Faith + Reason = Truth

According to this article in Psychology Today magazine, images and reminders of death do indeed strongly influence people to think and act more conservatively than they normally do.  The article is full of studies, theories, examples, claims of various biases, stereotypes, etc., but there do seem to a few solid points made:  people who, in adulthood, are either liberal or conservative show persistent and identifiable tendencies and personality traits in early childhood, at 3 years old (to avoid stereotyping in this space, suffice it to say children identified by secure-insecure, messy-neat, etc. follow a definite pattern in their conservative or liberal tendencies as adults); people exposed to images or connotations of death tend to react at a gut-level to be/act/vote more conservatively than they typically would.  Whether it's irrational fear, or realization of the dangers of the world, or anything in between is anyone's guess, but apparently fear of death = conservatism.  Who knew? 

There's a Business Week article that discusses a shift in focus for U.S. venture capital firms, which are increasingly looking to China for both early and late stage investment opportunities due to China's cost advantages over their U.S. competition for funding dollars.  Richard Lim, Managing Director for a Chinese affiliate of a U.S. investment company, is quoted as saying a U.S. venture with 100 employees will burn through $20M in a year, whereas a Chinese venture with 100 employees would only burn through $2.5M.  The affiliate he works for manages $300M in China-focused venture capital, and he should understand the different cost structures quite well.
This staggering cost differential reminds me of a thought I had while watching The Corporation dvd the other night (Netflix, of course - that service is a documentary feast!  Smartest Guys in the Room is also worth watching; I guarantee you'll learn something you didn't know about either the Enron debacle or the California energy deregulation crisis).  Now, The Corporation (like any Michael Moore-associated piece) is extremely one-sided and can be tough to sit through if you're pro-business or even pro-capitalism, but it's ALWAYS good for one's perspective to try to balance it with different points of view, extreme as they can sometimes be.  And let's give the guy a LITTLE credit - he's obviously passionate about his causes, and I would be afraid of some of the entities he takes on with his in-your-face style.  Likeable?  Not really.  Effective?  Possibly.
For me, I'm very pro-business and pro-capitalism and pro-democracy, and I understand the world isn't perfect and some things have to be sacrificed for the common good.  Like wages for people in China, South America, Africa, etc.  Though the plight of this "exploited" proletariat is documented on film and heart-wrenching to witness, there's currently no alternative.  If U.S. businesses were to pay these foreign workers higher wages, what would happen?  The limited openings would quickly fill, and the rest of the people would continue to work for the corporations of other nations at too-low wages (like Chinese operations in Africa, which the Wall Street Journal ran on article on last week that had a few African worker comments regarding the brutality of their Chinese employers).
Folks, this country isn't perfect, but even if it were, the rest of the world would more than pick up our slack in the "unfriendly to foreign workers" arena, and those countries would be even MORE price-competitive against U.S. firms than they currently are, and in the end, are consumers going to pay $30 for a shirt that they could buy for $3 from a foreign manufacturer?  I would expect not.

Many of you who track multiple blogs and news sites may have heard of Netvibes.  It's like my old My Yahoo page on steroids (or Web 2.0).  If you're not already using it, do yourself a favor and click on the link to it.  Skip the rest of this post if you need to - it's that much of a web life-changer!  No, I don't get paid to push this (who would pay for an audience of 3 people, give or take?).  I had no idea how much time I spent visiting the various sites that I track throughout the day; I've got Firefox all tabbed up, RSS feeds lining the top of my browser, etc., but it still took a lot of time to visit all of the different pages and scan them for anything new since the last time I checked 10 minutes ago.
Now, as of a few weeks ago, my online life is all on one page:  my Gmail inbox preview, local weather graphic, automatically updating headlines in little boxes from every feed I track (several of which were already built into Netvibes, and the others were very simply and intuitively added manually by me).  All I do is maximize my browser window, quickly scan my whole Netvibes page for any new Washington Post headlines, Wired or Business Week or whatever articles, blog posts, emails, and every other site I track, and hit the ones I want to hit.  I'm done scanning in seconds, rather than taking several minutes to visit every site individually.
Do yourself a favor - go to Netvibes right now, and a few minutes later you'll have it customized just the way you want it (it's default settings are pretty comprehensive, too) and you'll wonder how you ever got by without it!

So you want to be the President of the United States.  But wait - you say you don't have a "healthcare solution"?  And hold on there - you haven't already made up your mind about whether to commit the troops in Iraq for 10 more years or yank them out the day after your inauguration?  And how about that wall between us and Mexico - SURELY you've already got your preferred chain link fence vendor lined up for a big fat payday, or maybe, conversely, you'd eliminate the Border Patrol altogether.  Well, there may be hope for you yet!  I believe those "big issues" may be nothing more than political hot air, and that real voters would cast real votes based on a candidate's stands on an array of niche issues, and more importantly, on their "feeling of trust" in the candidate him/herself (there's some support for this theory, in a non-scientific poll conducted right here on this very blog).  Case in point:  the Democrats swept into power 3 months ago on a wave of "get us out of Iraq" sentiment.  Here we are, drawing up and debating "non-binding resolutions" that may or may not result in a SEVERE slap of the hand.  Nothing more.  And so it goes with most overarching policies, covering issues too large and unwieldy to be solved or resolved by a President or even a Congress.  So why not base your vote on issues which CAN be addressed and which matter to you, or base it on someone you actually believe when they make a promise (i.e., a non-politician)?  I'll tell you why not - it's because we don't know where the various candidates stand on these issues, because there's no room in the campaign to drive home where they stand on these lesser issues.  If we had a forum, or a scorecard, where candidates could check off where they stand on these myriad "long tail" niche issues, then one candidate may garner enough support based on these lesser issues alone to defeat other candidates who are more broad-based and have propensities to fill themselves and the rest of the Electionsphere with much of their aforementioned hot air.  It won't take much to get this thing rolling, and we're early enough in Campaign 2008 to be able to impact the way that informed voting decisions are derived.  Tell everyone you know, and let's get some traction on this.  We'll do it American Idol-style and get some of Rupert Murdoch's cash horde behind it in the form of "most popular candidate wins a Presidential Election Warchest to campaign with".  I'm serious - Murdoch has not backed a particular candidate as of now, nor does he see himself doing so any time soon.  Give him 1st dibs on a sure-fire ratings hit AND tie it all in to Youtube, where the candidates will post videos that will be voted on to narrow the field, and he's jumping in with both feet!

Front page of the Wall St. Journal today has a story about Iran, Russia, and Qatar exploring the formation of a natural gas cartel.  Last week there was also a big story in the journal about Russia and Iran and a gas cartel.  Those two countries have over 50% of the world's proven natural gas reserves (the U.S. has maybe 4%).  Currently, the U.S. imports a very small minority of its gas needs and mostly consumes its own production, but this won't be sustainable for long.  A year ago, in March 2006, this story in Foreign Policy discussed this exact scenerio, why it would be bad, who the players are, and why it would arise.  Interestingly, they were spot in, as the WSJ is reporting now.

I saw a Forbes review (print, not online), of the best web tools.  In the category that dealt with online productivity apps (word processors, spreadsheets, projects, presentations, etc.), it mentioned that Zoho Writer (free online word processing app) was great and could publish directly to blogs, TypePad being among them.  The great thing about this would be lots more formatting options for blog posts.  So here's the first post done using Zoho's Writer app.

I found myself at a gathering last night, playing a spirited neighborhood version of "The Newlywed Game" (GREAT way to get to know your neighbors in ways you never thought possible, for better or for worse).  Some people had been married for 20+ years, and some not that long at all.  A diverse mix of folks.

At one point, while sequestered with some other husbands, we were flipping channels and came across SNL, at which point I asked if anybody watches.  Nobody had in years, all agreeing that it wasn't funny anymore.  I told them they might tune in and give it a chance every now and then because there's some pretty funny stuff being done in the form of SNL Shorts, then explained to them the short video concept, the Lazy Sunday phenomena (they HAD heard of it, though not all had seen it), the D In a Box, etc., and told them they could find it on Youtube.

Then, the unimagineable happened:  one of them asked, "what IS Youtube?"  Stunned, I momentarily fell silent.  Seeing my reaction, he quickly backpedaled and said "I mean, I know it's where you can see funny videos online, but what is it?"  He was joined by a chorus of similar sentiment expression by the others.  I explained that it's simply a place to go and click a play button and have a video play in your browser right there, immediately, without downloading any special players or software.  Ease of use, as it were.  They said "oh, I get it," but I don't really think they did.  They had never bothered to try to watch or upload video over the web before, so they had no idea what a barrier to entry had been overcome by those 3 guys that started it.

What else is out there to be done, something that we all assume needs extra and/or superfluous (this is the perfect word for what I'm trying to express, by the way) steps or processes involved to make it happen, but in reality just needs to be rethought and executed in a way that skips or eliminates those barriers/processes altogether?  I've got one off the top of my head:  the U.S. Presidential Election Process.  And I've got a fun, entertaining, fair, profitable, direct-and-to-the-point alternative to the current gyrations, which I'll detail here in the next few days!

About 10 years ago in a marriage preparation class, our instructor was a religious historian.  This was just before the days of being able to look up anything and everything online in a matter of seconds, so not a lot of people knew the story at the time.

Being a Christian was not cool in the early years of the religion - in fact, being one was reason enough to be devoured by lions in the Colisseum (this was before they had football, hockey, or even lacrosse).  Going to Church on Sunday wasn't something you did out of peer pressure; one had to risk one's life to even attempt to find out if someone else was a Christian.  So what you did was this:  walking along the dusty streets and common areas, you might have come across someone and started chatting.  You would then casually draw a meaningless arc in the dirt.  If the other person did nothing, you could just scratch it out or keep doodling or whatever; however, if they other person ALSO drew an arc in the dirt, beginning at a point of your arc and then overlapping yours to make a simple fish symbol out of the 2 overlapping arcs, he would clandestinely have just identified himself as a Christian.  And you, also being a Christian, would then know it was safe to discuss such things with him.  If you weren't a Christian yourself, you wouldn't have thought twice about the other person making a fish symbol out of your arc.

Supposedly the Romans never cracked this simple code, making it one of, if not the, longest uncracked code in history (of course, there may be other uncracked codes that are still secrets and date back to an even earlier time than 100 AD, so if you are a member of one of those secret orders/brotherhoods/societies, feel free to share your secret handshake here with our community.  I won't tell ANYONE.)

Quickly, off the top of your head, would you assume it's advantageous to have been an elected official in or representing the State of New York if you're running for President of the United States?  What about Georgia or Arkansas?  The answer may surprise you, as the following score shows:      

  U.S. Presidents Elected* from 1964 - 2004

# of terms by Presidents that served in/for states with capitals SOUTH of Washington, D.C.  = 11

# of terms by Presidents that served in/for states with capitals NORTH of Washington, D.C.  = 0

   * Ford assumed the Presidency and was not elected, so is not counted here

Told you it was stunning!  I'll follow up with some high-level bios for every President elected from LBJ to W, along with 3 current front-runners for each of the 2 major parties.  Wonder if the Party Leaderships pay any attention to this kind of thing?