A number of years ago, a bunch of my friends were reading Naomi Klein’s book No Logo and getting really riled up by it. The book is certainly written to make you angry, describing how brands and logos have become more and more prominent in our society as the marketing industry has become more sophisticated at [...]
...full articleThe dating site OkCupid has some brilliant mathematicians behind it. They get you to answer all sorts of questions about your personal preferences to various situations or ideas, and then run mad statistics to figure out who would be good romantic partners for you. It’s surprisingly effective. I never had any good dates out of [...]
...full articleMy business school buddy Jeremy Farkas is heading off to Kenya soon. He says:
I’ll be developing marketing and distribution programs to broaden access to clean water for families living on as little as a few dollars a day. Every year over 1.6 million people, largely children under the age of 5, die of [...]
This last week there was a lot of news coverage of a “daring hostage rescue in Columbia.” Fifteen people were freed from the FARC. Many had been held captive for years, including politician Ingrid Betancourt, and three Americans. The press has been celebrating the victory along several lines. How wonderful it is for these people to be set free after years of captivity. How the US military helped plan and support the operation. How the guerrillas were fooled into giving the hostages up without firing a single shot. (Aren’t we smart! Aren’t they stuipd?) But there’s a dark side to…
...full articleMy 14-year old Subaru is on its way out, and since I’m commuting to Kirkland almost every day I really need a new car. Primary criteria for me are safety and fuel economy / ecological impact. Safety seems to correlate very strongly with model year so I’m looking at new cars. In theory running on bio-diesel gives your car essentially zero net carbon impact. Also, many new renewable organic fuel sources seem to be more like diesel than gasoline. So I looked at what diesel cars can be purchased new in the US these days. I was amazed at how…
...full articleHere’s the scene: It’s 1:30 PM. In 30 minutes the CEO of your company starts a conference call with analysts to announce quarterly earnings. PR told you he is going to tell the Wall Street analysts how cool your team’s website is. It is quite a success — in 18 months it has rocketed from non-existence to the world’s fourth most popular site in a very competitive industry. Sounds great to get some recognition, right? Only problem is, today your site’s kinda broken. The night before a database upgrade got confused half-way through with no possibility to roll back. One…
...full articleI generally find CES exhausting. It’s amazing how far you have to walk to get anywhere in Vegas. It’s about a half mile walk from the hotel lobby to the elevators to get to your room. And there’s this inflation field caused by everybody living on an expense account — $4 for a small bottle of water or $10 for a small sandwich. It’s worse than an airport. So while I’m always happy to go there and get some hands-on market research and competitive analysis done, or try to close some deals with partners, I’m also generally just as happy…
...full articleI’m a little slow to re-report this, but but I find it fascinating so I want to share it in case you missed it. New York City has banned the use of trans-fats in restaurants. They’ve done this almost completely (a few exceptions for things like donut shops) and very quickly (by middle of next year) and extremely decisively. I find this amazing for a couple of reasons. First, it drives home the artificial nature of trans-fats. I’ve thought of them as similar to saturated fats in a lot of ways — things that are everywhere but should be avoided….
...full articleSome people complain that the holidays have become too commercial. That the holiest of christian holidays has become an excuse to accumulate material things, and that the true meaning, whatever that was, is being lost. I disagree. I think now is the time to Buy More Stuff! I have to give props out to all my friends who have been dutifully going down to Westlake center on the weekends to spread the good word. Someday soon I hope to have time to join them. The only thing that really surprises me about this is that some (clearly unamerican) people argue…
...full articleTranshumanist Morality is the idea that we should consider the impact of our actions in the context of the millennium-scale history of humanity. Specifically, I think the only way we will avoid some kind of dystopian apocalyptic fate is by seeking salvation through technology. In this context, moral actions are those that increase the probability that as a species we achieve technological salvation before we blow ourselves up. I’d like to explore what this means in very practical terms by analyzing a number of jobs I’ve had and considered and seen my friends do over the years. SEO for e-Commerce…
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