jeremynorberg.com

Massive Dog and Cat Food Recall

There is a HUGE dog and cat food recall announced today. If you feed your animal wet food, please take just a second to check if your food is effected. The recall is causing kidney failure in animals and has effected someone close to us already. Just a reference: IAMS and Western Family are included in this recall. Menu Foods

Microfinance and you

I recently stumbled onto an incredible project called Kiva. Kiva facilitates micro-loans to third-world entrepreneurs. Examples include a small store owner who needs to increases her frozen foods storage, but lacks the capital required to do so. The loan amount she is asking for...$900. About 50 people from around the world, using only a PayPal account gave her the loan, and away she goes!
This kind of participation in the world economy is incredible, and is also world changing! I've made my first $25 investment, and I'm sure I'll do a few more. How about you do the same?

Official: Edwards is in the Race.

Its official. John Edwards is official seeking the democratic nomination for president. Oh ya!

Extra! Extra! Grand Canyon created by Noah's Flood

According to top White House officials, there is strong proof that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's Flood. This recent discovery throws into question many more geological wonders in the US, including Yellow Stone Parks Old Faithful, Mount Rainer and the US-side of the Niagara Falls. I'm a bit concerned at this discovery, as this could have a dramatic economical impact on text books, college curriculum, and the thousand of geologist who have been mislead by so-called "hard-science" proof as to the origin of the US.
It is my hope that the crack team of advisors to the Bush Administration can help set the record straight. I knew all along the US was different, I never thought it was this different!

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY — Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Another NYC Worthy One

Wife + New York * December = Incredible

Jessica, Janet and I headed out for NYC for a long weekend. The city was abuzz with the Holidays. While taking the subway, I was able to snap a great shot of Jessica and Janet.

Edwards Plans Presidential Bid, Democratic Officials Say

As published in the Wall Street Journal. This warms my heart.

Greed?

Is it possible for a company to be happy (content?) with a certain revenue stream? Can a company make a decision to avoid going public for funding, and instead use a combination of self funding and angel investment to still offer a competitive ROI to investors and stakeholders? Google has a decree not to be evil. I want to create something that has a decree of not being greedy. I'm not saying being socialist, what I'm saying is create a company that loves what it does, stays small and invests in its future as it makes sense.

The greed that is currently the norm in the business market has very little interest to me anymore. Would I be interested in a couple of million dollar houses, a private plane, a fleet of expensive cars. Probably, but at what price does this come? I would rather have a comfortable living that allows me to explore many things in business and life. And to know that I'm create something that has extreme value for my customers and is fairly priced. Even if I'm not growing my income double digits. That is perfection to me.

Smart Car with Spinners

SUVs of the US aren't the only ones worthy of spinners. I took this today while heading to lunch. Classic.

Potty Dance

It's official. Finn is potty trained. It took us about a week, a lot of little accidents. A lot of dancing and singing. Stickers galore. He has done it. Congrats little man!

Fuck the God of War

This has been blogged about already. But it recently came to my attention via a song. The following is a transcript from author Howard Bloom, (not sure how accurate) from a DVD entitled, Disinformation: The Complete Series. Read it a few times. Enjoy it, and Fuck the God of War.

People under the age of 20 have this massive hole in their soul. And they have built their personalities around cynicism. Cynicism means, simply, aping or putting into an ironic form, mocking, existing institutions, instead of building institutions of your own. What I’ve discovered is that because these people have such a deep need for something to believe in that if someone like you, who has a powerful set of beliefs, or someone like I, who has a powerful set of beliefs—I’ve been searching the Gods all my life and now I know them, the Gods inside of us. Or I feel I do. Someone like me or you who can come along and show these people that there is a meaning to life, that there are things worth believing in, that there are things worth being passionate about, they respond immediately. Now, we're either going to have the new Adolf Hitler’s coming along, who know how to manipulate this need, and do it with the new nationalisms and the new tribalism's, and the new hate groups, or we're going to have a you or a me, who will come along and pour a positive message—a positive sense of something to believe in, a positive crusade for emotionality.

The only messiahs who exist are as human beings. We human beings are all basically cockroaches at heart. That is to say, we're insecure when we’re alone by ourselves, we have all kinds of self-doubts, we have our depressions, and we have all kinds of reasons to believe that we're nobody at all. But it's the “nobodys-at-all” who become the Isaiahs of the world, it's the “nobodys-at-all” who become the Einstein’s of the world, it's the “nobodys-at-all” who become the Jesus Christ’s of the world. And it's incumbent on us, having learnt the lesson—we’ve been able to learn a lesson from the history of Christianity. Jesus put together a movement that was based on respect for the humble and the poor, on seeing their possibilities, on seeing that they had to be treated as human beings too.

But what happened to his message? When it was taken over 322 years later by Constantine, Constantine had the cross painted on the shields of his men. And suddenly, Christianity became an excuse for mass murder. Christ would never have allowed that. OK, we know that now. And we know that Christ was just as human as anybody else. Why did he cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” when he was on the cross? Because he was insecure about everything he had believed in up until then. He was as human as we are.

It's up to human beings to be the messiahs. We're the only ones who are there to do it. And we have to do it. We have to do it. Because if we don't do it, someone with an equal belief and passion to ours, who believes that the way to achieve things is through the old animal way (...) built into our limbic system, built into the lower parts of our brain, who knows that the best way to unite people is by uniting them in hatred against an outside group; and uniting them in mass murder.

We have to come along before that person comes along. We have to fill that void, and we have to fill it with positivity. It’s about digging into the elemental passions (...) All of this plays a part in trying to give to the new generation a movement that's based on something extraordinarily passionate. That you can powerfully believe in. That you can use to advance humanity tremendously, absolutely tremendously—but that excises, deliberately, the God of War.

When you find the Gods inside yourself, you'll find the God of War. You'll find the God of bloodlust. You'll find the God of genocide. And he will be one of the most powerful passions in you. And you have to knife him out of existence. You have to freeze him in his own private Hell, and make your positive Gods the Gods that take you over.
And by “the Gods that take you over” I mean you have to find those passions that are so much more powerful than you, than anything you've been allowed to express in your life, and making those things the things you work on. In other words, not putting off until you’re 40 or 50 the things you feel passionate about at the age of 15 and 16 - but going directly to those things, and trying to implement them when you're 20.
Pass 'Go'. Forget the 200 dollars. Go directly to Park Place. And put your life there, on the line, with all the emotion and power and passion and insight in you.

And fuck the God of War.

Online vs. Offline

Small company taking on the big guys, and in my opinion, winning! Online word processor that saves as .doc or will post directly to a blog! If you are going to teach your 5 year-old or 80-year-old parent to create documents, why would you bother with Microsoft Office? Online vs. Offline, is there a difference anymore?

revolt of the national advertiser

Why do national advertisers allow their paid advertisements to be baried in the middle of an endless sea of interruptions? The content providers, i.e. the Wallstreet Journal, ABC, CNN, Sports Illustrated, continue to raise the entry for even the shortest inturptions. Seth Goodin has written books on the changing way consumers are ingesting advertisements; and the main message, consumers are awash in interruption, and can't handle anymore.
So back to the question, why do the nationals continue to buy what boils down to a really shitty product. Most companies will fire suppliers for smaller infractions, but why not the content providers, why won't the nationals fire the content providers, or demand a better product offering? The reason maybe as simple as, they control the supply and they only give what the market demands. Agreed, the market is not demanding more.
Here is my fix, overly simplified back of the napkin style. Instead of allowing the content providers to cram your advertisement into a blender of sameness, buy whole chunks of time/space, and demand that the content providers fill this extra space up with real content, instead of just ads from competitors or worse products that you really don't want yours associated with. This really is a throwback to the old days, when advertisers sponsored whole programs on TV, "bought" magazine issues, etc. If I was in charge of a national marketing budget, I would seriously figure out how to do this, or better yet, find a supplier willing to change the status quo.

Sir, please get off the tracks

Zoning out on the Subway platform today, when suddenly there was a ton of commotion at the far end of the station. The security forces for the station were all running around and screaming, and I could see that my subway was just starting to enter, albeit slow. It then stopped, just shortly after. Interested, as is everyone by know, I look down onto the tracks. There is this guy, kneeling in the middle of the tracks, very close to the entrance. Now, most of the times, the subways start decelerating very close to the entrance of the station. They are probably doing in excess of 40 mph as they enter. This dude was more or less saved by a very quick thinking security guard that was able to stop the train prior to entering the station. The police were finally able to get him off the tracks, but not before combing the whole area around were he was for any "presents" he may have left. Pretty scary, and that would have been really shitty to see some guy get hit my a train.

So I married an introvert

A good friend recently shared with me a trait of Jessica's. While I thought I knew it, my understanding of it was less than stellar. My wife is an introvert. This is of course not a bad thing if you understand it, but if you don't and your an extravert (like me) look out. We have been together since 1991, and it has been an amazing 16 years. But there has always been this sort of misunderstanding in our relationship, and to clarify, mostly by me.

For those that know me, you know that I'm anything but reserved. I think everything out-loud. Classic extravert trait. Jessica on the other hand is a thinker. She rarely (hard to remember anytime actually) thinks out-loud. She is an incredible listener, sharing her thoughts only when she has thought them through, or, if not ready for prime-time, never at all. When she does share, they are incredibly powerful introspections on the situation/conversation/arugment. Chalk this up to introversion.

Misunderstandings come into play when an extravert is talking with/over an introvert and two-way communication grinds to a halt. Actually the communication doesn't stop, it just becomes one-way, i.e. extravert thinking out-loud at noisome, while introvert graciously listens hoping that extravert will shut the fuck up for a minute so they can gather their thoughts.

This is a really important point, and the whole reason for writing this. Jessica has patiently accepted my trait (she was able to figure out my extraversion probably on our first date), while it has taken me 16 years and a friendly prod to recognized hers. Ouch! Take a page from my wisdom book and don't fall into this trap. It doesn't mater if you are at work dealing with work peers/management, siblings, or partner/spouse, learn to understand peoples inherent traits. Take the Myers-Biggs. Understand what traits encompass you, and encourage the people around you to do the same.

There are a few very good articles that I read on the web. Each one shared multiple views on introversion and extroversion. Google a few, read them and most important use them.