Framing
I love spending time looking at art in museums or galleries. It's like a big buffet and you can consume more of what you like, and sample some of the other offerings. And just like a good meal, I am satiated, tired, and happy at the end of the indulgence. Mentally and emotionally, that is. I was with a friend recently at the DeYoung museum who commented on the excessive ornateness of the frames on the art, which distracted and detracted from the beauty of the painting itself. And it struck me, literally and figuratively, how much framing matters. We exhort ourselves to never judge people by their looks, or a book by it's cover, but at the end of the day, we succumb to framing. Advertisers have been exploiting our shallow judgment heuristics for years. So, when given a choice to frame something like a great work of art in good light, why do we choose bad framing? One can understand the opposite, where framing can be used to improve a poor impression, but adverse framing is harde...