Eat Not the Ortolans in Strife Lest Ye Remain Ill-tempered

Good Ideas Just Come to Me

Ortolans Bunting: Emberiza hortulana

My admirers often ask me how I come up with so many winning ideas, to which the only answer I have is, They just come to me. I'll give you an example.

While chewing the fat with some friends here in Savoonga, it occurred to me that blubber is the ultimate fast food; loaded with fat and it fries in its own juices, so to speak. What a brilliant idea for a new fast food chain, me thought (which is how my brain works). Just as quickly, the name flew into my head, Try It Out; Brilliance upon brilliance, if I do say so myself.

Alas, and much to my chagrin, not everyone has read Moby Dick or knows that what you do with whale blubber is to try it out, which any whaler can tell you is a really messy job! Worse still, "*Try It Out* is 1981 single by Montreal-based singer, Gino Soccio." This according to Wikipedia, but who in sardine Hell is Gino Soccio?

It's a humbling experience to shelve what seems like a brilliant idea because civilization isn't sufficiently advanced to understand it, but such is the life of an entrepreneur. Nonetheless, the seed of an idea was planted, and all that was needed was the right inspirational fertilizer to bring it forth into full bloom, if you receive my meaning, and that's exactly what happened.

Sometime later, while playing Letterpress with relatives (we're pretty much all related here in Savoonga), inspiration struck! I should explain that we're addicts, which means we've come to terms with the Letterpress dictionary, arbiter of word correctness. We accept the fact that Navvy, Drownding, Subdew, Woolcharts, Paxwax, Overfrank, and Fuckwit are acceptable, while fudgiest, pitbull, and motherfucker are not. It pays to try everything, even finchfry, which is not a word.

FICHFRY!? Wow, thought I, Finchfries just sounds delicious! I do a quick check: whois finchfry.com? Answer: finchfry.com is available, would you like to purchase it? You bet I would, and I do, because my idea has blossomed and I'm in marketer's heaven. I'm on a roll—bulkie roll, egg roll, it hardly matters, because ideas flow out like duck sauce.

Pistolets bruxellois, photographiés
dans une boulangerie bruxelloise

What's everyone's favorite fried finch? It's obvious, Ortolans en Brochette (skewered-grilled buntings eaten whole)! Drench with special sauce—garlicky aoli, spicy Habanero chili,  smokey Pimentón,  stuffed into a Pistolets bruxellois—it's toasted, and we have a hit before dipping a single endangered species in a vat of hot oil. LEDs are going off in my massive cranium like flash bulbs!

That's the inspirational part, but there were still a few implementational details to work out. For instance, it's illegal to hunt the wild ortolans bunting, on account of beak-spitting French gourmands eating the helpless critters to near extinction. No problem! In the U.S., no such ban exists, not even in Alaska. In fact, no such species of finch exists in the Western Hemisphere.

It didn't take long to find a suitable substitute. I know a knowledgeable group of worldly diners, and inquired of the, "What does ortolans taste like." "Like little juicy chickens," they all agreed. This was music to my taste buds. Baby chicks, dipped in batter, flash frozen, and quick fried—crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. We retain the ortolans-like crunch of tiny bones, and the idea that took flight earlier in my mind acquires legs. Why, it's practically running away from me.

We located a chick hatchery so large it can be seen from outer space. This is important, because we'll be expanding rapidly. It's not in the U.S., but there's always room for one shipping container full of frozen chicks on China's giant freighters. (Did I say China? I meant Liberia.) You can fit a shitload (also not a Letterpress word) of small birds in a single container and with room leftover for a drum or two of cottonseed oil.

In our test kitchens, opinion was nearly unanimous that our Fabulous Finch Fry tasted just like chicken! We just don't have the heart to tell our customers it really is chicken, which is why we have to say that it's BETTER than chicken.

That's pretty much the story of FinchFry's Famous Succulent Small Birds. You'll no doubt agree that it's nicely serendipitous, but as Louis Pasteur famously quipped, probably while enjoying a dish of ortolans, "Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés." Which is kind of like saying: In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared.

This episode puts me in mind of Malvolio's inspiring words from Act II, Scene V of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

And since I such a very lit'ry Walrus, I'll also share this poem about the ortolans that we intend to have framed and mounted in every one of our ultra-hygenic FinchFry restaurants:

Oh, better no doubt is a dinner of herbs,
When season'd by love, which no rancour disturbs
And sweeten'd by all that is sweetest in life
Than turbot, bisque, ortolans, eaten in strife!
But if, out of humour, and hungry, alone
A man should sit down to dinner, each one
Of the dishes of which the cook chooses to spoil
With a horrible mixture of garlic and oil,
The chances are ten against one, I must own,
He gets up as ill-tempered as when he sat down.
-Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part I, Canto II, Stanza 27.

Though we've shortened it to the following:
Eat not the ortolans in strife lest ye remain ill-tempered.

I remain your ever-faithful and doubly-tusked pinniped,
-Professor Walrus

iOS 7, The Redesign: Flatter, Cooler, Cleaner, Whiter, Antiseptic?

Tim Cook says it's the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone, which falls into the category of typical Apple Hyperbole. But iOS 7 really does LOOK different. We knew the old skewomorphic designs were washed up, but where did that new color scheme come from? It's as if Jony Ive has recreated the Apple Rainbow logo, but this time in transparent hues that look like you could lick them right off of a retina display.

The new UI features greater use of transparency, new typography, new layouts, fewer actual buttons, more gestures, and an edge-to-edge view for embedded graphics. My first impression is positive, but I can only judge by Apple's official postings. It makes the old UI seem out-dated, though I wouldn't have said so if iOS 7 hadn't made this apparent.

On the other hand, lots of Tweets expressing distaste, disgust, and absolute abhorrence for the new design. About the lowest blows I've seen are the comparisons to Windows Phone, which clearly aren't intended to compliment Microsoft. Obviously, much of good UI design is a matter of personal preference, and there is always a large contingent of those who don't like change. I'm all for it, but this brings us to the laws of change, which are absolute.

Professor Walrus's First Law of Change Resistance:
Change is hard. Big change is harder. Major change is impossible.

Professor Walrus's Corollary to His First Law of Change Resistance:
The impossible takes some getting used to.

My old friend, Dikran of Mesopotamia, wrote a book called Blow it Up, which is as Machiavelli's The Prince was for the Medici of Florence for the Walruses of Savoonga; especially as our ice floes melt due to global warming! (Always nice to see Apple board member, Al Gore, enthusiastically attending another WWDC.)

What will the newly-designed UI do to Developer's app designs? We'll have until the Fall to find out. Meanwhile, as one tweet pointed out, we are Apple's beta testers.

Why Developers Love Apple's WWDC? Hint: It's not the Unlimited Supply of Odwalla Juice.

You can feel the love, even without attending. Apple's WWDC sold out in 72 seconds, and the unfortunate many, rather than skip the trip to San Francisco entirely, have created #AltWWDC, a simultaneous and free developer conference down the street from the main event.

And the rest of us got to share the love, as well, because at nearly the last minute, Apple announced it would stream the WWDC keynote, live. How many sat enraptured (or angered), alone at home or in groups at work for the entire two-hours—watching on one screen, while actively tweeting on another? (This Walrus among them.)

Substance, Hype, & the Message for Developers

Apple knows how to excite the troops, and there was plenty to cheer about: new operating systems coming this Fall, both OS X Mavericks and [iOS 7](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/), hundreds of new features, APIs, and UI design changes, plus new hardware including Darth Vader's surprisingly shiny, black, and cylindrical Mac Pro. Apple's doesn't appear to be getting lazy from success.

We wouldn't be geeks if we didn't love the new gadgets. Wasn't the Anki Drive AI/robotic car-gaming demo great?! Yes, but it's just part of the entertainment, not the reason we love WWDC. Nor is Apple's powerful hype-engine, working at full throttle, what's packing the Moscone West center.

The Ghost of Steve Jobs Loves On

Formerly, the mere presence of Steve Jobs was enough to account for the excitement generated around the WWDC keynotes, every one a kind of love fest. But Steve wouldn't have been Steve if he'd left anything to chance. So now we cheer his surrogates: Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, Eddie Cue, Jony Ive (always on video), and CEO, Tim Cook, not someone who craves the spotlight, but he, too, has developed his own comfortably-familiar on-stage presence.

Cook is master of ceremonies, chief of introductions, and presenter of the boring parts. Steve would always go through the litany of Apple successes, first: this is how we got where we are today, followed by it wouldn't have been possible without you, our devoted developers.

But that's the point, isn't it? This is why we love WWDC, and now Tim Cook is curator of this most important message:

Apple's phenomenal success wouldn't have been possible without us!

Don't believe me? Here are Cook's chosen statistics for the past year. Read them and be proud (you can't help it):

• The App Store's 5th anniversary is next month.
• 50 billion apps downloaded, "that's a lot of zeros," says Cook.
• 900,000 apps in the app store, 375,000 for the iPad.
• 93% of all apps are downloaded each month.
• Apple has 575 million store accounts, most with credit cards and one-click buying. "More accounts with credit cards than any store on the Internet that we're aware of," says Cook.
• Apple has paid out $10 billion to developers, $5 billion in the last year. "Three-times more than all other platforms combined," says Cook.
• Cook showed a pie chart of App Download Revenue by Platform: 74% iOS, 20% Android, 6% all others

Cook's final slide showed these words:

"The App Store and iOS ecosystem give budding developers with great ideas the best chance for success." -Ron Conway, SV Angel.

It's this last quote that's the key, and Cook emphasized it by saying he particularly loved the ways Apple's App Store leveled the playing field for small developers so they could compete against big developers.

And that's why there were so many developers willing to pay big bucks to be in San Francisco for Apple's WorldWide Developer's Conference. It's the place to be. Wish I could have been there, too.

Un-cleaning a Brainwashed Mind

(Applesauce, by Pat Cunningham;
(Rockford Register Star)

Prefatory Note: I wrote this before the November election. I didn't publish it because I didn't want to offend our friends. They're not offended.

We had a young friend over. His parents, old friends, were delivering him and a tailer full of his worldly goods to Boston. A recent Master of Communication, he has finished his education and is beginning his professional life as a business analyst at a consulting firm on Boylston Street. It sounds very posh.

Our young friend is tall (6' 3"), fit (he ripped off 20 chin-ups, no sweat), handsomely blonde, and with all the confidence befitting such a picture of potential success. There's no evidence of the former delinquent behavior that landed the teenaged version of this boy in juvy. He was never violent, and as far as we know, his crimes were of the underaged-drinking and driving and smoking pot variety. But these were severe enough to get him thrown out of his public high school and placed in some sort of local rehabilitation program.

Amazingly, the program, for whatever reason, worked. Instead of a drop out, unemployable, substance abuser, our old friends have a son to be proud of, a son whose academic prowess needed time to find productive focus, a son whose path took distinctly unhappy turns. Yet the family persevered and all came out the stronger for it.

It's an impressive, if bland, story of turning one's life around, if it weren't for a nagging detail. Our young friend is a Republican! When asked ironically if he enjoyed watching the GOP convention, he replied, "Yes!" with a bit too much enthusiasm. His parents are much like us in finding the current incarnation of the Republican Party thoughtlessly callous and calculatingly dishonest. Their son, believes the lies, supports the calumny, and fails to understand that simple-minded slogans and overly-simplistic, short-sighted ideas are no match for the complexities of real-world governance.

There was a particular lack of compassion in the young man's parroted arguments, right down to his underlying belief in the rightness of "greed" as a necessary ingredient for successful capitalism. The weak die off, the strong survive! If you're hungry enough, there are plenty of good jobs, and if you don't like what you're doing, you should find another job. It became evident that these old slogans of past disastrous policies sounded sensible to the callow youth.

There were two particularly bothersome issues fueling the young man's opinions. First, the ever-linked corollaries of taxes being too high and government spending out of control. Second, the belief that it's better to help businesses make more money than it is to help individuals lead more fulfilling lives. Somehow, we should all be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps; it's the all-American, freemarket way. There is no excuse for failure, and those who fail have no one to blame but themselves!

The obvious irony in this cruel viewpoint was missed. This is a young man who fell afoul of the system, but rather than discarding him as worthless, our society, through government-run, tax-supported institutions, gave the wayward youth help to mend his ways and opportunities to make the most of his talents. It sounds a bit too Horatio Alger to be credible, but the fearless young man we saw going off to undertake unknown professional trials, wouldn't exist without many years of publically-funded support, including community college and state-run college and University.

Why is it so difficult to see the greater good provided to society in general, and to our young friend in particular, of paying a graduated income tax? Paying taxes in no way limits greed, though it certainly makes the greediest feel resentment toward governments and the neediest. I understand this, but I still don't understand why it's okay to condone greed by lying, by ignoring the economic facts, and by concocting insupportable theories of prosperity, that amount to nothing more than an empty closet full of Emperor's New Clothes.

Despite my two-hour lecture on the history of taxes, the middle class, the Social Contract, Judeo-Christian morals, and the Apple versus Samsung decision, it seems unlikely that our blinkered young friend has in any way changed his mind. My hope is that he will begin to consider the ideas he accepts so readily with some skepticism. An ability to examine unsupported opinion under the light of factual data might even prove professionally useful to the young analyst.

On the other hand, faith is a powerful force, and no quantity of data can convince the faithful of any fallacy, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. Demagogs count on their faithful following, and the current Tea Party incarnation of the Republicans is particularly guilty of demagoguery. It would seem laughably stupid and naive if it weren't so scary.

Our friends seemed pleased that I was haranguing their golden boy, and I felt their support for my points. Clearly, they had tried to do the same, and with many of the same arguments and much the same result. Katharine asked me if I held out any hope, as if we were speaking of a sailor missing at sea. I've never experienced a missionary moment, where a poor heathen puts down his totem and joins the one true faith, but I continue to argue, cajole, badger, and ridicule the hopelessly misguided. I like to think that there will be some longer-term positive effect. That somehow, our young friend has been nudged toward a more thoughtful and compassionate view of his fellow humans.

But what should I do about my former colleagues and various casual acquaintances who declare their support for Romney and the Republican platform of social injustice and democratic regression on Facebook? There's no longer a convenient thumbs-down icon or Dislike button for me to register my protest. Is it wrong to do nothing? I wonder what The Ethicist would say?

Why Do We Like Being Mislead?

"This 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur Raised $300,000 By Wearing Dad’s Wool Shirt For 100 Days"

Professor Walrus Wonders Why This Headline Is Successful, When It's Actually Inaccurate and Misleading >

It worked on me, this attention-grabbing headline. I read the story. Not a bad story, but not the story I was expecting, and this bothered me.

The headline has two equal thrusts: 24-year-old entrepreneur raises $300,000 on Kickstarter, which is impressive, but not special. Second, he publicizes the campaign by wearing his Dad's old, presumably smelly shirt for 100 days. Now that's a compelling! We love people who are willing to make fools of themselves, but I suspect we're the ones being made fools of.

I got the story from the Co.Exist Daily newsletter. The 15-word headline packs a lot of information, and I wear wool shirts and have a 24-year-old. As it turns out, the lede is basically correct, but intentionally misleading. What's wrong with it:

1. The headline accompanies a picture of a slim young man wearing a button-down, tattersall, wool shirt, presumably the one in question. However, it's not a picture of "this 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur, Mac Bishop;" it's a model.
2. Dad never wore "Dad's Wool Shirt." He manufactured it. Bishop's father is the 5th-generation owner of Pendleton Mills in OR, which controls "85% of the American wool button-down market" and is where the shirt is made.
3. Wool & Prince, Mac Bishop's Kickstarter-funded startup, exists, because the family turned down the idea. His father's shirt remains the heavyweight, durable, slightly scratchy, lumberjack standard. This is really the son's shirt, lighter weight, more-stylishly cut, much more appropriate for the Kickstarter crowd than the aging, woodsy set (of which this walrus admits to being a member).

If Bishop senior had decided to market his son's shirt, do you think he would have been written up in newspapers, profiled on NPR, and mentioned in Jay Leno's monologue? Not likely. 

But let's not take anything away from the ambitious, younger Mr. Bishop. As a crowd-funded entrepreneur, he seems to be doing everything right. With Wool & Prince, Bishop can rebrand his updated Pendleton shirt and hit just the right markets. It's no wonder he was able to attract so much positive attention and funding, and that's really what this story should be about—good product, great marketing, people want to wear his shirt and are willing to pay money for it.
What about the misleading blog headline? Take your pick:

• Scratchy Wool Shirt Finds Kickstarter Fountain-of-Youth On the Back of 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur (16 words)

• This 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur Raised $300,000 By Wearing Dad’s Wool Shirt For 100 Days (15 words)

• One Wool Shirt, 100-Day's Wear, Washed in Kickstarter, Comes Out Smelling Like $300,000 (14 words)

• There's Something About The Pendleton Men. Is it the Shirt Worn 100 days? (13 words)

• Worn 100 Days, the Shirt Makes the Entrepreneur and $300,000 on Kickstarter (12 words)

Postscriptum: It's not a bad article, and I like the slide show with captions at the top of the story. I'd edit it differently and it could be funnier if it were tighter, but I ended up liking the shirt. If it came in Walrus, I'd buy one. I've included the Newsletter teaser to the article, below.

This 24-Year-Old Entrepreneur Raised $300,000 By Wearing Dad’s Wool Shirt For 100 Days Mac Bishop’s Kickstarter for a miracle wool shirt that doesn’t need to be washed exploded across the Internet. But what you didn’t hear was that Bishop’s dad’s company is the country’s largest wool shirt manufacturer. And you can buy that miracle shirt today--no Kickstarter required.

Google's Happy Face

Yesterday's Official Google Blog explained the end for eight "features of services" in terms that brought to mind the doublespeak of George Orwell's, 1984! In fact, there are good reasons why Google should jettison some of its thousands of projects—"Open the pod bay doors, Hal." But before I fall into a black hole of dystopian revery, let's examine Google's statement, beginning with the introduction: 

A second spring of cleaning

We’re living in a new kind of computing environment. Everyone has a device, sometimes multiple devices. It’s been a long time since we have had this rate of change—it probably hasn’t happened since the birth of personal computing 40 years ago. To make the most of these opportunities, we need to focus—otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact. So today we’re announcing some more closures, bringing the total to 70 features or services closed since our spring cleaning began in 2011:

Skipping ahead to the end, the responsible person is listed thusly:

Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow

Am I the only one who finds this explanation ingenuous? The first three sentences are pure bloviation! How does one live in a "computing environment?" And where does Google get off claiming that we haven't seen this rate of change "since the birth of personal computing," which was really more like 35 years ago. 1984, the Orwellian year when Apple introduced the Macintosh, was only 29 years ago. You'd think Google, king of data, could supply a graph showing the rate of change in computing over the past 40 years. I'm guessing it's a fairly straight upward-pointing line, which as a graph of rate, would indicate exponential growth.

Next, SVP Hölzle, with no segue, we get the following, which I've converted into algebraic notation for your convenience:

"new kind of computing environment" = "these opportunities" = "we need to focus"

From which we draw the logical(?) conclusion:

"otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact"

Or more (or less) precisely:

If "new environment" then ("opportunity" and "need to focus") else ("spread thin" and "lack impact")

What's wrong with this logical statement, it appears to make semantic sense? Unfortunately, semantic sense doesn't necessarily yield good sense. For instance, this new kind of computing environment; what is it? Most simply, it's mobile—mobile devices, ubiquitous services, data access from anywhere. Even before the ubiquity of mobile devices, Google existed in the ubiquitous-services/data-access-from-anywhere universe—it's services are Web-based.

New for Google has more to do with the competitive, rather than computing, environment. As a mobile device and operating system provider, Google is in the thick of the most competitive, rapidly-changing market since… (choose whatever you like, because I can't think of a good comparison).

In addition to the changing competitive landscape is the changing landscape within Google, itself. I don't pretend to know what these changes really are, but we can't get some sense from this little example of software amputation couched in terms of positive growth. One of the most exciting aspects of Google has been its willingness to attack just about any problem. Inevitably, this has led to a huge number of projects of various degrees of quality, usefulness, and success. This is all the explanation they need for an everlasting string of spring cleanings!

Things change. This is neither surprising nor remarkable. Yesterday's clever hack becomes today's useless garbage—out with the old, in with the new. It doesn't take a Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow to tell us this obvious fact. But in this new kind of competitive environment, Google somehow feels the need to obfuscate the obvious and ordinary. Pity.

In conclusion, I give you Professor Walrus's 4 Black Holes of Marketing Doublespeak:

1. Bad news is an unmeasurable opportunity for…
2. Senior executives poccess unquestionable farsightedness into a past that never really existed.
3. Trust us. We're sorry we cut off your toe, but we promise to grow you a new one better than the first.
4. You agree to believe everything we've told you and then forget that we ever said these things.

NOOK Media LLC—The Ill-Begotten or Isogamy for the Rest of Us

Who wants to buy a bookstore? You remember what a bookstore is; a place you enter to purchase handheld content items, formerly known as "books!" Durable, reusable, occasionally beautiful objects existing for several centuries of human history. Fortunately, bookstores haven't quite reached dinosaur status, but the last and largest of the giant thunder lizards, Barnes & Noble, has been thrashing mightily in this new climate of digital reading and publishing.

And since none of the fleeter mammals on the ePublishing planet were interested in coming close to Tyrannosaurus Nookus, the choice seemed to be death in a bricks and mortar tar pit, or an ungodly union with some other mighty being. This latter window of hope has arrived in the form of Brontosaurus Microsoftus, and thus, full-blown from the heads of old gods, NOOK Media LLC is born.

Forevermore, let this creature be known as a Barnes & Noble subsidiary in a strategic partnership with Microsoft. For a paltry dowry of $300 million, Microsoft acquires a 17.6% genetic equity stake. No mention of visitation rights for the child stated in its birth announcement.

NOOK Media LLC begins life with the burden of its DNA in the form of Windows 8, to be launched on October 29th, just in time for Halloween. The spin:

• B&N Nook is a "leader in the emerging digital reading and digital education market," a provider of "world-class digital reading experiences." Does "world-class" refer to a multi-language reading experience? 

Even more impressively(?), "NOOK Media is a leader in developing the next generation of digital reading Windows 8 devices," How do you get to be a leader of anything on the day of your birth? And furthermore, there are as yet no Windows 8 devices, so I suppose we're speaking of the life of the unborn. Not a problem, I can accept that as the premise for a $300 million investment.

And Windows 8, where is it coming from? Its progenitor is the Windows Phone 7 Series, which replaced 9 generations of Windows Mobile Computing and quickly became Windows Phone 7 and then Windows Phone 7.5. The burning question, "Which version of Windows Phone do I have?", is the #1 How-to Basic at WindowsPhone.com. My answer, if you need to ask, better off slinking back into your cave until Spring arrives.

But so many people love their Windows phones. Our ever vigilant friends at Gartner report something between a 1% and 2% marketshare for WindowsPhone devices, and about three million sold over a 6-month period. For perspective, there were five million iPhone 5s sold in the first weekend they were available.

On the other hand, perhaps Apple's time has run out, and Google's, too. Obviously, the canny business minds at B&N and Microsoft have ample evidence of pent-up demand waiting to burst forth and purchase Windows Phone 8 devices. Maybe, but then what does this paragraph from Wikipedia's Windows Phone entry mean?

• The low market share of Windows Phone might be explained by a study by Bernstein Research that concluded that consumers don’t want Windows Phones. The research points out: "The lack of consumer interest for Windows-based phones has been very consistent in marketing surveys we have carried out across the globe over the last several years." and that "The situation of Windows in mobile phones is now very unlikely to revert."

I'm reminded of the movie, "Rosemary's Baby," which was actually a book by Ira Levin that you could buy in bookstores. The poor actor sells his first-born to the devil in return for the starring role in a Broadway play, and his wife, Mia Farrow, gives birth to a little devil. I think this is every mother's worst fear. "What if my child turns out to be a little devil?"

In the case of NOOK Media LLC, I don't think there's anything to worry about, because this is the offspring of two fathers—two male gametes uniting to form a single zygote. Not to worry, this sort of thing happens. Back to Wikipedia:

• Isogamy is the state of gametes from both sexes being the same size and shape, and given arbitrary designators for mating type. 

So there's hope, but what form this isogamous corporate being with arbitrary designators might assume is yet to be determined. If it becomes viral and threatens all of mankind, we'll be left with no alternative but to ask "will it blend?"

-Professor Walrus