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Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

It’s time for celebrity teachers?

09 Feb

In the US we have celebrity trainers, celebrity cooks, athletes, song writers, scientists, CEOs, politicians, zoo keepers, mechanics, comedians, and ballon-boy. But where are the celebrity teachers? When a preacher is really good they build a mega-church and broadcast to millions of people. But the best 7 grade math teacher IN THE WORLD can only have 30 students. Why?

Why can’t we celebrate exceptional educators with a nationwide platform to let them reach as many students as possible? Pay them the mega-salary and give them the rockstar treatment. Why can’t the guy in first class sitting next to Vanna White be Mr. Smith – celebrity Algebra 2 teacher one his way to his next Opera appearance?

Just wondering…

 
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Posted in Imagination, Philosophy, Thoughts, Web Design

 

A “Thanks for your order” message with authenticity

02 Apr

The Saddleback Leather Company is the real deal. It has something the rest of the world is now trying to recreate after a century of washing it away with bureaucratic, six sigma, dehumanization – authenticity.   The problem most large organizations will have with being authentic this is identifying exactly WHO is thankful. Think about it – the first line of customer interaction at your company is probably more authentically happy when the phone STOPS ringing and they can take a break. This means of coarse that you are going to have to hire someone (ahemmm) to help you find your voice.

Study this email. I don’t recommend you copy his style (which is reminiscent of overindulgent catalog king J. Peterman on “Seinfeld”) but rather think about how honest-to-goodness thankfulness, and transparency can be incorporated into your business, regardless of its size.

Hello there Ben Shoemate

Just wanted to let you know that I sent your bag out just a little bit ago. Your tracking number is listed below along with a link to the shipping company so you can track your leather piece every couple of hours.  To care for your leather piece and read about the photo contest please see the Questions page on the website. I have all sorts of tips to keep your leather in top shape.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t want to tell you this before you joined, but 10% of the gross amount that you gave to Saddleback went directly to one of those aid organizations on the Dave’s Links page.  If you spent $500 + $20 for shipping then $52 went out to love people.  Basically, you just contributed to drilling a well for an entire village or partially sponsored a 5 year old street kid in Rwanda to get into a loving orphanage and go to one of the best schools in the country. This is the main reason Saddleback Leather exists. Just wanted to let you know… between friends. Thanks for helping.

The way I see it, out of the thousands and thousands of companies in the world, on the Internet or down on the corner selling leather goods, you chose mine and I really do feel honored.  You are very much appreciated.. Welcome to the family.

Thank you and have a great week.

Warm regards,

Dave Munson
Presidente
Saddleback Leather Co

Your order number is SBL-*********.

The tracking numbers are:
******************************
You can track your package by visiting the links below:
http://wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/processInputRequest?TypeOfInquiryNumber=T&InquiryNumber1=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The following items have been shipped to you:
line items
———————————————————————–
Small Wallet Light Tobacco Brown (WA-SM-LTB)
quantity: 1
total price: $28.00
———————————————————————–
subtotal:                        $28.00
sales tax:                        $2.28
standard shipping: *             $12.98
*shipping total includes handling and insurance fees
=======================================================================
grand total:                     $43.26
———————————————————————–

This order will be billed to:

Ben Shoemate
************
———————————————————————–

Orders for merchandise ship UPS and will receive a confirmation email and tracking number when your UPS order has shipped.
Orders for gift cards only ship via USPS mail with Delivery Confirmation and usually arrive in 3 to 5 business days.
—

This is an automatically generated email

Even down to letting you know this email was generated automatically – the message is honest and personal. Well done Dave.

 
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Posted in Email, Humor, Philosophy, Social Networks

 

Einstein never said that…

30 Nov

Einstein quoteI was testing BlogJet today as a possible desktop blogging tool. Strangely, what caught my eye first was not the tool, but the quote, attributed to Albert Einstein, that they used in the sample post… I found it a little hard to believe that Einstein who died in 1955 would have a quote about computers…especially about computers being fast. Here is the quote:

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein (or was it Leo Cherne?…read on)

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Imagination, Science, Thoughts

 

Where is the bear in the big dipper?

28 Oct

On the mantle of my bed I have a planetarium (Sega HomeStar) that projects the night sky onto my ceiling. Every other night or so, I turn this on when I’m relaxing into sleep. It allows me to star up at the stars, forget about the day, and contemplate the vast, unending beauty of the universe we live in. It is hard to look at the sky without your brain searching it for patterns (after all the brain is a pattern finding machine). The brain cannot help but try to connect the dots in a futile search for meaning and familiar shapes. Seven of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere form what we call Ursa-Major – Latin for “The big bear”. I for one, and most people I know never can see any bear shape at all in those stars, so we call it The Big Dipper instead.

We can’t see the bear for 2 reasons –

  • First, there are actually 20 stars that make up the bear, and the “big dipper” is just his rump and tail – that’s right I said “tail”.
  • Second, bears don’t have tails.

Why does this bear have a tail?
According the the Greeks, Zeus, the king of Greek gods, flung this bear into the heavens by its tail, stretching the tail into the shape it has now. Was this story compelling enough that Greeks, Roman’s, and all of Europe and generations of artists would see a bear? Apparently it was:


Artists have been drawing this “bear with a tail” for centuries.

Interestingly, many American Indian tribes who never heard the Greek story, also knew these seven stars as part of a large bear. They saw the three stars of the Dipper’s handle not as a tail, but as three boys chasing a bear. A much better story if you ask me.

To see how other cultures saw these stars, check out this nice site.

I think this image shows it best:

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Art, Imagination, Observations, Science

 

Deadline to register to vote is today (in Texas)!

06 Oct

I know a lot of you don’t live in Texas but many of you do and others are in states with similar deadlines. I just wanted to send out a reminder to make sure you are registered to vote in the November presidential election.

If your not sure, there is an easy way to find out on the Obama website (I’m sure there are many others but I used this one)

http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php

Finding out how to vote is now quick and easy.
Using this tool you can:
1. Register to vote.
2. Request to vote absentee.
3. Find your polling location.

This should only take about 3 minutes.

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Observations, Philosophy

 

Quote of the day

26 Jun

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”
- H. L. Mencken

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Philosophy

 

Why the Japanese love wikis, the French love blogs, and the Germans love…testing?

26 Jun

Look at this Google trends search comparing the terms “wiki, blog, music, movies”. It would appear searching for music online is in decline (but there is a definit Christmas time bump as people fill there new iPods and laptops with movies and music). But look at the steady climb of blogs and wikis, they are almost as popular now as online music (the term MP3 follows music but is lower).

Blogs

So what’s the deal? Why are blogs and wikis so popular? Are they really as popular a search term as music and movies? To try and find the answer I looked at the cities and countries where the data comes from. Blogs are dominated by the French and Vietnamese?

The word blog returns 3,510,000,000 results worldwide on Google (that’s 3.5 Billion with a B). My research (consisting of asking Google “blogs popular in france”) returned this article. Although it is already 2 years old, it asked the same questions and reports that users of France’s most popular blog spent over an hour there on average versus just 12 minutes in the US.

French blogs stands out in other measurable ways. They are noticeably longer, more critical, more negative, more egocentric and more provocative than their U.S. counterparts, said Laurent Florès, the French-born, New York-based chief executive of CRM Metrix, a company that monitors blogs and other online conversations on behalf of companies seeking feedback on their brands.

“Bloggers in the United States listen to each other and incorporate rival ideas in the discussion,” he said. “French bloggers never compromise their opinions.”

Wiki

Wiki appears to be crazy popular in Japan. Just look at these results:

Let’s ask the same question. First some anecdotal evidence, like this article about a Japanese government official caught doing something he should not have been on the internet…editing wikipedia articles about the robot toys known as Gundam?
I love this quote:

“The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The agriculture ministry verbally reprimanded five other bureaucrats who contributed to entries on movies, typographical mistakes in billboard signs and local politics. The six employees together made 408 entries on the popular Internet encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003.

Test

One term I that myself use a lot is the word “test”. When ever think my internet connection may have been lost, I open my browser, and just to make sure I’m not looking at a cached version of google, I type test. I figured I was not the only one so test is pretty high on google’s rankings. The suprising thing is where it is popular.

Note that I graphed it versus, xp and jobs. Both of those show new year increases (one for new christmas computers, the other for new years resultions I imagine).

But look how steady test is, which fits my theory that the term “test” is used to actually test google. Now look at the regions:

The Germans are not only number 1, they dominate with the top 5 cities. What is going on here? It does fit the sterotype.

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Imagination, Observations, Social Networks, Web Software

 

Attention Boeing/AirBus – Start working on blimps!

25 Jun


When I rent a car these days I try to rent a prius. I love gliding silently through the streets, pulling up to fast food windows and not having to shout over the rumble of an engine. Imagine if we could fly in such silent style. Imagine if the airplane was as quiet as a library. This painting made we wish for that. It is a painting by “futurist” Syd Mead who also worked on movies like Blade Runner, Tron and Aliens—but in his most recent work he envisions a future city by the name of Doha, Qatar.

I think we have the building architecture down. But somebody has got to get to work on these wonderful flying machines.
Technically, blimps are soft-body-inflatable aircraft – these are more like zeppelins, rigid-body-lighter-than-air craft. Either way, I would except the longer commutes if I could have a conversation without losing my voice and hearing.

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Art, The Future

 

Flying with no ID where your going

25 Jun

Shared by Ben Shoemate

A few years ago,I lost my ID on my way to Las Vegas. (It turns out I left it on the plane and got it back 6 weeks later with $200 cash still inside. Thanks Southwest!) But I had to fly from Las Vegas to LA, LA back to Las Vegas, and Vegas to Houston with no ID that week. I ended up going through security faster without ID! In Vegas, if do not have ID, the airline will write NO ID – on the ticket. The guard checking IDs will point you to a special line where they “puff test” you for explosives, open all your bags, and xray them. But this line had 5 people in it. The normal line had hundreds! I was though security in 5 mins versus 30!

Consumerist’s Meg Marco sez, “One of our readers describes flying with no ID under the new TSA policy, first hand:”

After about 15 minutes, the main supervisor, Laurie, arrived. Again, Laurie was exceedingly nice and professional, but seemed a little more concerned than Brenda. She asked if I was sure I didn’t have photo ID, like a credit card with my picture on it, or even a CostCo card. I wound up going through my wallet in front of her to show that I didn’t, and she pointed to various cards and receipts in it to ask if they were IDs. I wound up showing her everything to prove I was telling the truth. She repeatedly said they had no way of “verifying” that I was who I said I was, and that someone could have stolen my credit card and traveled under my name. I didn’t want to mention that they shouldn’t need to verify who I am, because I was afraid they could then say I wasn’t cooperating and deny travel on that ground. In fact, I even mentioned several times that I wanted to fully cooperate with them because I was aware that was a component of the new regulation, and they assured me that I was.

Finally satisfied that I didn’t have ID, Laurie took my boarding pass and went away. She came back a few minutes later having photocopied it, and also had an affidavit that she requested I sign. It asked for my name and address, and stated in small print at the bottom that I did not have to fill it out, but if I didn’t I couldn’t fly. It also said that if I choose to fill it out and then provided false info, I would be in violation of federal law.

Link

(Thanks, Meg!)


 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Imagination, Observations

 

Disney’s new short Glago’s Guest

24 Jun

My first official reason to want to see this new Bolt movie.

 
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Posted in All Blog Posts, Art, Science, The Future, Web Marketing

 
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