Random

In the “if you can’t beat them, join them” category, following is a hilariously ironic story by Mark A. Stein from the 11/19/06 New York Times Openers section. “Tyson Foods, the world’s largest chicken producer and meat processing company, blamed high corn prices last week for its third consecutive quarterly loss. It said that the recent excitement over corn-based ethanol fuel sent the price of that grain soaring, raising feed costs and compounding the effect of a meat glut that depressed prices. “This is either corn for feed for corn for fuel,” Rich L. Bond, president and chief executive, lamented in a statement. ...

I spent the weekend in Louisville, Kentucky thinking about analogies (and how new things are like old things.) Amy and I took four friends to the Breeders Cup (also known as the Super Bowl of Horse Racing.) I’m not a horse person (I’m actually afraid of them), but I like to humor my wife whenever I can. We had a great time and – as I looked around the very expansive race track (that I’d been at once before for the Kentucky Derby) – I realized that horse racing is “NASCAR for Snooty People.” I was down $40 for the day (I quit betting after I lost my second race in a row – I still can’t figure out how to bet a trifecta.) ...

I’m sitting in first class on an evening flight from Denver to New York. I’m in row 6 and just got up to go to the bathroom. As I stood up I had a nice view of the 20 people in front of me. Eight of them (nine including me) are on their computers. They are a mix of Dell and IBM laptops. Every single person is working in a Microsoft Office app – about half are in Outlook, a few in Word, and one in Powerpoint. No Macs. No “online thingys” (we’re on an airplane – that online thingy doesn’t really work so good without connectivity.) Fascinating. And – yes – it’s United and the bathroom – even in first class – is filthy.

Education in Colorado is a well known “issue” for anyone that lives here. While our current (and soon to be previous) political leadership (e.g. the governor’s office) hasn’t done much, a number of incredibly hard working and dedicated people – such as my good friend Jared Polis – have thrown themselves deeply into the challenge of trying to improve the education system in Colorado. Lisa Reeves of SAP – who happens to live in Boulder – send me two great things last week. The first is a remarkable blog called The Fischbowl which is spearheaded by Karl Fisch – the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School . It’s an awesome example of how blogging can be used to in a high school. In addition to Karl’s blog, Lisa send me a superb presentation that everyone should click through and ponder. My favorite slide segment is “Name this Country: ...

Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002 and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written an essay called After Pat’s Birthday that everyone should read regardless of their political ideology – and reflect on what Kevin has to say. Thanks Dick for pointing it out.

Once again, Google announced financials that are incredible. If I’m on the exec team at Yahoo or Microsoft, I’m having a drink tonight wondering what I’m doing wrong and what dramatic moves I can make to try to regain some momentum and take some of it away from Google. Hint – publishers, publishers, publishers .

I finally had my bizarre TSA / toothpaste confiscation experience. It was bound to happen – I’m just surprised it took this long. Yesterday I went through security at DIA. Like a good little traveller, I had put my toothbrush, toothpaste, and bacitracin (for the cut on my knee that is still healing) in a small ziplock bag. I took the ziplock bag out of my carry on bag and put it in the grey storage tub, along with the contents of my pockets, my shoes, my laptop, my spare laptop battery, and my coat (ok – it was three tubs.) The person behind me bumped me and pushed my stuff forward as he was trying to undress and get all his paraphernalia into a tub. ...

I believe I’m seeing a steady increase in the lack of critical thinking from everywhere. In an effort to be recursive, I thought about why I thought I was seeing more of this (and if in fact it was an increase, or I was just noticing it more.) My “instinct” is that I’m seeing more of it, which amuses me when I ponder it. My hypothesis is that it’s coming from a few places: ...

I saw the post A Thousand Hall Monitors from Yahoo this morning and immediately thought “why is YPN focusing on the wrong thing?” YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) is way behind Google AdSense. They are trying – hard – to catch up – and doing plenty of smart things. They should have three goals – all really simple. Get their targeting technology to be equal to or better than Google. Sign up as many advertisers as possible. Sign up as many publishers as possible. Duh. Pretty simple. So – why is someone posing as (in their words) the “cross librarian” and telling people to “tattle on publishers that are violating the YPN Terms and Conditions.” ...

I have listened to NPR every day that I’m in the car on my way into work for as long as I can remember. I have fond memories of hearing Morning Edition in the car as a kid whenever my dad drove me in the morning (which was very rarely – my bike got a good workout.) Last year house Republicans tried to kill funding for NPR and PBS – it was defeated. ...