Years of Poems and Spirits

Earlier I was looking for the spelling of Aegis on Google. Instead, I found this guy, JP Brown, who built a Lego “Aegis” system that can shoo away squirrels from his wife’s flower bed. There are more goodies on his site.

There is video of how his lego-botics work. E.g.

Totally fascinating!

Read a recent article on New York Times. The author wrote a scathing review of a recent truck commercial where GM invoke tragedies to sell its trucks. I found some of his remarks relevant to our studies.

Some quotes:

“The first time I saw it, I thought, holy mackerel, they are using negative images to generate positive emotions,”

“I don’t mind when they have a tent sale on President’s Day, but those guys have been dead for 200 years. I’m not sure I’m ready for a Rosa Parks sale-a-bration.”

“The message seems to be, ‘If you don’t buy our truck, we will go bankrupt,’” said Al Ries of Ries & Ries, a brand consultancy. “The kind of people who buy trucks are not going to buy them because a company is in trouble. People like to buy from winners.”