Pittsburgh, Infantilized

I wasn't the only person who reacted with horror to Cindy Ravenstahl's creepy defense of her son, the mayor, in the Post-Gazette on Friday. I didn't do a grand tour, but Reg Henry - despite working for the One of America's Great Newspapers that published the piece - hit the essential points. Dan Acklin's "vote for my nephew" defense of challenger Kevin Acklin was no better.

If you take the op-eds seriously, then the only plausible interpretation is that the candidates, their families, and the Post-Gazette editorial page are conspiring to infantilize Pittsburgh. I looked up "infantilize Pittsburgh" to see if anyone had used that phrase before, and it turns out that the Post-Gazette itself put that headline on a piece by Mark DeSantis (remember him?) that criticized a proposal by the City of Pittsburgh to limit internet use by city employees. So at least the paper is aware of what's going on.

The only other plausible explanation is that the Ravenstahl and Acklin pieces are jokes at the public's expense. As John McEnroe might have said, they cannot be serious. City residents should vote for Luke Ravenstahl because Mom said so? Kevin Acklin because Uncle Dan said so? If I were a city resident, I might vote for Dok Harris solely because he had the good sense not to come out say that we should vote for him because Franco said so - though Franco, being a proud father, is happy to say in private that we should vote for his son. But if the Ravenstahl and Acklin pieces are inside jokes rather than serious politicking, then instead I should vote against Dok because his sense of humor clearly doesn't match that of his rivals. Ravenstahl and Acklin know how to tickle Pittsburgh's funny bone. Why didn't Dok play along with the Halloween week masquerade?

It is a good thing, one might conclude, that Pittsburgh is such a well-kept secret around most of the US and most of the world. Because for all of its pre- and post-G20 Summit bluster, Pittsburgh isn't capable of playing at the top levels as a world city. As weird as politics get in California (Jerry Brown wants to be governor again; the Governator is exchanging public profanities with a member of the state Assembly), New York (David Paterson wants to remain governor), Rome (Berlusconi and the Italian media), and Afghanistan (Karzai trying to avoid a vote boycott), that weirdness is the weirdness of big places and big issues. Whether Pittsburgh's mayoral campaign is infantilizing the city or playing it with one enormous inside joke, Pittsburgh still suffers from the weirdness of being a very, very small town.

Mad as Hell, and Not Going to Take it Anymore!

At the Pittsburgh Comet, Bram Reichbaum has given notice: The blog will wind down. I know from my own experience what this means: license to bleat and boast a bit about what it means to have tried -- and apparently, to have failed -- to attract the notice that one thinks is due a blog about serious topics in Pittsburgh. Along those lines, today, Bram winds up and delivers an uppercut to the mediocrity of Pittsburgh's media, and Pittsburgh's audience. It's a thoughtful, passionate rant about everything that is wrong with local television. Much of it applies with equal vigor to our local newspapers. Bram has been backfilling the failings of the paid media, and he's discouraged and exhausted.

Someone who works as hard as Bram does at his blog, for as little compensation as he receives, certainly deserves gratitude -- and a break. Agree or disagree with his day-to-day analysis, there aren't many paid reporters in town who dig into the details of the mysteries of Pittsburgh's politics as regularly as he does. (For the record, Bram and I have corresponded occasionally, but we've never met.)

Along the way, Bram discovered what almost all professional journalists eventually discover, whether or not they work in Pittsburgh: Investigating and reporting real news -- the news that matters to the future of a community, and that (surprisingly) even includes what happens on the playing field -- is backbreaking work. The hours are long, the wages are low, and gratitude from an appreciative and adoring public is rare. Journalism is partly a calling and partly a form of public service: You do it because you have no choice, and because it needs to be done. The payoffs are meted out inconsistently, unexpectedly, and over long periods of time, when they are meted out at all.

Bram makes a plea for serious, sustained coverage of local news. In principle, I think that he's right, and I've written here about related issues: The future of paid media, especially failing print media, lies in figuring out how to map the economy of the neighborhood onto the network of networks that we call the Internet. Mapping the economy of the neighborhood onto itself used to be the name of the game, but now it's like getting a recalcitrant child to eat spinach. You can't force people to eat the journalistic equivalent of what's good for them; it turns out that the neighborhood often just doesn't want to think that hard about itself -- not when there is OJ to watch, or (Not in the) Balloon Boy, or Facebook to waste time with. Few people who aren't absolute masters of their domains really enjoy looking in the mirror each morning all that closely; it's much more fun to look through someone else's window.

In other words, I suspect that the media enterprise is overrated as an agent for change. We like to pretend that the TV station, the newspaper, and even the thoughtful blog can shine a light on corrupt government and, by force of the First Amendment, make things better. People will read the news, emerge from their huts with pitchforks and torches, and toss the miscreants into the streets.

But if the world ever worked that way (and maybe there was a time when it did), today it works more indirectly than all that. I don't pretend (as I once might have) that this blog has any direct influence on the direction of the Pittsburgh region. What I can pretend is that the blog occasionally gives me access to conversations with people who are creating, organizing, and innovating in organizations, institutions, and neighborhoods around town. Pittsburghers *do* care about what happens here; they just don't often care for much self-scrutiny in the media. We have become The Truman Show. Fixing The Truman Show doesn't mean turning fake news into authentic news; it means breaking out of the myth that what happens on camera or on the screen can really control our destiny. Jim Carrey, prophet! Who knew?

I suspect that Bram has figured this out; at least, I hope so. My experience, and that of at least one other once-retired local blogger, teaches that he will be back.

Not Pittsburgh Politics

Items I've noticed while focusing on other stuff recently:

New Girl Elaine LaBalme discovered that Cleveland really is a nice place. For all of the passion behind the Pittsburgh/Cleveland rivalry, and for all of the short-term benefit that Pittsburgh derives from performing "better," economically-speaking, than other Rust Belt cities, in the long term Pittsburgh is better off if its counterpart cities (Cleveland, Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit) are doing well, too.

That's a tall order, I know.

Speaking of Detroit: "It Takes a Village to Open a Bistro," from the New York Times. I would love to read counterpart stories of community enterprise in Pittsburgh.

Eve Picker has boarded the in-migration train. Indeed: As I've written here for some time, as Harold Miller has written on his blog and at the PG, and has Chris Briem has argued at Null Space (and don't forget Jim Russell at Burgh Diaspora), Pittsburgh's real population problem is not that our young people leave. It's that not enough new people move in.

And read this account of yet another debate about Pittsburgh branding.
Because Pittsburgh has reinvented itself, say some, should Pittsburgh have a brand? Does it need a brand? Can Pittsburgh be its own brand? Why isn't Pittsburgh selling its reinvention? Audrey Russo of the PTC makes a critical point: You can't have a brand if you don't have a product. (Well, modern marketers think that you can sell a brand as a brand, but that sort of thing just brings big money to a few people and a lot of trouble to everyone else.) Her quote: "There's cynicism that we haven't been bragging about our achievements ... But in all fairness, there's nothing to brag about yet."

Cleveburgh Works

I (as in not Mike) have been woefully behind in my Pittsblog duties, but this belongs here more than anywhere else. Beyond the more general Cleveburgh thoughts of late there is story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today focusing on economic development efforts up the turnpike. Yet one of the most prominent things in the article is talk of Pittsburgh’s own Innovation Works....  singled out some years ago in a report done for them by the folks at McKinsey as "the 12 best regional development growth organizations in the world".

See: Jumpstart offers a solid base for emerging Cleveland-area businesses, by Marcia Pledger, Cleveland Plain Dealer. October 24, 2009,

So Long to the Renaissance?

Never forget that Pittsburgh often cares more about who wins and who loses than about the future of the region as a whole. Library branches will be closing. Now UPMC wants to close its Braddock hospital. The URA is thinking about paying a developer so that a different developer can build apartments on the South Side.

Did someone say regional planning? Is anyone surprised that these decisions were not publicized until after the feel-good G-20 media blitz had passed? Does the pattern of wins and losses reflect anything new?

Thought not, on all counts.

Meanwhile, the new Dunkin' Donuts in Squirrel Hill is doing land office business, and it's kosher. Baked morsels for less! Taste great, spiritually fulfilling. Does this mean that the tide of the Cupcake Class is receding?

The Costs of Football

Come Sunday afternoon, I'll join friends and family in black-and-gold, expecting the Steelers to mash the Browns.

But I'll be thinking a little differently about the price that's paid down the line by the athletes who entertain and inspire us. Our pleasure, their suffering.

You may think differently, too, if you read this GQ story about brain injuries, which begins in Pittsburgh with a scientist named Bennet Omalu, a blessing of sorts from his boss, Cyril Wecht, and what happened to Steelers icon "Iron Mike" Webster.

Spam, I Get Spam

Someone named "Timothy P. Brennan" (is this a name I should recognize?) sent me a Facebook invitation to this event:

Timothy invited you to "PAYD Canvass for Jack Panella and Luke Ravenstahl" on Saturday, October 17 at 12:00pm.

Event: PAYD Canvass for Jack Panella and Luke Ravenstahl
What: Club/Group Meeting
Start Time: Saturday, October 17 at 12:00pm
End Time: Saturday, October 17 at 3:00pm
Where: South Side VFW

Clearly, Timothy P. Brennan hasn't read what I've written about the Mayor. No, I won't be joining the Young Democrats on Saturday.

I also wish that Gmail had a filter for "unsolicited requests to shill for new products, services, and candidates."

Murphy and Me

At Null Space, Chris Briem muses on the meaning of Bob Cranmer's "rebuttal" to my Post-Gazette piece from a week ago (follow the links at my post yesterday). Be sure to read the comments, which are at least as interesting as Chris's post.

My bottom line: It's a bit weird to read comments about my work in that forum, but as one commenter notes, I can certainly take it - and I probably could stand some push back. (I'll interpret that statement as fair in all of the several ways in which it may have been intended!)

The more important point is that I hope that my posts, and Chris's, and others, become part of a much-needed broader and public conversation about the future of the city and the region. The debate isn't really about anything that I've written, or about anything that anyone writes in response to me, whether that's about Tom Murphy or Bob Cranmer or any other former Pittsburgh politician. The debate is about the future.

Agree with me, disagree with me, partly or wholly, no one should seriously dispute the proposition that right now, Pittsburgh is leader-less. There is no one in government, no one in business, no one in education, no one in philanthropy, no one in the media etc. etc. who is out there publicly leading a dialogue about what Pittsburgh can and should do to survive and prosper in the decades ahead.

This isn't news, at least not here. I first raised this problem more than two years ago. Things haven't gotten better; arguably, they've gotten worse.

Meanwhile:

Until a leader or leaders are found (elected, appointed, and/or volunteered), interested folks need to keep the conversation going, and they need to do their best to do so despite Pittsburgh's occasional efforts to marginalize people who are interested in the conversation but who don't fit the city's mid-20th century self-image: they aren't sufficiently born here; they aren't living in the right place; they didn't go to the right high school; and so on. They need to do their best despite the apparent disinterest of the larger population, despite the occasional indifference of the mass media (that's another challenge to the Post-Gazette), and despite repeated rumors of bullying -- and worse -- by political powers that have a vested interest in *not* engaging in that conversation, but instead in consolidating their hold on public office.

The brute fact about Pittsburgh is that its future doesn't belong to the generation that kept the flame of the city lit over the last 30 years and the generations that came before. There aren't enough of them. They're too old. And they don't have enough money. Respect them, value them, honor them, but don't count on them. Count on those people who are coming through school today, both here in Pittsburgh and around the world - for those people have to move here and help Pittsburgh; there aren't enough resources here, and not enough political and economic will, to built a future Pittsburgh that is anything more than the pleasant-but-hardly-thriving region that Pittsburghers inhabit today. There is no guarantee that any of them will succeed, but Pittsburgh's success depends on them, and it depends on envisioning a future that they are willing to invest in.

Enough abstraction for a while. More concrete posts coming soon.

Pitt and Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are both recognized in a new survey of "Best Neighbor" colleges and universities in the United States. Pitt is tied for the #2 position; CMU is ranked #19.

There is no arguing with this sort of thing; the researchers did their best with an incomplete method. But it's fun to read what they got right -- and wrong -- about the schools in our backyard. From the complete report:

University of Pittsburgh: Pitt’s motto is, “The city is our campus,” and through an engagement program, which builds upon the historic connection between institution and metropolitan area, the university has played a key role in helping to economically, culturally, and physically revitalize Pittsburgh. Working through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Pitt created the Community Outreach Partnership Center, which has leveraged the university’s resources in a manner, which supports neighborhood partnerships in order to address neighborhood concerns. The selection of the city as the site of the 2009 G-20 Summit reflects an urban economy discovering “life after steel.” PITT ARTS connects the university’s students with the city’s emerging and energetic art scene. Pitt has set the dimensions and pace of engagement in Pittsburgh. Its neighborhood collaborations have resulted in physically and economically revitalized neighborhoods. Neighborhood is the key here. Pitt’s engagement benefits the entire metropolitan region, one neighborhood at a time.

Carnegie Mellon University: The Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach coordinates and makes public much of CMU’s community engagement efforts. These include Strategies for Engineering Education, which provides middle-school girls with an opportunity to spend two weeks every year in “hands-on, multidisciplinary engineering activities focusing on the theme of energy.” Its Summer Academy for Mathematics and Science prepares high school students for the rigorous curriculum they will face as college engineering, science, and mathematics majors. The university emphasizes the similarities between engineering and music and thus its School of Music, through its Keyboard and Drumming Projects, seeks to enhance music instruction in the Pittsburg Public Schools. Its powerful engineering and design schools have been instrumental in hundreds of “start-up” companies.

Letters, We Get Letters

Former Allegheny County Republican Committtee chair and former Allegheny County Commissioner Bob Cranmer bonks me on the head this morning as "yet another ivory-tower academic." Since I worked pretty hard to become an ivory-tower academic, I'll take that as an unintended compliment.

Cranmer is shocked, SHOCKED to discover that my series on "The Story Behind Pittsburgh's Revitalization" didn't praise HIM lavishly. (From what I can tell, Cranmer didn't read the whole thing; he only read the short piece that was re-published in the Post-Gazette.) He's writing ostensibly in defense of former Mayor Tom Murphy, whose unblemished record of success apparently missed my ivory-tower eyes, but of course Cranmer is stalking his own legacy. It's curious that the Post-Gazette published his letter to the editor without pointing out that Cranmer claims credit for a current "renaissance" of Pittsburgh.

It's tempting to return Bob Cranmer's favor and describe his little piece as characterized by the modesty that we expect from a local pol. Instead, I'll say this: Sorry, Bob: It's not about you.

Podcamp Pittsburgh: An Appraisal Before the Fact

I happened to be scrolling through the session descriptions for Podcamp Pittsburgh, which happens tomorrow and Sunday (October 10 and 11), and I stumbled across this:

Intellectual Property: What Are Your Ideas Worth?

In this era of “free” Internet content, copyright infringement and rampant plagiarism, who really “owns” an idea? And if you *do* have an idea, is it actually worth anything? Devil’s advocate John Carman moderates this debate about intellectual property changing business models between anti-IP advocates Nick Pinkston & Steve Klabnik and pro-authorship devotees Justin Kownacki & Dawn Papuga.

Good thing I haven't had breakfast yet, or I would have lost it. I blog a lot, but IRL I'm a copyright lawyer (and teacher, and scholar). That description is nuts.

Any "debate" between "anti-IP advocates" and "pro-authorship devotees" is bound to be either misleading or unhelpful. If you're a social media creator or consumer (or more likely, both), you need to know that you live in a world of IP. You create it; you use it. It's unavoidable. In many ways, IP is a great thing; in some ways, it's overbroad and stifling. Learn to make it work for you.

Most important:

No blogger owns his or her ideas. Full stop. Not under the law, and not under any sane definition of ethics. A writer has some specific legal rights in the specific words (and media) that he or she creates (though not in what he or she borrows). You get those rights whether or not you want them; they arise automatically, as soon as you put finger to keyboard. But enforcing those rights requires that there be an actual lawsuit ($$$ required) or an actual threat of an actual lawsuit ($$ required) or, at the very least, that those words or media be registered with the United States Copyright Office ($ required).

Is your work worth anything? The odds are - no, it's not. Of the many thousands of things that are registered with the Copyright Office every year, the vast majority of them never earn a penny for their authors or publishers, and the ones that do are almost always published by established artists and/or established media. If you want to make a few bucks off of your amateur art, there's rarely any harm in registering it with the Office, but you're more likely to see some income if you sign up for ads via Google.

In the IP realm, unless you're a professional creator who is part of a professional enterprise -- in that case, identifying and protecting your original creations is often a good idea -- you have a couple of better options.

One is to let it go. Let the Internet be the Internet; let people quote and link to you and be happy with the attention. If someone outright misrepresents your work as theirs (or their work as yours, which also happens), then scream and shout and call them out, and have your friends help you, and if there is real harm to person or bank account, then hire a lawyer ($$$$ required).

Two, which is very close to One and which is no foolproof technique, is to slap some version of a Creative Commons license on your work. A CC license is a way of telling the world that it can use your work, and under some conditions -- like, the world has to give you credit. That's the good news: you can let it go and sleep a little better at night. The bad news is that no one really knows whether Creative Commons licenses are legally binding. (CC licenses are a lot like open source software licenses, and the world only learned about ten months ago whether open source software licenses are legally binding. It looks like they are - maybe.)

Turn this around. If you want to use (copy, borrow, remix) the words or media of someone *else,* when are you on safe ground, mostly safe ground, and/or sketchy ground?

Linking - is just always OK, but don't misrepresent someone else's words as your own, or your own words as someone else's. That's good manners.

Copying short phrases out of a longer original, even full paragraphs out of a longer original, is often just fine, because it's fair use under copyright law. This is especially true if you're using the excerpt to make some other point (like the original should be ridiculed, or used as part of a teaching moment, or illustrates some historical argument), but that kind of "transformation" of the original doesn't always have to be part of the plan.

Copying the full text of a source, especially if that source is commercial (commercial media, like a newspaper, or commercial creativity, like a novel) is almost always wrong. But not always; videos on YouTube and other online sources are often set up to be embedded in your site. Photos on Flickr often include statements by the photographer that give you guidance regarding what the photographer thinks you may do (note that whatever the photographer might say, fair use is always permitted). When you borrow, giving credit to the source is usually a good idea, because the source is less likely to be unhappy with what you do and because it's often the polite thing to do, but giving credit isn't required by the law.

Copying *ideas,* but using your own words and creativity to express those ideas, is just about always fine. No one owns their ideas; in fact, it's often wrong to say "their" ideas in the first place, because ideas almost always involve borrowing material from *other* sources.

For more:

With my professional (non-blogging) hat, I participate in the production of "best practices" statements about the law of fair use that help non-lawyers navigate this problem in some specific areas of creative production and re-use. The one that likely is of most interest to the Podcast crew is the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.

Let the Libraries Close

Let the libraries close.

Well, not really. But I may have your attention. Here's why I think that the outrage over the potential closure of five of the 19 branches of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, as announced by its Board the other day as a cost-saving measure, is misplaced. (For a fantastic piece of outrage, read Brian O'Neill's column.)

First: "Revitalized" or not, the city of Pittsburgh just isn't as big and wealthy as it used to be. The citizens of the Burgh are going to have to get used to the idea that public services are going to get cut back. The money just isn't there; a city of 300,000 simply can't support the same level of services -- doesn't demand the same level of services -- that a city of 675,000 once demanded. We see proposals to cut one thing or another all the time, and the outrage is always the same - and nearly always misplaced. Cut police personnel? Never. Close fire stations? Never. Cut a library branch? No! My point goes to the general proposition that libraries never should be closed. Cutting *this* library branch or *that* fire station may be the right or the wrong thing to do, and there are bizarro politics sometimes on display in these decisions. Mayor Ravenstahl's "see no evil" ("I want to see the books") response to the branch-closing announcement is beyond silly, though it's consistent with an "I'm not in charge here" tone that pops up in his administration from time to time.

Even if you disagree with that argument, because you think that books and DVDs are just too damned important to the education of our children and the sustainability of an informed citizenry, then there is something else to consider. (I love books and DVDs, too; most of my professional life involves studying ways to ensure that society gets more of them!)

Second: Why, oh why, are decisions and reactions to this sort of thing always made in a one-off crisis mode? Pittsburgh lurches from "close the fire stations? never!" to "close the libraries? never!" to "where's the casino payment for the new arena" as if Captain Renault were supervising the premises. He was shocked, SHOCKED, to find gambling going on at Rick's -- as he pocketed his winnings. What I mean is that there is no plan here, no sense whatsoever that library-branch-closing or fire-station-closing or arena-construction-subsidized-by-gambling is part of a vision of the city's future. Instead, it's just the latest crisis to be dealt with -- at a time when absolutely no one can pretend to be ignorant of the fact that the crisis is part of a long-term restructuring of the city and region. Library-branch-closing is just a game of winners and losers, and the Carnegie Library Board appears to be doing its best with a bad hand of cards. Metaphorically, Pittsburgh is Captain Renault -- without the winnings.

This is part of what Jim Russell called my new "crystal ball" approach, which I brought back from my recent appearance in Amsterdam:

What will Pittsburgh look like in 30 years? In 50 years? I'm not looking at the "Regional Visioning" project launched earlier this year; whatever that "vision" produces, it won't be a template for "how does Pittsburgh prosper while it downsizes?" Going out and talking to "the people" won't answer the questions that the region really needs to answer, like "how many library branches does the region really need?," when that question needs to be coordinated with the answer to "what's the scale and scope of the public transportation infrastructure that the region should commit to?" and with the answer to "who's going to pay to fix our water and waste systems?" Brian O'Neill's outrage poses the problem but doesn't address it:

The library board doesn't want to get in the middle of a mayor's race, but Pittsburgh is not a green city if it's not walkable. It's not a green city if parents have to drive their kids across town to find an open library. And this vaunted city of neighborhoods can't be a desirable place to live and raise children if we allow our community centers to whither and die."

That rhetoric -- while compelling and eloquent -- misses the point. Every one of the sentences in that paragraph may be true, but they don't add up to an argument against library closing. "Walking to a neighborhood branch" and "driving across town to find an open library" don't exhaust the options. They exhaust the options so long as we all think reactively, in crisis or winners-and-losers mode (sadly, all of the Mayors and mayoral candidates seem to be doing this, too). What if I could ride a convenient bus to a library, or ride a tram?

What if we sketched out a map of public transportation, parks and schools and libraries and other community "centers," public safety resources (some of which could double as community centers), and housing and shopping concentrations (let's call those "neighborhoods") and figure out how to make those different systems talk to each other in ways that reinforce communities and livability? Doing that wouldn't stop the Board from closing library branches, but it might make branch closing (fire station closing, arena subsidies, and so on) part of a game plan that persuades people that a little sacrifice today is part of a better future. Maybe we think about closing library branches here and opening library branches there. Maybe we think differently about the current round of Port Authority transportation cuts. Maybe the arena gets security for its money from the casino up front, rather trying to claim it out of the back end.

I'm not optimistic right now about the region's collective ability to do all of this. But if it is not done, eventually it will have to be done, and it will get done via the winners-and-losers mode that we're seeing at the moment rather than in any more considered way.

Beyond Revitalization: Looking Ahead

I spent much of the last month looking at Pittsburgh's recent history. Over the coming months, it will be time to look at Pittsburgh's future.

The re-focus is prompted by being energized at a conference that I attended and spoke at last week in Amsterdam on the future of cities -- all cities, and "the city" as an ideal. Here's a link to the conference site: Morgen/Tomorrow: International Urban Planning Congress Amsterdam. I spoke about Pittsburgh; others spoke about Chicago, Mumbai, London, Helsinki, Rotterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Hamburg, and Tirana. We also heard quite a bit about Tokyo, Mexico City, São Paulo, and Lagos.

My speech drew on my "The Story Behind Pittsburgh's Revitalization" series, excerpted yesterday, with some very cool illustrations, in the Post-Gazette. More important than what I said, though, is what I heard and learned. I'll share some thoughts on that over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, and along the same lines, Harold Miller (the man who has been behind "Pittsburgh's Future" for a long while) had a PG column yesterday on how Pittsburgh needs more entrepreneurship. Here's a fuller version, from his blog. His bottom line: Pittsburgh needs jobs, entrepreneurs to create jobs, and investment capital to support entrepreneurs. In future posts, I'm going to agree that Pittsburgh needs jobs. I may disagree that Pittsburgh doesn't have enough entrepreneurs or investment capital. The rate of company formation here may lag the rate in other cities, but the problem (problems?) may not be raw material. If you want a cake, it's not enough to put flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl.

More shortly.