aim of FOSTA-SESTA was to keep people safer, these laws have garnered international speculation and have become quite controversial. </p><p><a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180321006214/en/National-Anti-Trafficking-Coalition-Celebrates-Survivors-Senate-Passes" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to BusinessWire</a>, many people are in support of this bill, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and World Without Exploitation (WorldWE). </p><p>"With the growth of the Internet, human trafficking that once happened mainly on street corners has largely shifted online. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 73 percent of the 10,000 child sex trafficking reports it receives from the public each year involve ads on the website Backpage.com."</p><p>As soon as this bill was <a href="https://www.pivotlegal.org/sesta_fosta_censoring_sex_workers_from_websites_sets_a_dangerous_precedent" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">signed into law</a>, websites where sex workers often vetted and arranged meetings with their clients could now be held liable for the actions of the millions of people that used their sites. This meant websites could be prosecuted if they engaged in "the promotion or facilitation of prostitution" or "facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims." </p><p><strong>The bill's effects were felt around the world — from Canadians being unhappy with the impact of this American bill to U.K. politicians considering the implementation of similar laws in the future.</strong> </p><p>Heather Jarvis, the program coordinator of the Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP), which supports sex workers in the St. John's area, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/heather-jarvis-website-shutdown-1.4667018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">explained to CBC in an interview</a> that the American bill is impacting everyone, everywhere: "When laws impact the internet — the internet is often borderless — it often expands across different countries. So although these are laws in the United States, what we've seen is they've been shutting down websites in Canada and other countries as well."</p><p>Jarvis suggests in her interview that instead of doing what they aimed to do with the bill and improving the safety of victims of sex trafficking or sexual exploitation, the website shutdowns are actually making sex workers less safe. </p><p>While <a href="https://gizmodo.com/the-uk-wants-its-own-version-of-fosta-sesta-that-could-1827420794" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one U.K. publication</a> refers to FOSTA-SESTA as "well-intentioned but ultimately deeply-flawed laws," it also mentions that politicians in the United Kingdom are hoping to pursue similar laws in the near future. </p>Has FOSTA-SESTA done more harm than good?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTUxMzY5Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2ODUyNDc4OX0.dSEEzcflJJUTnUCFmuwmPAIA0f754eW7rN8x6L7fcCc/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=-68%2C595%2C-68%2C595&height=700" id="69d99" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="734759fa254b5a33777536e0b4d7b511" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="sex worker looking online for a job" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Is this really going to help, or is this bill simply pushing sex work and sex-related content further into the dark?
Credit: Евгений Вершинин on Adobe Stock
<p>While <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180321006214/en/National-Anti-Trafficking-Coalition-Celebrates-Survivors-Senate-Passes" target="_blank">supporters of this bill</a> have framed FOSTA-SESTA as a vital tool that could prevent sex trafficking and allow sex trafficking survivors to sue those websites for facilitating their victimization, many other people are strictly against the bill and hope it will be reversed.</p><p><strong>One of the biggest problems many people have with this bill is that it forces sex workers into an even more dangerous situation, which is quite the opposite of what the bill had intended to do.</strong> </p><p>According to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-anti-trafficking-activists-cheer-but-sex-workers-bemoan-shutdown-of/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Globe and Mail</a>, there has been an upswing in pimps sending sex workers messages that promise work - which puts sex workers on the losing end of a skewed power-dynamic, when before they could attempt to safely arrange their own meetings online. </p><p><strong>How dangerous was online sex work before FOSTA-SESTA? </strong></p><p><a href="https://www.beyond-the-gaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BtGbriefingsummaryoverview.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The University of Leicester Department of Criminology</a> conducted an online survey that focused on the relative safety of internet-based sex work compared with outdoor sex work. According to the results, 91.6 percent of participants had not experienced a burglary in the past 5 years, 84.4 percent had not experienced physical assault in the same period, and only 5 percent had experienced physical assault in the last 12 months. </p><p><a href="https://www.pivotlegal.org/sesta_fosta_censoring_sex_workers_from_websites_sets_a_dangerous_precedent" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PivotLegal</a> expresses concerns about this: "It is resoundingly clear, both from personal testimony and data, that attacking online sex work is an assault on the health and safety of people in the real world. In a darkly ironic twist, SESTA/FOSTA, legislation aimed at protecting victims of and preventing human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, will do the exact opposite."</p><p><strong>Websites are also being hypervigilant (and censoring more content than needed) because they can't possibly police every single user's activity on their platform.</strong> </p><p>Passing this bill meant any website (not just the ones that are commonly used by sex traffickers) could be held liable for their user's posts. Naturally, this saw a general "tightening of the belt" when it came to what was allowed on various platforms. In late 2018, shortly after the FOSTA-SESTA bill was passed, companies like Facebook slowly began to alter their terms and conditions to protect themselves. </p><p>Facebook notably added sections that express prohibited certain sexual content and messages:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Content that includes an implicit invitation for sexual intercourse, which can be described as naming a sexual act and other suggestive elements including (but not limited to):</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– vague suggestive statements such as: 'looking forward to an enjoyable evening'</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– sexual use of language […]</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– content (self-made, digital or existing) that possibly portrays explicit sexual acts or a suggestively positioned person/suggestively positioned persons."<br><br> </em></p><p>Additionally, sections like this were also added, prohibiting things that could allude to sexual activity: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Content in which other acts committed by adults are requested or offered, such as:</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– commercial pornography</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>– partners that share fetishes or sexual interests"</em></p><p>Facebook wasn't the only website to crack down on their policies — the Craigslist classifieds section being removed and Reddit banned quite a large number of sex-worker related subreddits. </p><p><strong>Is FOSTA-SESTA really helpful?</strong> </p><p>This is the question many people are facing with the FOSTA-SESTA acts being passed just a few years ago. Is this really going to help, or is this bill simply pushing sex work and sex-related content further into the dark? Opinions seem to be split down the middle on this — what do you think?</p>