Local Digital Statistical Logistical

Again, where is your value added?:

Whose trade tradeoff is on or based off

The More Things Stay The Same...

An Affair of the Wallet.

If anyone figures out how to make money without making money, let me know.

Magnetised Aligned Crystal Readings

Somewhere amongst Boy Scout manuals, nature identification books and computer programming guides is "Old Wives' Tales: Life-Stories of African Women" that I picked up out of pile of discounted paperbacks in a university bookstore around 1980.

Although I no longer compete with colleagues to design and purchase the latest gizmos that define the best of modern conveniences, I stay in touch in order to observe the developments within modern society.

I dabble in my tiny lab in the study.

I go out into crowds, watching and listening to the rhythmic flow of conversations, free/constrained facial expressions and socially-trained body gestures.

Then I read books on as many different topics as I wish.

The Book of the Future back in my clutches, I consult with my programmers, the Committee of 7.5, a witch doctor, the crystal ball, old movies, the weather (local, solar, and galactic), the two in the know, our cats, the birds in the yard, general news headlines, the condition of my skin, the taste of tapwater, and, of course, colleagues, associates, friends and family.

All so that I can best decipher and translate what the current moment means to those looking back at us from infinite points in the future and past.

Anthropologically, this blog records the slow degradation of the concept of the individual person as a special phenomenon outside the interaction of states of energy.

Using something like 128 symbols (or fewer) to convey messages steeped in humour, satirically wrapped in a false sense of sarcastic cynicism.

Do you believe in crystal healing? Would you believe that strips of dark-coloured tape contain magnetised particles that turn into images and sounds of people and places that no longer exist, as if conjured by magic?

Imagine a Coriolis effect of military attacks flowing backward, the U.S./Japan attacking North Korea/China, Pakistan attacking India, Russia attacking the E.U., Iran attacking Israel, South Africa attacking the midcontinent, and Venezuela attacking Brasil.

All in the name of military corporations showing nonmilitary companies who really controls Earth?

As if conjured by magic.

Some on the committee want to pursue that course, reducing the global population considerably, and redraw the world map of political boundaries to their longterm advantage.

For the publicly-sworn cause of advancing the species, freeing up valuable rare resources for populating the galaxy with current versions of ourselves and portable ecosystems.

Other committee members want to sell a gaqzillion gadgets, depleting raw sources of rare minerals that'll have to be recycled out of refuse in the future, to increase their wealth so they can become well-loved philanthropists in their old age.

Can you see a future where both are accommodated?

Give every member of the general populace [the illusion of] happiness in the moment and hope for the future AND remembrance of the golden days of the past.

Then they'll give you whatever you want - they'll even pay you for the privilege.

After all, deep down we know we're on this big ball together - we participate in the moment and prepare for the future as one, the past belonging to everyone (no matter how atrocious or triumphant).

What Happens When You Are Your Public Self

A virtual you is here now.  Where are you?

Afield and in the stream of technology

Want to live away from it all but work as if you aren't?:

Rural outsourcing gaining stride

Orange You Glad?

I'm thinking out loud here, letting thoughts flow through fingers on a non-designed course.

I woke up this morning with the word "stasis" and the word "status" competing to become "statice," "statics," or "state." Too bad I don't remember the dream associated with the words at play.

Duck hunting, blinds, and camo in Scottsboro, along with Ann at Walmart, Gail at UBC and Karli at Krystal.

By keying in all the groups in concert with and opposition to one another, we get to see why seven billion can resolve issues together, including peacelike negotiations and warlike fighting.

Humour does not mean peace or war. For many, the daily struggles omit all three.

I am a lazy guy, about as demotivated as a person can get who knows his lifelong dream will not be realised in his lifetime.

But I continue on. Hope is a stronger word than despair.

A messenger carrying a fraction of a message multiple generations in length knows that the game is neither won nor lost in a single generation.

I live as if my life never began and never ends, every action of mine making a significant difference, no matter how seemingly insignificant - an eternal symphony by a faceless/nameless composer, conducted by an invisible concertmaster.

My teachers guaranteed that the responsibility of freedom is not easy to handle. Every person adjusts according to individual capabilities.

I use humour, the sharpest, strongest, fiercest and gentlest talent I have.

I have no enemies but there are those I watch carefully, because I know many take advantage of the fact life as we know it is inherently not fair.

I live here and now, no when/where else.

Some would give corporations a corporeal reality but people run corporations. Corporations don't live and breathe except as memes in our shared social interactions. They are means for people to pay mortgages and raise children. Not an end in themselves.

As long as corporate officers and shareholders proport (and purport) job creation as the fuel for corporations, then I'll focus on the byproducts and waste that make corporations inefficient in the larger ecosocioeconomic picture.

We can talk all day about hierarchies, matrices and flat organisations laid bare by social media but at the end of every workday most people are heading back to their home lives dominated by a separate set of social media dominators.

Which one of the following would you call the most normal family situation?:

a. An Amazonian tribe isolated from modern society,
b. An Amish community living and working on farms insulated against the modern society around them,
c. An extended family living in a set of high-rise flats and working in the middle of a large metropolitan area fully participating in modern society.

What you say against a group or idea perpetuates that group or idea. The best way to oppose something is through silence.

Better yet, build a positive alternative that attracts people away from supporting the group or idea you oppose.

Negativity is a means to a dead end (and there will always be those who build a detour that avoids a dead end as long as possible, in order to extend their negative message pathway as long as they can before their untimely end is met).

Am I auditory or visual by default? I'm not sure. These words imply otherwise.

Thanks to Lamar and those who demo'd the color Nook at B&N in Choo-Choo city; Oh Henry's restaurant; the Times-News for local sports coverage.

Does a Fork Have Three Tines or Four?

In this parallel universe, I bounce the ideas you give me against the protagonists wandering around waiting for instructions on what they're supposed to do next with their lives.

A single word changes the course of these fictional characters' purposeful campaigns.

Should I let them continue on toward more concentration of riches, exclusive information ownership and bigger, stronger, more luxurious gates/walls preventing access to the masses?

I am an individual who works in this imaginary world but does not live here.

As the information gatekeeper, I have access to both of my imaginary friends' worlds.

I will not live to see how their scenarios here completely play out in comparison to the real world.

"Is this a morality play?" I ask myself when a word spoken in imaginary and real terms has the same (or equal) effect.

I try to convince myself that I don't know what I or my colleagues in the real world are talking about.

Empires come and go.  No one lives forever here or there.  Languages spoken and not written are forgotten.

In this imaginary world, friends tell me that they feel betrayed by their popularly-chosen leader.  Since they don't have a "vote of no confidence" or a call for new elections to force a change of leadership, they're banking on other methods to voice their lack of confidence and desire for a new leader.

They believe local leaders who are emboldened by this current superregional leader are using redistricting and school closing methods to cause a "flight" of specific populations from neighbourhoods so the local leaders can get their own friends into the neighbourhoods (and more cheaply, too).

I'm glad all of this is imaginary because, if I had the slightest inkling that it was true, well...

I asked my associates Sal and Vince, who provide bodyguard personal security services for the Committee of 7.5, if they had heard any of these rumours, they being in on the know and the know-how that ain't nobody's business no-how.

They said, yeah, they'd heard it, too.  They was watching the real estate prices like all good investors - houses, flats, estates, commercial properties catering to the military, that sort of thing - seeing as how it never hurts to turn a tidy profit when no one ain't looking.

They asked me why I was interested, me being all about the species and the big picture and all that.

I told them it was simply a matter of a subplot in a story I was writing.  They nodded.  Enough said.  They knew all about digging up plots and turning them into subplots.

You've seen how they operate - a burning cigarette accidentally dropped on the carpet and a high-rise burns (boins) down, a brake line breaks and a car careens out of control down a hillside, a Hollywood type don't pay her dues and she gets what's coming to her, some "kids" tear into a laboratory for kicks, leaving graffiti around and a virus spreads unchecked.

Life is full of mishaps that resemble art.

Their priest tells them to turn the other cheek but he don't say nothing about what they're supposed to do when they're looking the other way with their cheek turned.

That's why I don't judge my friends, colleagues and associates.  Business is business.  Money makes the world of money go up and down.  Favours make sure we all got something to hide and the means to pay for keeping them hidden.

If you want another Houdini, Chamberlain or Hitler, I can't stop you.  History if full of history about people who can't learn from history.

Besides, this is just fiction.  It's not like my friends are trying to tell me the truth.

I mean, if you picked up a metal object on the road and the object had one end split in two, would you call it a tuning fork or an eating fork missing a couple of tines?  Some of my old mountain friends would call it a miniature divining rod.  I would just call it a fork in the road.

The decision's up to you.  You can START negotiations now or put them off until the future.  If you put them off, can you prove you did so because you were investigating a trail of information that someone was trying to hide from you before ratification was completed?  Would the people believe your story about the reasons for saying no on the crucial day when you needed them to say yes for you one more time?

Granted You Know What You're Doing

Are you ready for the webcast?

You Go Ahead And Fight The Liberal/Conservative Fight

While we obsess about the old labels of right, left, conservative, liberal, et al, here in America, the rest of the world, both developed and developing, is focused on the future:

The idea of America through an Indian lens

I'm with the rest of the world on this issue.  Political infighting gets us nowhere fast.  If you want America stuck in a rut until 2012, you'll get your wish.

Let's put the past behind us, teach our children to value practical/technical skills rather than watch us being examples of complaining and whining about what's wrong with this country.

Lots of business opportunities out there, if we're willing to look and maybe change career paths every once in a while.

Education is a lifelong process.  Laurels of past victories fade quickly, turning to dust before our eyes.  When the game or race changes, you've got to learn new skills or nurture old/new talents to win.

It doesn't have to be EUSA vs. BRIC vs. AFRASIA.

Seven billion strong, I tell you.  That's all.

And Now This?

So, today I activate my new Bank of America card (which goes back to the card issued to me when I was in college in the 1980s).

And then I surf the Web to find this article:

Let's Set the Record Straight on Bank of America: Open the Books!

 Good thing my wife and I are careful about our monthly expenditures, using credit cards as convenient cash replacements rather than debt accumulators.

Sounds like Debtor Nation participants are snookered into toxic loans.  We still haven't held the predators responsible, thus freeing up the future for more of the same.

Welcome to the history of our species, more affluent and longer living on average.  What have we gained in what we've lost?

With tongue in cheek and my eye in a wink, I look to the bright light I call the future where miracles happen all the time.

Thanks to Heather at Houston's in Memphis, U.G. White Mercantile in Athens, Amy at Sooner or Lather Bath Works, and Steak & Shake.

Linked To Baidu Lately?

Anyone met Li recently?:

Forbes Lists Li

As wealth disparity spreads throughout the world, including China, should we concern ourselves about ensuring we don't experience a surprise people's uprising?

Or is revolution normal?

Just because much of our species' activities can be tracked electronically or through low-tech surveillance doesn't mean we always know what's going on.

I've got to get that Book of the Future back.  Working in the dark is interesting, challenging and all those other independent words but not always fun.  I prefer to base future projections on facts, not emotional conjectures (although anything will do in a pinch - emotional levels are important indicators).

Away We Go

I was pumped and excited after the U.S. elections two years ago.  I am just as pumped and excited today about the election two days ago.

Change is good.

Time to look forward, watching updates not only from NASA but from commercial ventures, too, such as SpaceX and news about space flight in general.

All while reading "Dark Side of the Moon" by Wayne Biddle - the dead never live to see the retelling of their life histories to fit the views of the time - and "Never Order Barbecue in Maine" by Ken Tanner - you don't have to be radical or a maverick to succeed, but it doesn't hurt to be one, either.

It's a bright, cool day in fall - time to take a short hike into the woods and remember why living is where it's at.  Always good to meet a snail or bird that has no clue what all these funny-looking scribbles we call words are about.

A Connection Between Adversity, Diversity and University - Versatility!

The other day, while Conan was letting a bunch of neighbours take his Veyron for a spin around the playground, I stopped snapping photos to consider what it's like to be a frugal millionaire.

Then, after watching Leno crash his electric Sparrow at the sight of his protege having more fun fans than he, I knew what it was that perplexed my complexion.

There are only two people on this planet who know what's really going on and I can't tell you their names.

Sitting on a secret is liking sitting on a flight from Yemen to the UK or the US - the seat cushion's hot for no apparent reason, except for that teeny-tiny lipo battery installed in your posteriour that keeps your pacemaker and you alive.

What if they accuse you of being a living version of a box of toner?

Even worse, what if you have no effect on the economic recovery of your favourite country?

For me, it's a dream come true.  I always wanted to be an unknown nobody and if I don't spend my uncounted millions, nobody'll know who I am 'cause I won't change the engine of growth we call the bartering society.

I leave it up to my colleagues and associates to decide how to conduct business like a symphony, causing mass movements for both fun and profit.  Seven billion people to have fun with, joke with and siphon off legal gains in public and other laundromat material out of the public eye.

I got an invitation to a museum opening.  The director wanted me to see the new works of art.  When I look in them galleries, all I can see are those transactions of my friends that have to be covered by purchasing overhyped splotches of paint on canvas or wire and sticks stuck together in so-called sculptures.  But, hey, if it keeps the creative types occupied, you know how I am - don't let the idle curiosity seekers poke into my business and I'll pay to have them dedicated to esoterica.

Besides, I've got friends with billions to spend on founding colonies off of this world.  It ain't art but it should make us a pretty penny, what with the adverts we'll sell along the way.  That, and the film tie-ins promoting trinkets all the kids'll want.  We'll make the Star Wars franchise look like a rank-and-file amateur production.

And Now, Back To The Finance Folks...

Important thoughts for entrepreneurs?  Probably so:

Innovation, Risk, Taxes

The Canary In The Dairy

Read this nontweet about tweeting:

CIO Magazine - The Four Biggest Mistakes Businesses Make on Twitter

How Does That Apply To You/Me/Us?

Just how social are you?  Are they?:

Kleiner Perkins: Get Social, or Get Left Behind

If you're going to promote the viability of your city, do you and 150 of your best friends buy a Mercedes-Benz?  Do you?:

India's smaller cities show off growing wealth

Can just anyone get to space?  Can he?:

"To the moon with yourself"

Would a country and its companions encourage a continued devaluation of its currency to decrease a foreign entity's holdings?  Would I?

Best purchase in a long time: "The Four Antiphonal Organs of the Cathedral of Freiberg Played Simultaneously By E. Power Biggs, Bach/The Four "Great" Toccatas and Fugues" for $.95 on LP by Columbia Masterworks at McKay's.

Some days, questions are all there are to ask, wrapped in colloquial colonialistic antipathy, neither for nor against anything in particular.

On The Hunt For Good Pepper

Why is it, when I think of Cameron or Clegg, I automatically think "keg"?

Have you ever monitored the output of the professors at Woodrow Wilson College?

Last night, I sat and listened to a typical academician's report on an ongoing report about academic issues - the intersection of scientists and entrepreneurship presented by David Audretsch, Ph.D., on the campus of UAHuntsville.  I stuck it out for 30 minutes before I figured I had better things to do, like finding scientifically-minded entrepreneurs instead of hearing about digging some out of a statistically-significant pile.

Despite contrariness on my part, happiness is my only act of sacredness.  Otherwise, nothing is sacred to me - all subjects are not off-limits or off-subject.

Labels are labels - if, for instance, a person says s/he is for limited government but works for a government contractor or an entity that receives government funding, I ask myself if anything that person says is supposed to make just as much sense.

It's easier to turn a blind sow's ear than to make pearls out of evergreen trees.

So it's facts I deal with and let people throw out all the labels they choose to use to support whatever tautology they wish to call their own.

A simple fact.  I heard Soos Weber give a presentation on why it's important to preserve acreage in the state of Alabama to ensure we have clean drinking water, places for huntable/fishable wildlife to spawn/reproduce, and recreational areas for us people to get away from it all every now and then.  Especially when the funding comes from offshore drilling and not from the state's coffers.

Nowadays, anyone with a computer, a projector and a laser pointer can give a powerful slideshow presentation.

Thus, as much as I know Soos and trust that the board of trustees of Forever Wild have my best interests (as a general citizen) at heart, I had to find out for myself if their intentions lined up with reality.

Yesterday, I jumped on the computer, looked up a nearby wildlife management area called The Walls of Jericho, packed a shoulder bag with water, dried almonds/cranberries, apple, water and first aid kit, slipped on a pair of sneakers under my dress pants and drove an hour or so to a gravel parking lot.

On the way there, I realized there was a public outdoor shooting range and a local road called Highway 65 that any God-rearing hogriding member of the NRA would love to travel and get to.

Imagine the perfect family vacation.  Dad and son like the bikes and the guns.  Mom and daughter like horse riding and stirring up some victuals.  They load up their horses, picnic gear and motorbikes, pull off on Highway 65, let momma drive the truck on to The Walls of Jericho horse trail in the Skyline Management Area while the boys take off on their bikes to get to the shooting range before they stop at the The Walls of Jericho hiking trail.  They all meet up at the Walls of Jericho picnic/camping area hungry as a bunch of hibernating bears in spring.

But I digress.  After I shouldered my pack, put on my NASCAR cap, and grabbed my handmade walking stick out of the trunk of the car at 10:30, an hour and a half later I stood inside the natural amphitheater called The Walls of Jericho.  Imagine, if you can, seeing Niagara Falls without water rushing over the precipice.  That's The Walls of Jericho, walls of jericho, walls of... [simulating echo effect].

To get there you zigzag through switchbacks, walk across two log footbridges and see lots of wooded hillsides.  Tread quietly and you'll observe the natural setting for great barred owls, minnows, cardinals and other creatures I won't mention because you have to be there to appreciate them.

When I got there at noon, two young persons were rolling up their campsite where they had slept under the stars on the edge of The Walls of Jericho the night before.

I ate my apples, almonds and cranberries, downed half a liter of water, snapped a few photos with my pocket-sized cannon (make that a Canon SD1200 Elph) and within 15 minutes I was on the trail again, returning along the edges of cliffs and dropoffs, passing other solitary hikers making their way into the "Grand Canyon of the South."

By 13:45 I was back at the car - sweaty, happy and talkative - describing to some hesitant folks in the carpark exactly how strenuous the 5-mile hike was in dress pants and sneakers.  I convinced one couple to find an easier trail and another couple to take the challenge.

By 15:00 I was home, taking a shower (and then later a nap) before getting ready to hear Paul A. flip electronic charts about milking academic scientists for money.

I am a happy man.  Although I live in a state that has the lowest number of publicly accessible lands to enjoy, there are still many choices for outdoor hiking/camping (as opposed to mall walking and hotel sleepovers) within a drive of an hour or so.

This in a metropolitan area that some joke has the highest number of Ph.D.s per square inch.

What more can a good ol' boy like me, with the intelligence my parents gave and nurtured in me, ask for?

From the News Desk of Our Caracas / Karachi / Tehran Bureaus

So often I've been told that one group of people is tired of all the flood of noise coming from another group.

"We're tired of the Western influence on the world."

"One more elevator piping Muzak and I'm going to explode!"

Having seen from another country the local reporting of international headlines filled with important "news" from my country, I understand only one thing: squeaky wheels.

There are more Chinese Internet users than there are people in the U.S. so why are non-U.S. countries entertaining us with U.S. news rather than news about internal Chinese events?

I say we experiment by only publishing the usual sensational/shocking/negative news about China rather than the U.S. and make the Venezuelas and Irans of the world happy.

Better yet, let's publish the same news about Venezuela and Iran in international headlines all the time - the 24/7 shocking accusations and innuendos about their politicians, athletes and film stars; tantalising hints about debauchery in business deals; "on the street" reports about the hidden poverty, crime and general malaise.

Oh, and occasional "feel good" stories to change the tone/pace of news and keep citizens glued to their TVs, radios, computers, and mobile phones.

After years of hearing how excitingly decadent these countries are, we'll run some polls to determine what global citizens think are the countries with the most ruinous children of Satan.

Or we can agree that news proliferation is proportional to the number of people free to file reports, positive and negative, about countries and events.

Is it a fair system? Certainly not. After all, news sells advertising. Advertisers like news that sells their company image in a positive light.

"A family of eight, after just filling their petrol tank with refined Iranian fuel, wiped out in fiery head-on collision on crowded Venezuelan motorway. More news at 11. Have you considered buying a new automobile lately? Then, Brand X, with its slew of family-friendly safety features, is the way to go. Now, back to your regular programming."

Where Are You In The Circle?

The circle of life.  We've all heard the phrase.

Where do you find yourself, if you find yourself, in the new circle?:

Your Online Life: Spokes On The Hub

How Successful Are Your Responses To Changing Market Conditions?

Reading and listening.  Basic functions of many of our lives.

How we read and listen has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years.

For thousands of years, we shared our stories and songs in person.  Then recorded music and books came along.

Now the digital world has flattened the hierarchies associated with delivery of music and reading material.  This blog, for instance - a combination of "letter to the editor," opinion column, short story and personal diary, any one of which would have been used to make money - is available to the public essentially for free.

What about those who deliver your news and music?

One man, Mr. Anderson, offers his take on the business.  He feels like he's up against the "nearly-free content for our hardware platform" model sold by Steve Jobs and the "nearly-free hardware platform for our content" model sold by Jeff Bezos.

Another comments on the demise of a local bookseller, ending with a timeless quote from John Donne's work.

So, no matter whether you make your money as a street vendor or as owner of all products supplied to street vendors, you've got to keep up with what your customers want that'll also help you stay in business.

Thanks to the Internet, I found an interesting article breaking down a report by Credit Suisse about distribution of wealth around this planet.

Being part of the top 1% of the world's wealthiest might seem like a life of jetsetting from one pleasure spot to another but it's not.  At least not for those who like to put themselves to others' use - keeping their employees happily well-fed, funding parts of society that aren't easily able to see how they can lift themselves up by their bootstraps and generally staying busily engaged in the businesses that brought you to the Top 1% Table.

I'm tired of all the negative news headlines trying to sell you advertising.  Not that I'm against advertising.  I mean, how else can we compete for your attention and get you interested in a product you may have never known you wanted or needed?  Seriously.

Therefore, I'm not going to compete against the headlines for your attention.  Instead, I'm focused on getting you focused on caring for one another again.

No more petty arguments about who's got the best idea about [fill in the blank].  Let's try all the ideas and keep moving along until one idea or a few of the ideas bubble to the surface with success for those whom the idea(s) best serves.

Reiteration, reiteration, reiteration.

If distribution doesn't work, then try another business.  If construction engineering is petering out, try pollution engineering.  If pollution engineering isn't profitable for you, try biomedical engineering.

Hire a bunch of enterprising young people to become your farm of apps for the iPads, Droids and Google TVs of the world.

Hire farmers to host a server farm in a corner of their property to cover costs when times are bad because of weather, precipitous produce price drops, etc.

You don't have to think outside the box.  You can reinvent the use of the box and stay firmly planted in it!