Trying to Be Hip and Edgy, Ads Become Offensive
by Stuart Elliott and Tanzina Vega
New York Times
May 10, 2013

Some of the biggest names in marketing, including Ford Motor, General Motors, Hyundai Motor, Reebok and PepsiCo, have been forced recently to apologize to consumers who mounted loud public outcries against ads that hinged on subjects like race, rape and suicide.

PepsiCo found itself meeting this week with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the family of Emmet Till — the teenager whose death in Mississippi in 1955 helped energize the civil rights movement — to try to quell multiple controversies involving its Mountain Dew brand.

“It’s like the Wild West,” said Paul Malmstrom, a founding partner of the New York office of the Mother ad agency.

Advertising experts offer a long list of reasons for the increasing frequency of such incidents, but the primary reason they keep happening, they say, is the growing anxiety on Madison Avenue to create ads that will be noticed and break through the clutter. (more…)

Dirty medicine
By Katherine Eban
Fortune
May 15, 2013

The epic inside story of long-term criminal fraud at Ranbaxy, the Indian drug company that makes generic Lipitor for millions of Americans.

1. The assignment

On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby’s tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance.

His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy’s head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him.

Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India’s largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company.

When he stepped into Kumar’s office that morning, Thakur was surprised by his boss’ appearance. He looked weary and uneasy, his eyes puffy and dark. He had returned the previous day from South Africa, where he had met with government regulators. It was clear that the meeting had not gone well.
The two men strolled into the hall to order tea from white-uniformed waiters. As they returned, Kumar said, “We are in big trouble,” and motioned for Thakur to be quiet. Back in his office, Kumar handed him a letter from the World Health Organization. It summarized the results of an inspection that WHO had done at Vimta Laboratories, an Indian company that Ranbaxy hired to administer clinical tests of its AIDS medicine. The inspection had focused on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that Ranbaxy was selling to the South African government to save the lives of its AIDS-ravaged population. (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus:

The Mind of a Con Man
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
New York Times
April 26, 2013

One summer night in 2011, a tall, 40-something professor named Diederik Stapel stepped out of his elegant brick house in the Dutch city of Tilburg to visit a friend around the corner. It was close to midnight, but his colleague Marcel Zeelenberg had called and texted Stapel that evening to say that he wanted to see him about an urgent matter. The two had known each other since the early ’90s, when they were Ph.D. students at the University of Amsterdam; now both were psychologists at Tilburg University. In 2010, Stapel became dean of the university’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Zeelenberg head of the social psychology department. Stapel and his wife, Marcelle, had supported Zeelenberg through a difficult divorce a few years earlier. As he approached Zeelenberg’s door, Stapel wondered if his colleague was having problems with his new girlfriend.

Zeelenberg, a stocky man with a shaved head, led Stapel into his living room. “What’s up?” Stapel asked, settling onto a couch. Two graduate students had made an accusation, Zeelenberg explained. His eyes began to fill with tears. “They suspect you have been committing research fraud.” (more…)

Phony Bishop: German Imposter Sneaks into Vatican
Spiegel Online
March 4, 2013

German church officials on Tuesday distanced themselves from the man who infiltrated a meeting of cardinals at the Vatican by masquerading as a bishop, saying he can’t be trusted. This isn’t the first time the self-proclaimed bishop and “Jesus yoga” proponent has caused a kerfuffle.

He called himself “Basilius” and showed up wearing a cassock that was too short, a strange-looking chain with a crucifix and a purple shawl instead of the traditional sash. The man who managed to slip into the Vatican on Monday and mingle with cardinals was not a bishop as he claimed. He was German Ralph Napierski, who is known among German clerics as something of a troublemaker.

The fake bishop snuck into the Vatican along with dozens of cardinals who were there making preparations to elect a new pope later this month, according to Italian news agency ANSA. Though he managed to go unnoticed for a time, even posing for a photo with Cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana, he was “eventually identified and kicked out to the visible amusement of journalists nearby,” ANSA reported. (more…)

SILENCED Kickstarter campaign: Only 6 days to go and the producers are within $2,000 of their goal to raise funding for post-production.

Telling the truth becomes a dangerous act when four federal whistleblowers reveal the darkest corners of America’s war on terror.

SILENCED is new documentary now in production from Academy Award nominated director James Spione.

Trailer:

The War on Whistleblowers

SILENCED follows a group of high-profile truthtellers who dared to question official national security policy in post 9-11 America, and have endured harsh consequences. (more…)

Media literacy alert! This article about covert advertising does exactly what it talks about. It masquerades as content while advertising products…

When advertising becomes content, who wins — advertisers or publishers, or both?
by Mathew Ingram
PaidContent.org
March 2, 2013

One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert?

Andrew Sullivan, the former Daily Beast writer who recently launched his own standalone publishing venture, has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t like advertising, which is why his site is supported entirely by reader subscriptions. And he also made it clear in a recent series of posts that he doesn’t like the growing trend of sites like BuzzFeed using what they call “sponsored content” as a replacement for traditional advertising — something he suggested was ethically questionable for media entities of all kinds.

Like it or not, however, this phenomenon is becoming more and more commonplace — and not just at new-media ventures like BuzzFeed but also at traditional publishers like The Atlantic. Is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? This is a question we are going to discussing at length at paidContent Live in New York on April 17, including a panel entitled “The future of native advertising: Blurring ads and content.”

If it’s useful, does it matter if it’s sponsored? (more…)

…isn’t the pot calling the kettle black?

Original: By The Big Questions. You can watch the complete episode here: Part 1, Part 2.

via Upworthy.com

From Larry C.:

Bigfoot Is Real, And We Have DNA To Prove It: Researchers
by Lee Rannals
RedOrbit.com
February 14, 2013

We thought the first evidence would emerge from some backyard video footage, or a smartphone photo, but the real proof of the existence of Bigfoot actually lies in the DNA.

A team of scientists has published the results of a five-year study of DNA samples from Sasquatch in the journal DeNovo Journal of Science.

Researchers claim they have sequenced three whole Bigfoot nuclear genomes, helping to prove that the legendary creature exists in North America, and is a human relative that arose 13,000 years ago.

The scientists hypothesize that the Bigfoot creature is a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens, with a novel primate species, giving it the species name Homo sapiens cognatus. (more…)

Notre Dame Football Star Manti Te’o Says Dead Girlfriend Was Hoax
ABC World News
by Colleen Curry and Dan Harris
January 16, 2013

The star of Notre Dame’s championship football team said the widely-reported death of his girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te’o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

He said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te’o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te’o at Notre Dame and in the media.

“While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, ‘I love you,’” Te’o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death. (more…)

EFF creates the “Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents”
by Cory Doctorow
BoingBoing.net
December 20, 2012

Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban and Minecraft creator Markus Persson have donated $500,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to endow the “Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents,” which will be occupied by an attorney tasked with hunting down and destroying crappy patents that have been recklessly granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office to unscrupulous “inventors” who claim to have invented things that were obvious and/or already extant; and to pay for activists to fight for substantive patent reform:

Read more here.

Almost 1,000 doomsday cult members arrested in China
BBC News China
December 20, 2012

The BBC’s Damian Grammaticas says police are likely to detain suspected cult members for several days

Police in China have carried out further arrests of members of a doomsday cult for spreading rumours about the imminent end of the world, state media say.

Almost 1,000 members of Christian group Almighty God have now been detained.

Read more here

image: Huffington Post

From Larry:

Ukraine Crushed in $1.1bn Fake Gas Deal
by Jen Alic
oilprice.com
29 November 2012

Certainly the folks at Gazprom are having a good snicker, reveling in the mockery that has been made of what should have been a landmark Ukraine-Spain gas deal that would have loosened Russia’s gas grip on Kiev.

Everyone wondered how Russia would respond to Ukraine’s attempt at gas independence. But this is what happens when you mess with Gazprom.

It was a horrible moment for Ukraine on Monday—all the more horrible because the whole event was televised—when the historical $1.1 billion deal it was about to sign with Spain’s Gas Natural Fenosa turned out to be fake. (more…)

From Linda: Fact or fiction? You decide…

This audio clip is from Y94 Playhouse Fargo, ND radio station, courtesy of tutufunny4u:

Here’s Part #2, The Rest of the Story, where Donna professes to be surprised by all the hub-bub.

From Linda:

Vampire Threat Terrorizes Serbian Village
by Dragana Jovanovic, Belgrade
ABCnews.go.com
November 29, 2012

For the people in a tiny Serbian village there is nothing sexy or romantic about a vampire. In fact, they are terrified that one of the most feared vampires of the area has been roused back to life.

Rather than ‘Twilight’s’ Edward, the people of Zorazje fear that Sava Savanovic is lurking in their forested mountains of western Serbia.

They believe that he is on the move because the home he occupied for so long, a former water mill, recently collapsed. Savanovic is believed to be looking for a new home.

“People are very worried. Everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people,” Miodrag Vujetic, local municipal assembly member, told ABC News. “We are all frightened.”

Vujetic said villagers “are all taking precautions by having holy crosses and icons placed above the entrance to the house, rubbing our hands with garlic, and having a hawthorn stake or thorn.”

“I understand that people who live elsewhere in Serbia are laughing at our fears, but here most people have no doubt that vampires exist,” he says. (more…)

From Erin:

Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes
by Alexis Madrigal
The Atlantic
October 29 2012

With Hurricane Sandy approaching the New York metro area, the nation’s eyes are turning to its largest city. Photos of storms and flooding are popping up all over Twitter, and while many are real, some of them — especially the really eye-popping ones — are fake.

This post, which will be updated over the next couple of days, is an effort to sort the real from the unreal. It’s a photograph verification service, you might say, or a pictorial investigation bureau. If you see a picture that looks fishy, send it to me at alexis.madrigal[at]gmail.com. If you like this sort of thing, you should also visit istwitterwrong.tumblr.com, which is just cataloging the fakes.

The fakes come in three varieties: 1) Real photos that were taken long ago, but that pranksters reintroduce as images of Sandy, 2) Photoshopped images that are straight up fake, and 3) The combination of the first two: old, Photoshopped pictures being trotted out again.

*****

This image of NYC — and of, yes, a double rainbow — made the rounds on social media this morning. (It was helped along by a Facebook post from none other than George Takei.)

(more…)