A little while ago, I got an interesting email message from Facebook:

To: Dan Soltzberg
Subject: Theresa Soltzberg said that you two are married...

Theresa said on Facebook that you two are married. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, married to Theresa.

To confirm this relationship request, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?home.php

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Theresa is, in fact, my wife. After briefly considering several possibilities for practical joking, I followed the link, and was presented with this grand choice:

With the price of gas skyrocketing, will we see this replacing the Vegas wedding as the quick solution to getting married?

Anyway, I confirmed, and just wanted to share my nuptial joy with all of you . . .

Manners poster, London, 2008

Different town, different ideas about public behavior. While I don’t want to smell anyone’s odors (fragrance, bodily, or foodie), the declaration that “smelly food” will be avoided was surprising to me. It’s a rather specific act that I hadn’t really thought about before.

We had a good conversation about this poster today at the BBC. I talked about social norms, and how one tactic to changing behavior is to help more people do something, so that those who choose not to do it are clearly on the outside. They shared the history of these posters, where the specific things being avoided by the characters are not new, but instead of the previous version where a blue-text-on-white authoritative voice warned that smelly food and other actions were prohibited, this has shifted to a more inclusive collective voice – “together.”

It’s also a story about following the rules (for the greater good) rather than not following the rules.

Update: another poster from the campaign here.

See more of my London and Sheffield pictures here.

• kev/null on How Improv Teaches You to Build a Better Product
  Nicely done. Kevin takes leads with “making a thing” quite strongly and the result complements what I’ve written about improv and ethnography.

• Yorkshire Post: University to host international conference
  Speakers include Steve Portigal, founder of San Francisco company Portigal Consulting; Alan Blackwell, Cambridge University’s expert in interdisciplinary design and Christoph Zellweger, an internationally-acclaimed Swiss jewellery designer

Miami Beach construction, June 2008

Visitors to Miami Beach encounter hotels (and other architecture) that is old and new Art Deco, as well as various modernist and post-modernist successors (see examples here). This construction site with its orange and stainless look fit nicely with the finished aesthetic seen in the area (note the similarly colored building in the left corner).

Previously:

• Body Image Norms: Miami
• Rum Culture

More Miami photos here.

• Gift giving in Israel
  A rentable ATM-like device lets wedding guests pay for their (traditionally cash) gifts by swiping a credit card.

Miami International Airport, June 2008

Even growing up I remember hearing that as soon as you get off the plane in Las Vegas you encounter slot machines, right in the airport. Here’s a parallel example: Bacardi has a booth selling Mojitos in the Miami aiport!

Previously: Body Image Norms: Miami

More Miami photos here.

• Thsrs, The Shorter Thesaurus (although it gave me “soul” for “longer”)
  Services like Twitter and delicious limit the number of characters per message. Thsrs helps you compose better messages. Enter a longer word from your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words.

• Southern India residents earn $1/month using public urinals
  To promote hygiene in rural areas in Musiri, authorities have succeeded in keeping street corners clean. Urine was also being collected and tested for its efficacy as a crop fertilizer.
• Starbucks Schadenfreude
  A mostly-media-manufactured story about anti-Starbucks people pleased about poor financial news at the Seattle-based purveyor of caffeine.

Miami Beach, June 2008

Mannequins reflect a regionally-specific body image norm. An unscientific observation of locals suggested that this norm is at least partly accurate.

Previously: body self-image around the world

See more of my Miami pics here.