Martin Luther King Jr.

It's a long video. If you have the time watch it. If you've never read King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, please take an hour and read it. It demonstrates a compassion and understanding for humanity that have rarely been seen in this world. This passage moves me every time.

"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

I encourage my loyal few to embrace that understanding of collective responsibility and let it live on through your hearts and actions.

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Why do many people fail?

I got a call from a recruiter last week who wanted to engage me in a contingency contract to fill open positions I might be recruiting at my current company. I, at the moment, do not have any open positions and even if I did, this particular recruiter does not specialize in representing the kind of candidates I would be evaluating for hire. However, I gave her the go ahead to send me her contact information and invited her to send me an invite on LinkedIN, a business networking site I am involved with.

Did she follow up?

No.

Will she get referred to the person I know hiring exactly the kind of people she reps?

No

Is this a major failure for her and her company?

You better believe it.

Lack of follow up is a leading cause of failure in business. The worst part about this for me personally is I am as guilty as the next person. There are so many things I really want to be doing, but I am working so hard right now it is very hard to spend the extra energy to follow up and follow through on the things I want for myself. I don't really have it to spend. Of course that is excuse making, no need to point it out to me.

If there is one thing I want to do in 2008, it is to be better, in all things. Now I just need to follow through.

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Sir Edmund Hillary - A hero for the ages

Sir Edmund Hillary passed away yesterday at the age of 88 years old. In my opinion Hillary's greatness did not come from being the first to reach the top of Mt Everest. His greatness wasn't defined by being the first man to lead a mechanized expedition to the South Pole. His greatness is defined by his willingness to try. He stood up and said "I will strive for the untouchable." The attempt to do the impossible is great all by itself.

In addition to being perhaps the greatest adventurer of the 20th century Hillary was supremely generous. His founding of the Sherpa Trust in the 1960's changed Himalayan life. Hillary worked tirelessly for the Sherpa community, building schools and hospitals. His will to give back to the world was as great as his desire to experience what few men have.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Sir Edmund Hillary personified the man in the arena. He knew the triumph of high achievement and in the attempt as much as the achievement inspired the world for generations.

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Further evidence Georgia, well, sucks

The Georgia Supreme Court is currently discussing the constitutionality of banishment. This is far more important of course than discussing the in effectual, illegal, and un-Constitutional teaching of abstinence only curriculums in the schools. Apparently crossing into Georgia immediately transports you back to the time of Napoleon I. I always wanted to visit Elba.

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Twitter will figure it out

Fred Wilson a venture capitalist from New York, is an early stage investor in a an upstart social media company called Twitter.

For the blissfully unaware Twitter has been the subject of much debate in the tech community as of late because no one can really figure out how they will make money long term. They are a company that launched without a business model and are hoping that somewhere along the way they will figure out how to make money. I think they will.

Twitter is a service that allows users to deliver quick messages (tweets) to the community of people who follow that particular user. The tweets can be delivered in various ways. It is catchy because in addition to it being incredibly easy to use it is kind of fun. It is stream of consciousness micro blogging. It is also a lot more.

How do you monetize it?

Well the first thing they can do is make it a "freemium" service like Yahoo or countless others. It is free for the basic service, but if you want more complicated features, it costs X dollars a month/year.

Advertising. Web ad spending is expected to double between now and 2011. If this is true it means a LOT of new potential revenue for a company like Twitter to capture and they have interesting ways they can do it. Basic text ads attached to tweets and contextual advertising (Google-ish) based on tweet content are two very simple and possible ways that Twitter could start generating some significant advertising revenue.

Here is something I consider more interesting. They could partner with communities that already exist and brand their service to those communities. ESPN tweeting customized score updates through the twitter engine with the ESPN branding and Twitter collecting revenue from ESPN each time. ESPN pays the freight, they give an interesting service to their fans, and the brands expand. I know there are similar sports services out there already, but you can apply to any business, especially some that DON'T already have services like that. I know there is interest, because at my company we have already talked about trying to do something with Twitter. I also made a suggestion to a friend who works for a daytime talk show and he was intrigued about some possible ways to put Twitter to use.

None of these ideas even touch on the potential monetization of Twitter's open API which allow other applications to be developed on the Twitter engine. Twitter is a relatively young company and look at all these different applications that have been built!! Pretty impressive stuff.

Good social media tools become good marketing tools and end up being profitable marketing tools as long as they have good management, technology and support backing them up. I believe there are some smart people working on the monetization of Twitter and they will figure it out. I spent 20 minutes working on it and look what I came up with.

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The bell rings... or maybe tolls for America.

The Iowa Caucus takes place soon and the starting bell for the next presidential election will ring loudly across the land. Does the election matter? Is it possible for anything to change for the better? Daunting questions, to be sure, but hope springs eternal in my mind that we can achieve something as a united American people.

Meanwhile the disenfranchisement of the American voter continues. (I apologize for the USA Today link) Here is an article about how the caucuses actually prevent participation from interested Iowans because of the stringent voting restrictions.

This is a great piece of writing from Michael Moore. It sounds like Moore will endorse John Edwards if Gore doesn't get into the race. In my opinion if Gore doesn't get into the race soon it will be too late. The former VP recently accepting a partnership at Kleiner Perkins (a leading investment bank)makes me think he isn't running.

I am currently reading a book that was written to scare the living daylights out of Americans. Maybe that wasn't the intent of the book, but it is scaring me pretty badly. I will be delving into it in greater detail as I get further into it. The book is call The End of America, A Letter to a Young Patriot, by Naomi Wolf. I am about 25% through it. I recommend it highly.

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How do people get here?

I don't have what you would call a tremendous amount of traffic. I have some regulars and a generally increasing number of one and done type people who meander in from Google. I also get some regular traffic from "Why don't we get drunk and blog?", but unless I ever hit the top 25 over there I don't think that is going to increase too terribly much. If Paul Katcher ever linked to me my traffic would really explode.

Right now the #1 traffic driver to No 1 of Consequence is searching: Just end the season

This phrase holds a special place in hearts of Jets fans around the world as it is usually uttered somewhere between weeks 2 and 3 in the NFL season and repeated like a dogmatic mantra until the merciful end of week 17. Then the mantra is something along the lines of, "how will they screw up the draft this year?"

I also receive many hits to my Debbie Cole post because everyone seems to like a feel good story of a garbage person giving back life changing money because it is the right thing to do.

I get a LOT of hits for people searching tilapia recipes.

I quote Aaron Sorkin a lot (won't be linking to all the posts, but I always give him credit, so if you are interested use the search function in the upper left.) and that always brings people in.

How important is this? Not important at all, but it was way more fun to write than a lot of things I could be writing right now.

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The Georgia education system is atrocious

I am going to write about No Wife a bit today because my anger has reached a point that I may have a stroke if I don't get this out into the world.

My wife is a social studies teacher. She is a summa cum laude graduate of one of the finest universities for educators in the northeast. She has won very presitigious teaching awards from the State of New Jersey as well as been nominated for the Teacher of the Year Award sponsored by a very prominent corporation. Her lessons are engaging and collaborative. She has significant experience at top rated schools in a state that consistently ranks among the highest in public education. Yet here in Cobb County, Georgia, in two school years of looking she has been unable to secure employment. This is ludicrous.

In a state like Georgia which is supposedly dying for teachers. she is consistently passed over, not only for jobs, but also for interviews. In a state like Georgia, which has an appallingly ranked educational system, how can any principal justify passing her incredibly impressive resume by? In a state like Georgia which is populated by military families and numerous bases, how is it that a veteran of the United States Army with impeccable credentials and an amazing ability to reach even the toughest students doesn't get asked to serve her community?

Our phone should be ringing off the hook. She should not be sitting at a computer shaking her head as one perfect position after another comes and goes with nary a phone call. The middle and high schools in Cobb County Georgia are robbing their students of opportunity on a daily basis because of what appears to be an "old boy" hiring policy. (I have no evidence of this, but nothing else makes sense when you measure No Wife's credentials against the positions available.)

No Wife is a rock star at the front of a classroom. Who is going to step up and give their students a real chance to not only learn something, but love the process of learning it?

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Saliva

I have not been able to get this song out of my head. It is slamming! My musical tastes are fairly eclectic, but stuff like this winds me up. I would have embedded it here, but the embedding is disabled at the request of Universal Music who haven't learned that the free model, driven and bundled with advertising is the way to go and choking off content from the masses is stupid. What's better? Me bashing Universal for disabling the embed capability or, me embedding the song here promoting Saliva's music and Universal and allowing YouTube to get their advertising to a wider (ever so slightly wider) audience. Silly shortsightedness wins again.

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I'll have a tank please, shaken, not stirred

OK, so then we'll take the flying carpet and fly over the invisible tanks.

Invisible tanks.... I don't care who you are, that's pretty cool stuff.




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Interesting interview

You may or may not recall that awhile back a student at the University of Florida was hit with a taser and arrested after asking Senator John Kerry some hard questions during an open mic. Andrew Meyer has dropped of the radar since then, but he gave an interview to The Today Show website and will be appearing on the show Thursday morning. The interview is very interesting and despite his youth he seems fairly grounded. It is an interesting read.

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Jack Sparrow? Not so much

Being in the international trade game, I tend to look at international stories and politics in a different light than most people. Political unrest and conflict in various areas around the globe cause something called supply risk. I saw a story this morning about pirates off the coast of Somalia seizing a North Korean cargo vessel.

At first blush you can smile and laugh and think to yourself that anything the kicks Kim Jong Il in the teeth a little bit is good for the rest of the world. However if we take a moment and think what might be in that cargo ship and what could be falling into the hands of Islamic fundamentalist pirates we may begin to worry.

Piracy in the waters off Somalia and traveling through the waterways that surround the islands of Indonesia is rampant. Ships and good are routinely seized and held for ransom. My question is, what happens if the wrong ship falls into those hands? Not a pleasant thought.

****UPDATE: The North Korean crew retook their boat when the U.S. Navy showed up.

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41 years

My parents have been married for 41 years. In years 40 and 41 their jackass of a son (that would be me) has been too wrapped up in the insanity of his own life to remember their anniversary. So, to honor their commitment, I am mentioning the anniversary on my blog.

41 years is a LONG time. 14,965 days. 359,160 hours. 21,549,600 minutes. 1,292,976,000 seconds.

Their marriage, like any marriage, has had its ups and down, but despite any troubles they have remained steadfast.

41 years is a testament to love and commitment. It is also a testament to endurance. In an age where marriage and divorce happen on demand and vows are taken with a very large grain of salt. It is nice to slow down for a moment and look to a marriage that has stood the test of time.

I'm very proud of my parents for being able to achieve such a milestone. I look forward to actually remembering to honor their love and commitment to each other next year.

Mazel Tov guys! I love you.

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Pragmatic Environmentalism: Part II

I just saw this great article on CNN and was very pleased to see that my family already does a lot of the things on this list. I will be putting out a battery recycling bucket this weekend because as anyone with children knows, the kiddies go through batteries like water. Here is another phenomenal way to save money on batteries.

****UPDATE - Reason #468 why it is important to have readers smarter than you. The battery thing was bogus.

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You know you've been a parent a long time when...

Your baby pukes in the night and you have his clothes changed and him back to sleep in less than three minutes.

*In the interest of full disclosure this was minor pukage and not full on projectile vomiting over sheets and blankets. Had that taken place the pit stop would have taken 6-8 minutes depending on whether there was mattress involvement. Damned post nasal drip and the latest revelations that decongestants and babies don't mix.

***UPDATE: Second puking episode, this time requiring a tub dunk executed to perfection by mommy, jammie change, sheet changes and some snuggling. I was back in front of the computer in 12 minutes after putting in a stinky load of laundry. BOO YA!

***** UPDATE 2: 4 puking episodes, multiple jammie and bedding changes, and although it was relatively short during each one I didn't end up getting to bed until 2:30. I am retracting my earlier BOO YA!

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A little moralized... hmm

I know, I know, moralized isn't really a word, give me a grammatical break. I am usually very good to you people. :-)

As I have mentioned in the past, I lived in Israel. Well today I created a social network on Ning for all the alumni of the Otzma fellowship. It was kind of tedious inviting all 240+ members that I have e-mail addresses for, but I think it will end up being worth it.

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A little demoralized

In the first incarnation of this blog I used to get the occasional drive by comment. Someone who happened by and graced me with some words of their wisdom. I even used to have a contentious republican who would rant and call me a liberal nut. He would still read me ever day even though he hated me. I also had a regular Canadian reader named Grace who would happen by from time to time and give me some comment love. Now... I get nothing. It is kind of disappointing and makes me think my blog sucks. What a way to end an otherwise crappy Monday.

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And now for something completely different

The Freakonomics guys wrote about something recently that intrigued me. While I am not an anarchist or anti capitalist at all I find something very intriguing about anyone who is trying to do it (life) differently. Because I appreciate different points of view I have created a new link list and added a link to Liz Seymour - Anarchist Mom. Her point of view is so reasoned it makes dumpster diving seem almost palatable. I am planning on making her blog a regular read, because I like alternative points of view.

Here are a couple of other alternative point of view sites for a different way of looking at finance.

Prosper is a community based lending site

Kiva is a community lending non profit for micro finance in the third world.

Both sites are very cool and are helping people.

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Twitter 2

I wasn't sure about the whole Twitter thing at first. I am not usually an early adopter of technology, so it was kind of strange for me to be using something that is basically cutting edge. However, someone saw yesterday's Twitter message and hit me on the IM to express concern about my general well being. (I'm fine by the way) Why is the IM follow up relevant? It immediately demnonstrates the possibilities.

Imagine you are waiting for some very important news and by proxy your entire support structure both on and offline are waiting. The news arrives, positive or negative, and you tweet it out to everyone who follows you. (presumably the aforementioned human support structure) All around the world, people's mobile phones, e-mails, and or personal Twitter feeds go off letting them know that everything is ok... or not. It is a powerful communication tool that is just scratching the surface of its capabilities.

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Pragmatic environmentalism

I don't drive a hybrid, but I am interested in the environment. Lately my attention has turned to solar power and its potential for reducing the carbon footprint (excuse my use of trendy lexicon) of the U.S. and the world in general. This is a VERY interesting story about solar power and a new technology that makes solar cells signifcantly more effective. It isn't technical at all and is quite compelling. I recommend it.

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