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High Times Shopping In The Sky Mall

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Sometimes I Don’t Get Marketing

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are some things I just don’t get.

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For example I don’t get most things that have to do with home decorating. When Christmas rolls around my wife will take some classy looking ornaments and, say, arrange them on a side table over a snazzy table cloth with some glass bead strings snaked around the table.

It looks great! But I never would have thought to do that on my own. To my way of thinking ornaments belonged on a tree. Arranging them festively on a table would never have occurred to me.

This sort of thing has become a running joke in our marriage. We’ll see something along those lines and she will turn to me. Do you get that? You don’t get that do you?

Nope.

It looks great and all. But that someone would have taken the time and effort? Don’t get it.

I’m really OK with not getting some things.

I get most things about business. But there are some things about the whole marketing thing that I just make me shake my head. Nope. Don’t get that either. [Read more…]

Free FCC Ringtones: When Is a Monopoly Not a Monopoly?

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I’ve Got a Question

Isn’t a generally accepted principle here in the US that monopolies are pretty much bad things?

I mean it’s something that most folks here seem to agree on regardless of their political persuasion. Those who shade toward the conservative side see competition as beneficial for the economy. And folks with a more liberal outlook generally see behemoth corporations as undesirable.

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And didn’t the US government spend something like 8 years in court to break up the monopoly that AT&T had over out nation’s communication system?

I’m sure they spent a ton of our tax dollars on that.

They Say That Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Where I lived we weren’t too affected one way or the other by the break up. We happened to live in a very rural part of Upstate New York and our family somewhat affectionately called our local phone company, Taconic Telephone, Rinky-dink Tel. [Read more…]

That’s Okay . . . We’ll Sit in the Dark

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How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?

Wait, wait. Don’t tell me. I’m sure I know this one.

Scanning through the headlines yesterday I saw this one:

California may ban conventional lightbulbs by 2012

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What will they think of next?

Apparently conventional lightbulbs are bad. They are the scourge of the planet and must be banned. That wondrous joy of late night reading that Thomas Edison gave to us nearly 140 years ago has to be cast aside in favor of newer, more expensive technologies.

And California has just the legislature to make this happen.

You see there are folks there who are working on enacting a ban on traditional incandescent lightbulbs. This would leave folks in the Golden State with a couple options. [Read more…]

What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Learning

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“Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.” –Sir Winston Churchill

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I took Friday off from my “regular” job and went to a local blogging conference here in Savannah. I was surprised by the folks who attended.

What surprised me were the large number of folks who were there because they didn’t know much of anything about blogging and wanted to learn. In fact there were so many that the organizer of the conference adjusted the schedule and added an impromptu session to cover some of the basics of terminology so that those folks could get more out of the rest of the sessions.

That was very cool.

However there were also one or two folks there who didn’t share the enthusiasm to learn. One lady in particular seemed to have her understanding of blogging all worked out before she got there (although I don’t think she’s blogging herself) and spent a large portion of the conference time attempting to convince the rest of us to accept her views.

Apparently she was too smart for the rest of us and certainly wasn’t interested in learning from us.

She apparently didn’t like being taught.

Of course I’m not one who enjoys life’s forced lessons either. I was being taught how not to completely bite someone’s head off.

Fortunately for me while I was talking my wife happened to be sitting behind the challenging person and was able to help me out by signaling me to keep my cool. I hadn’t realized before that public speaking can be a team sport.

I sure appreciated my teammate helping me keep from doing something foolish!

But I didn’t much enjoy the learning process for that one Friday.

Sometimes my attitude toward learning is similar to my attitude toward exercise. I like having learned, not learning in just about the same way I like having exercised, not the act of exercising itself.

The best part about working out for me is finishing!

Oftentimes life’s lessons are painful to learn. However the benefit of having learned them makes that pain oh-so worthwhile.

How about you? Do you always enjoy the learning process?

What are some things we can do to make that process a little less challenging for us?

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.

The Politics of Money and Race in the South

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Storm on the Horizon

There’s a political storm brewing in my current home state that I only became aware of because of an attention grabbing headline at the Drudge Report this morning.

White Atlanta suburbs push for secession…

It’s just the sort of thing to make this former New York Yankee now living in the Deep South here in Savannah perk up and take notice of some state politics. So I did a little quick poking around ala Google and here is what I found out.

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Background

Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton county although a portion of the city extends over into DeKalb county, which seems to be a curious result of the original sight selection for a railroad terminal. Apparently there was a strong “not in my back yard” mindset in North Georgia in the 1830’s because the residents of Decatur were worried about train noise and insisted the proposed terminal be built well outside of town to the west across the Chattahoochee River. From what I can gather Fulton county was formed from the western half of DeKalb count round about 1853 as the area west of the river grew (due to the railroad terminal, of course).

Then skip ahead to the Great Depression in the early 1930’s. The two poor, rural, scarcely populated counties just to the south (Campbell county) and north (Milton county) of Fulton county were all merged together because the poorer counties were going bankrupt at the time. It created a sprawling elongated Fulton county, with the areas of the two former counties being referred to as North Fulton and South Fulton. It seemed all was well. [Read more…]

What’s Up With The Weather?

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What’s going on?

Things are crazy right now. Winter is not behaving normally. California is freezing their oranges off. Seattle has gotten pounded. Again. New Mexico has seen cattle killing blizzards.
Current US Temperatures
I heard about a town somewhere in Nebraska yesterday that has been without power since around the first of the year and isn’t expected to get it back for several more weeks.

And then here in Savannah we’ve still been wearing short sleeve shirts with 70 degree days. I mean look at the current temperature map. There’s a whole lot of pink in places that are usually yellow this time of year.

Don’t get me wrong. For my part I’m not complaining. We’ve had it easy so far this winter.

But wildly unusual weather like this does make it a bit challenging to continue to be a global warming skeptic.

A Convenient Theory

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Now I admit that being skeptical on the global warming thing is probably not so popular. But please don’t think that I am anti-environment. Fuel economy is high on our priority list in my car purchases. And even though the places we’ve lived in the South make it challenging to recycle my wife and I have recycled on our own through private concerns when we could.

In spite of the fact that I care, I’m still skeptical. It just seems too convenient to hear the high priests of the environment declare “Global Warming” at every single unusual weather thing that happens. Record high temperatures? Global Warming. El Niño? Global Warming. Oranges freezing in California? Obviously Global Warming!

I find it a tad suspicious that the theory seems to bend just a touch each time so that regardless what happens it can be incorporated as evidence the sky is falling. No, wait: The earth is warming.

Perhaps I’m a little simple minded or ignorant. But I have questions about the whole deal.

But how does record cold weather somewhere provide evidence that the planet is warming up?

Comparing how ever many millions of years our planet has been around with the few thousand years folks have been walking around (and the few hundred we’ve actually been recording the temperatures) how can we really be sure this isn’t some cyclical thing that is perfectly normal for our world?

When they take ice core probe temperatures they have to make some assumptions about things such as build up rates and stability of temperature at various depths. While these assumptions may be reasonable, how can we be sure they are true?

Different Biases

Now I admit I bring my own biases to the topic. Personally I think it is a bit arrogant for humans to believe we have that much influence or control over our planet.

As evidence exhibit A I’ll point to the science of Meteorology. In spite of all our technological advances and know how it is still pretty much a crap shoot whenever the weather guessers try to predict the future conditions in any particular location.

If our best scientists have such a hard time telling us accurately whether it is going to rain on the kids soccer game tomorrow night, how can we be so confident that what they tell us is coming down the road in a few centuries is any more accurate?

I guess I get the feeling on this one that many folks have made up their minds that human activity on this planet is bad by definition. Therefore they seem to present everything that happens through the bias that “proves” we are flushing ourselves down the toilet.

Maybe we are. I’ve gotta admit things are definitely a bit weird right now.

But maybe the planet is more resilient that most folks give it credit for. But that’s just The Way I C it.

Chris Cree is a regular contributor here at Successful-Blog and he helps businesses fuel growth through blogging with his consulting business, SuccessCREEations.