The Curator
Think of the last time you went into a bookstore and ended up carrying around a short stack of books with you. Now, in this particular made-up situation, you're only going to buy one of them. You're just having trouble making a decision. How do you make the choice? Is it based on the author? The subject matter? The way the cover looks? The blurb on the back of the jacket? There's a variety of...
Large
Why are we always so attracted to massive ideas? Talk about opening a coffee shop, creating an iPhone app for checking traffic reports, or say you're going to write a screenplay that's reminiscent of Crash that will require massive financial backing, then encouragement will beat a path to your door. Do it, everyone says, because they know that if you win, then you win big. At least, big enough to make it worth your trouble....
One for the History Books
I'm not actually one for watching a lot of news. The breaking headlines about the situation in Egypt didn't interest me at all in the beginning, when the revolution first started. As soon as I caught wind of Mubarak stepping down, however, I immediately had to read about the revolution and what had happened. I like news as soon as it becomes history, when the story we're hearing about reaches its conclusion. I guess I...
Permission Slip
You remember the drill: a group of students from your school are going to leave school and visit someplace, and you've got to take home a permission slip for your parents to sign. The school couldn't just pull you out of your regular routine and take you someplace. They had to get the okay from your folks. At other times, if you wanted to do something, you had to raise your hand and ask the...
Hot for Teacher
In the 1970's, someone decided to do a study of college professors. The setting for the experiment was a lecture hall in which each professor was giving a speech in front of a large audience of students. And all of the students in the classroom were participants in this experiment. (I wish I had been in on this kind of thing at least once when I was in college.) The professor stood while lecturing, and...
Where's the Hard Part?
There's always something. If there isn't, you should do something else. I had a friend once try to convince me that we should set up an online store selling drop-shipped goods. In theory, the website itself would do little more than put content out to Google, capture orders, and pass them on to the drop shipper, who would fulfill them and handle any customer service issues. I thought it was a terrible idea, just because...
Back to the Beginning
About a year after I got out of college, I had an idea for a website. And, since I didn't have any money, I decided to build it myself. It wasn't much of an idea...just an online liquor directory that would let people post reviews of their favorite liquors. My hope was to use it to get promotional booze samples from liquor companies. The thing was, I had no idea what I was doing. I...
Kiss and Tell
I was speaking with a gentleman last night who told me that he thinks truly good people volunteer to help others, but they never talk about the fact they volunteer. They just do in silence. I have another friend who lashed out both the members of the tea party and the people who marched to make fun of the tea party. Waste of time, he said, adding that if you want to make a difference,...
By Example
About two and a half years ago, I moved from Michigan to California. The city to which I relocated has a large number of bicycle lanes. To me, in my limited set of experience with cities in the United States, this is pretty unusual. Many of the bike lanes are so wide that you can fit an entire car in them. When I first moved out here, I noticed that several cars pulled into the...
In the Know
With rumors of the iPad 2 dropping this month, startups are asking after the specs and features it will feature. Everyone is looking for the inside scoop, because once they get that, and if they get it before everyone else, they can get a jump on building the next big thing. There are probably even people trying to get details onthe iPhone 5. I remain unconvinced. If you want to engage in insider trading, then...