I decided to look at the design of the game itself for clues. Spoiler: they weren’t hard to find.

A Little Context: In-App Purchase Done Right

Here’s the excellent game, geoDefense Swarm. It comes with many levels and is great to play from the moment it’s installed. But players can also buy more levels within the game itself. Here’s what that looks like.

First, one sees the normal menu for choosing a level to play:

Tap “Hard Levels”, and then scroll all the way to end (i.e. you’ve played all of them as I have), and you’ll see geoStore / Get More Levels:

Tap that and finally, we’re shown the geoStore with a “Level Pack” product description, and the very soberly displayed cost, $0.99:

Smurfs’ Village In-App Purchase Experience

So is Smurfs’ Village pretty similar? Did these kids go clearly out of control, finding their way to the in-app store to purchase more items? I decided to take one for the team and install the app. I can now say that the answers to these questions are NO and NO.

Here’s a pretty typical screen in Smurfs’ Village. I’m “purchasing” a house to build on a piece of land. The link into the real-dollars shop is the graphic on the bottom right:

Tap that, and you’ll see a nearly identical screen — for purchasing (no air-quotes this time) Smurfberries:

At this point, one may wonder why any children’s game should have something for sale for $4.99, let alone $99.99. Why would we even want Smurfberries? It doesn’t take long to find out. Leaving the shop, we tap our garden to see when the blueberries will be ready:

Intermixed with the info that 3 seconds are left, are instructions for using Smurfberries to force the blueberries to appear instantly. The cynical among us will see this as a thinly veiled ad, taking up 1/3 of the message display. But perhaps this is an isolated case? Unfortunately, NO. Over and over again, the game stops us and tries to sell Smurfberries:

The pattern becomes obvious: every step along the way, Smurfberries “help” our Smurfs work faster and better. (Scary…) Smurfberry “use” is woven into the fabric of the game in a variety of places:

Summary

This isn’t a game; it’s a money-extraction tool marketed to children ages 4 and up.

One of the "Americans {seeking} respite from the Nation's economic troubles," 1939

The New York Times has an interesting article which inadvertently highlights cultural prejudice.

“Roberts Seeks More Judicial Con­firmations” tells the story of the Chief Justice’s appeal to the other branches of government to solve “the persistent problem of judicial vacancies.” No problem with that.

Roberts’ Year-End Report begins, however, with a wistful vignette of depression-era America. I’m always incredulous when I see a writer reminisce about an era when the U.S. was a de facto police state which denied basic human rights to many Americans. I therefore present:

The Chief Justice’s Year-End Report, par. 1, corrected

In older Supreme Court dissenting opinions, it’s common to read “I respectfully dissent”, or “with respect, I dissent.” But what about today’s justices? Some seem to relish writing dissents which are indistinguishable from Internet flames. Here’s a quick little bit of research:

How often do the current and retired Supreme Court justices use the above phrases in their dissents?

Methods

LexisNexis on 11/11/2010. Two searches for each justice, e.g.:
DISSENTBY(thomas)
DISSENTBY(thomas) and DISSENT(respect! w/s dissent)

This analysis is fairly superficial; something I did while procrastinating on my actual work. It should, though, provide a little food for thought.

The first comment reads, “Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!”  An odd but friendly comment without a link to any website; seems benign.  But now that two have appeared, the pattern is clear:  They are (1) friendly posts that (2) praise the blog (3) using odd English phrasing, (4) without saying anything specific about the content and (5) are sent from the same sub-network.  Google shows 25,000 similar posts on other sites.

I’m not sure what the spammer is after, but my guess is: First become an “approved commenter” on the target sites, then return later to post actual spam.

This is how you use the Belladonna . . . you hold it upside down . . . then you twist . . . then you pop it in your mouth! . . . It tastes just like sugar.

Update:  Its creator took Kids & Homeopathy off-line in reaction to this blog post.  However, I had been careful to save a copy. Here are a couple of stills, edited to protect the child’s privacy:

“...you hold it upside down...”

“...then you pop it in your mouth!”

How many ethical issues does this raise?  In my opinion, the video steps over the line by…

1. Marketing medicine to children,
2. Using the pills’ similarity to candy to sell them,
3. Blurring the distinction between medicine and candy,
4. Promoting a culture of pill-popping and keeping a medicine cabinet full of “remedies” at all times to children,
5. Teaching children how to circumvent a child-safety device,
6. Teaching children to self-diagnose instead of turning to a parent or guardian,
7. Blurring the meaning of dangerous poisons such as Belladonna,
8. Focussing on the symptoms instead of the underlying problems:  Why does she have headaches frequently enough that she knows what “medication” she prefers for them?  Is there some underlying problem that’s going ignored while she self-diagnoses and self-medicates?
9. Marketing a disproven therapy (homeopathy) to children,
10. Harming this particular child through the inculcation of these values.

Did I miss anything?

Update 2

1. The video’s creator responds.
2. Another problem with the video’s concept occurred to me:  As can be seen in the screenshot above, the girl takes medication on camera even though she’s not experiencing any health problems.  This is both questionable (further teaching that taking meds is a lighthearted & fun activity), and odd (evidence that homeopathic medications maybe really aren’t “real”.)

But I recently stumbled onto his blog post, Pit Bulls….  It’s short; just two paragraphs long.  The first is decent; he describes how, even though a pit bull attack caused no serious physical harm,

. . . the attack could have been much more serious. If everyone hadn’t run to the defense of the boy so quickly, and if the boy’s mother hadn’t done exactly the right thing (lying down, with her body covering the boy) the boy could easily have been badly injured. The attack was horrifying, even if no one was seriously hurt . . .

But then the concluding paragraph is wrong on its face:

. . . part of the rhetorical arsenal of those who get hysterical about Pit Bulls is to pretend that every dog bite is a medical catastrophe. . . . [But] more people are admitted every year for non-dog bites than dog-bites—which is to say that when you see a Pit Bull, you should worry as much about being bitten by the person holding the leash than the dog on the other end.

[Emphasis mine]  I mean, really? He really believes (and thinks he’s proved) that people, or at least owners of pit bulls, are more likely to bite you than their dogs are?  My friend Morgan pointed out that this goes against our own experience:  We could each remember numerous times we’ve been bitten by dogs, but we’ve never been bitten by a person.

Where Gladwell goes wrong

His logic violates conditional probability which is based on this central idea:  It can be the case that if A happens, B occurs too.  Yet this does not imply the reverse: That if B happens, then A will occur.

Here, Gladwell’s premise is, when people land in the hospital due to a bite (A), it’s probably due to a non-dog animal (B).  He then draws the erroneous reverse conclusion:  When encountering a human and a dog (A), it’s more probable that the human, rather than the dog, will bite you, sending you to the hospital (B).

And another thing

I have to also say that his “those who get hysterical about Pit Bulls” characterization is B.S.  In my experience, pro-Pit Bull people (they exist) and Anti-BSL advocates often get hysterical.   However, I haven’t seen this in advocates for BSL.

The headline reads, “Jews gather to bless the sun”. Pictured are Shmuel, Shimey, and Menachem among others engaged in prayer.  Really.  The text doesn’t mention it, but they are Lubavitchers (a sub-sect of the small Hassidic sect).  Instead, the men (no women, of course, these are Hasidim) are twice simply referred to as “Jews”.  I have nothing against the Hasidic.  But, representative of Jews in Portland?  Or of Jews anywhere outside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn?  Not.

But if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And so to be helpful, I thought I’d offer this photo to the big O to run on Sunday:

Christians Gather to Prepare for Easter

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on these. . . . On what grounds could Obama not answer / refuse to answer? Why wouldn’t he answer just to shut this guy down? . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6_k3NtXZs This video has close to 2.5 million hits.

I did some “due diligence”, and am convinced that the video contains many untruths and arguments made in bad faith.  So many, that I didn’t have time to chase down each statement that sounded questionable.  I like to apply the science-investigation ethic  — “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.  The video fails this test. Here’s what I found:

(1) Intro screen by the film-maker: “I invented the Internet”
This is unfortunately a common falsehood.  Al Gore didn’t say this [4], and what he did say is correct.  I have personal knowledge here: I’ve been involved with the Internet as a user and software/network engineer since 1986; when it was still the “Arpanet”. I’m additionally confused as to why this is the title for this video. I don’t understand the connection to Obama; possibly this is simply a (presumed easy) swipe at another famous liberal politician. Indicates a lack of seriousness.

(2) Berg: “Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen”
Berg provides no support for this statement.  (In law school, we’d call that “conclusory”.) It begs the question, as it forms the basis for more statements.  I find this fairly shameless, and it appears to be disingenuous: Berg seems to want to come off as a concerned citizen. Instead, this is evidence that he is an ideologue — that he has an axe to grind.

(3) Berg: “FactCheck.org . . . supposedly checks out documents to make sure they’re correct.”
A slanted characterization of factcheck.org with no supporting details or evidence.  He then goes on immediately to another topic.  This is propaganda [5] intended to create doubt.  (And further, what does it mean, “to make sure they’re correct“?  He probably means “authentic“; this is typical of his imprecise language throughout.)

(4) Berg: “[in re Annenberg] There’s a little conflict of interest there, I believe.”
Same as previous.  This is tossed out, and then not followed up.  Is he claiming that Factcheck is wrong?  If so, where?  Did they fabricate?  If so, where?  He doesn’t say.  This is propaganda. [5]

(5) Berg: “John McCain . . . immediately released his birth certificate . . . he immediately released his medical records . . . . He said, ‘Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.’ and he did, right away.”
This seems to be false:  I could find no evidence of this.  What’s more, I found plenty of evidence to the contrary.  It seems to have taken 4 months for his certificate to become public, and it wasn’t through McCain’s organization:

Feb. 21, 2008: Earliest mention I could find of McCain’s citizenship question. [1]

May 2, 2008: Dept. of Homeland Security refuses to hand over copy of McCain’s birth certificate in response to a subpoena, claiming improper service. [2]

June 20, 2008: The Dallas News runs picture of birth certificate, courtesy of a source, “Don Lamb in Panama.” [3]

(6) Berg: “Obama . . . has refused to release any records . . .”
Untrue on its face.  The video itself talks about the records Obama has released.

[1] http://newsbusters.org/forums/latest-news/q-panamanian-born-john-mccain-natural-born-citizen-united-states-19392
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050103224_pf.html
[3] http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/06/mccains-citizen.html
[4] http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
[5] “Propaganda is a form of communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

LexisNexis

+1 Ability to request documents in single-column. I find this much more legible for fast reading and annotation.

+1 Ability to request documents with search terms highlighted. A single-column, keyword-highlighted pdf is awesome for fast reading and research.

+1 The online legal dictionary is accessible from the front page, and gives results with one click.

-1 Doesn’t work with Firefox (latest version, Mac.) So I use Safari, which seems to do fine.

+1 The research log (“history”) is much easier to use than Westlaw’s (“research trail”). One example: I did research in both systems an hour ago. I then logged out of both. Now I’m back online, and I log into both systems. I wanted to see the most recent items I had pulled up. In Westlaw, this required four mouse clicks and screens to wait for. In LexisNexis, this required one.

Westlaw

-1 Annoying single-threaded retrieval and notification system. Click a button too soon, and you get the dialog window, “Please wait while Westlaw completes the current task [Ok]”

-1 Westlaw has Black’s Law Dictionary online. This would be a huge plus. Except that the user interface renders it unusable. Searching for a single term can require several forwards and backwards clicks and scrolling through multiple pages searching in vain for a correct sub-entry.

+1 Can enter citations without spaces or punctuation. This is pretty convenient. LexisNexis’s input is a bit pickier.