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Posted on July 31st, 2007 by Myk.
Categories: Philanthropy & Environment, Business & Finance.
I suppose lots of things grow on trees–construction cranes in Miami, investment bankers in NY, pubs in the UK; but lots of things don’t either. Integrity in politics, sleeves in New Jersey, and grapes do not (1. there is a huge demand for political integrity and, as a known fact, it is commonly exchanged on the black market for cartons of cigarettes, which are then sold to prison inmates which resell them for all sorts of goods/services 2. somewhere in New Jersey there is a warehouse filled with sleeves–they have to set them somplace from all the sleevless shirts those guidos wear 3. grapes come from vines, Dummy). Creativity, too, does not grow on trees. No matter how smart you are, it doesn’t mean you have a creative bone in your body.
PaidContent.org wrote an article about an interesting project (in theory) run by The Economist. Code-named Project Red Stripe, it was a six-member team comprised of The Economist Group’s employees tasked to create an innovative and web-based product, service or business model from Sep 06 to July 27th. C’mon monkey, type!
What they concocted is what is generally referred to as crap. The team took 10 months to think up a service connecting the Economist community with non-governmental organizations needing help–something like a Facebook for the Economist’s group audience. Sounds like they put 6 MBAs (call them a “Learning Team”) in a room for a week. They were so effective that they came up with…ANOTHER social network??? The idea is as unoriginal and unproven (in the long term, meaning over 3 years) as it is uninspired. It was SO bad, effectively, that even they admit it and the project was deemed a “catastrophic failure of a global magnitude.” Kidding. But they did put the project on “cold storage”.
Now, the Economist happens to be my favorite publication–but not because it’s creative–because it’s thorough and gives me maximum relevant information in minimum time (1 issue a week). Why the hell do they have to go monkeying around with their secret sauce??
You see, creativity does NOT grow on trees. Most people are not relevantly creative–which means locking someone in a room for a week or a month will not yield creative results in most cases. People’s minds usually aren’t generally endowed with that power. It’s like a superhero’s strength; few have it and even fewer can or will direct it towards good.
For the record, any company now dealing with social networking, user generated content, green technology, and mobile (cell phone) applications, are NOT creative. They may come up with cool technical innovations, but they (and their VC enablers) are simply riding the current wave of what’s marketable. Smart guys, probably. Creative, neehhh…
Examples of creative types are: the Google guys, Edison, they guy who invented those mint strips that melt in your mouth, and Jesus (although not Buddha or Lao Tzu or Mohammed). Er wait, maybe it was the dudes who wrote the bible, not Jesus, who were creative. K scratch him.
Posted on July 31st, 2007 by Phil.
Categories: Media & Entertainment, Travel & Leisure, History & Politics, Arts & Literature, Humor & Pop Culture.
It seems that we’ve had a good number of friends either making visits to Moscow lately, or talking about doing it sometime soon. As such, I thought I’d offer up the following primer for anyone heading out to good old Mother Russia. This link offers a treasure trove of information on the coutry in a fun and easily digestible form:
In our view, the great times of the Moscow party scene have come and gone, and the real places to see now are the smaller CIS countries in Eaatern Europe. Still, there is lots of fun yet to be had in Moscow, and it is worth visiting at least once. So for those of you wondering what to expect from the nightlife, I offer you this appetizer:
Posted on July 29th, 2007 by Phil.
Categories: History & Politics, Business & Finance.
Reports from the Pentagon and the White house confirm that the current US administration is planning a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The US administration is also simultaneously planning a substantial increase in military aid to Israel, which would rise from $2.4B to $3B per year over the next decade. According to a senior US defense department official, the plan “is critical to the overarching architecture… to deal with the changing strategic threat from Iran and other forces.” So much for promoting stability in the Middle East.
Iran is certainly an enemy of the US, but that doesn’t exactly make Saudi Arabia a friend. Just because the House of Saud and the Bush family are oil and gas buddies, doesn’t mean they have any common interests other than money and power. In fact, the Saudis embody everything the Bush administration claims to have been wrong with America’s pre-9/11 policy. Little things like turning a blind eye to dictatorship, embracing a total lack of basic individual rights, and the blatant promotion of radical Islamist ideologies. It is the Saudis giving billions upon billions of dollars to fund madrassas, where Muslims learn they must wage jihad against America and Israel. Maybe our government is just trying to see how bad they can make the situation in the hopes that the whole region blows itself to bits, and we can sweep in and make a killing on the cleanup and restructuring. Oh yeah, and recapture the holy lands, and secure enough fossil fuels to sustain our energy habit.
Posted on July 26th, 2007 by Phil.
Categories: Media & Entertainment, Humor & Pop Culture.
The other night I was chatting with Crystal, a MySpace friend of mine, about the upcoming tryouts for her school’s cheer squad. Crystal’s a frisky little number, with quite a saucy temperament for such a young girl. According to her profile she’s a tall, beautiful 20 year old blonde with deep blue eyes, works part time as a model, and has a passion for dance music, costume parties, and the other girls on her cheerleading squad. Naughty, very naughty. Nice catch for the internet right? Well apparently not so. I just found out that Crystal is a 46 year old man named Bruce from Provo, Utah. Bruce is fat, has lot of back hair, a history of exposing himself to nuns and sexually abusing young boys, and was just released after serving a 1 year term for molesting a dead horse. I guess that’s what I deserve for claiming that I’m a 21 year old lesbian on my profile.
Is this story true? Maybe. OK, no, it didn’t happen to me, but I’d bet real money that something very similar has happened to lots of unsuspecting people. How do I know, well MySpace recently announced the deletion of 30,000 profiles from its network - when they discovered that the account holders were all registered sex offenders. This isn’t the first time they’ve done a scan and made group deletions, and it certainly won’t be the last. As North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper put it, “MySpace is a treasure trove of potential victims for child predators. Sex offenders have no business being on this site, and we believe MySpace has a responsibility to get them off (the site).”
All I can hope is that somewhere out there are two sleazy old men, both posing as teenage girls, wanking in cyberspace.
Posted on July 25th, 2007 by Myk.
Categories: Media & Entertainment, Humor & Pop Culture.
Once in a while, we write about something actually important. This, alas, is not one of those times. The Coreys: Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. All of us growing up in the US knew this adolescent duo well from movies such as The Lost Boys and License to Drive. They were cool man–from hanging out with Michael Jackson (see our previous post for more MJ) to being friends onscreen as well as offscreen–they were a testament to the buddy system. Pairs just have more cache than individuals. Then, when the calendar hit 1990, they disappeared.
Follow drug habits and stints in rehab…straight to home videos. Ouch–but we know this is a normal route for child stars, right? But, you know what, they’re back! These guys…They have a new show called The Two Coreys coming out on A&E. We even got invited to the opening party–you should go if you’re in LA (we’ve attached the invite below).
I suppose my only commentary besides “geez where the hell have you both been for the past two decades” is guys, “you’re lookin rugged.” Kids, please please look at these two now–drugs are bad for you.
Posted on July 24th, 2007 by Trey.
Categories: Uncategorized, Travel & Leisure.
After a 2 week European trip, I have returned to the States still thinking about how much better “life” is over there. Oddly enough, I’ve been coming across several lists ranking which cities of the world are the best to live in. These comprehensive lists evaluate “the brightest and most liveable cities around right now, taking into consideration their infrastructures, business opportunities, cosmopolitanism, green spaces, and of course the general well-being of their respective inhabitants.”
There were several consistent winners amongst each list, but each also seemed to skew towards a few favorite countries or continents. Not being satisfied with a clear winner(s) emerging, I decided that the only decisive way to pick the winner would be to throw all the results into Excel for a bit of data analysis. (Note: I did this on a Mac as to retain the hipness factor in the results.)
So let your mid life crisis begin as you find out exactly where you should be living these days. If you’re in America, you are not on this list (exception Hawaii).
Top 20 Cities to live: 2007
1 Zürich
2 Vienna
3 Vancouver
4 Copenhagen
5 Sidney
6 Geneva
7 Melbourne
8 Munich
9 Montreal
10 Düsseldorf
10 Stockholm
12 Auckland
13 Frankfurt
14 Toronto
15 Helsinki
16 Perth
17 Tokyo
18 Honolulu
19 Amsterdam
20 Berlin
Sadly I’ve only been to 4 of these places; 2 of which (Helsinki and Stockholm) were part of my latest trip. Both cities offered a remarkably different quality of life compared to Los Angeles and my friend who lives in Helsinki doesn’t appear to be moving back to the States anytime soon. I’m interested to hear what the other VM readers think of this list. What cities do you think are the best? Also, all claims should be backed with at least 2-3 good reasons.
Sources of Data
Monocle’s List: (Anyone ever heard of Monocle Magazine?)
The City Mayors List:
CNN.com List:
Posted on July 23rd, 2007 by Myk.
Categories: History & Politics, Humor & Pop Culture.
Maybe there are better places to be incarcerated than in the US. If you’re a white collar criminal, you go to a country club, read novellas, and enjoy a basically pretty boring leisurely existence. If you’re an average Joe crook, you are sent someplace to die of some curable disease, get a prison tat on your face, maybe get a little love from the brothas…but c’mon, some other country has got to be able to do better than that.
Enter the Philippines. Apparently, they like to liven up the existence of their inmates with something a little special. Watch this You Tube video to see how Filipino prisoners spend at least a little part of each day. There is of course a slight chance that this is not really a Filipino prison but I, for one, choose to believe. Because without hope, what’ve we got? So enjoy the show and if you are thinking about breaking the law, for your sake, please consider the jurisdiction into which you fall.
Posted on July 21st, 2007 by Myk.
Categories: Philosophy & Spirituality, History & Politics.
We hear about the politics of religion EVERY DAY. Worse, we TALK about the politics of religion every day. Xtian, Muslim, Jewish–there are clearly many issues at hand but what annoys me is that most individuals (Politicians, Business Leaders, College Grads, you get the point) can’t even begin to explain the difference between religions from an ideological or historical perspective. But you all know this already. Btw, I don’t exclude myself from this claim–there are A LOT of things to know and understand. Too much information, probably. But at least I don’t make unsubstantiated claims (that I actually believe 
).
I’ve just found a great site Maps of War that in 90 seconds depicts the history of religion in fast forward. Since I can never embed movies into my posts (sorry guys) click this link to watch the movie. It’s worth it–you will be absorbed for about a minute and a half–then you’ll realize you may have learned something.
Posted on July 20th, 2007 by Phil.
Categories: Consumer Products, Philanthropy & Environment, Humor & Pop Culture.
Looking around on Craigslist for an RV to rent for this year’s Burning Man, I somehow wandered over to peruse the auto classifieds section. After all, I’m moving soon, and I will need a new car eventually. Not too interested by the sea of Accords and Jeeps for sale, I found myself both suddenly captivated and utterly appalled by the listing posted for the orange beast shown above. The seller touts this antiquated creature as “an original”, and something that makes a “bold statement”. Yeah, that statement is ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment!’. I’d bet dollars to donuts that this puppy doesn’t get more than 7 or 8 miles to the gallon, downhill. But that’s just the beginning. The self-indulgent current owner goes further to say that the car’s true benefit is actually how recognizable and popular the car is, stating that “many a door man and valet at LA’s top restaurants and clubs know it all too well”. Staggers the imagination. I guess it just goes to show you that America is still living in the past, and California is not as progressive as its residents think. If a sputtering gas-guzzler like this, painted in Dukes of Hazzard style confederate flag theme colors, is a heralded and respected car in LA, then we definitely have a long way to go before we’re all driving zero-emission cars.
Posted on July 18th, 2007 by Myk.
Categories: Travel & Leisure, Science & Technology.
Skintight spacesuits?? Oh yeah…that’s hott. Well, maybe on a girl. MIT’s Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, has prototyped a new spacesuit that is lightweight & skintight and that will allow astronauts to explore Mars more effectively, or pose on the cover of Vogue (see above). Since spacesuits were invented 40 years ago, the gas-pressurized outfits have not changed very much, kind of like the Shuttle and Larry King (Daniel Baldwin’s 18 year battle with cocaine addiction anyone?), but it’s time for all these relics to be retired.
From MIT’s press release:
Newman’s prototype suit is a revolutionary departure from the traditional model. Instead of using gas pressurization, which exerts a force on the astronaut’s body to protect it from the vacuum of space, the suit relies on mechanical counter-pressure, which involves wrapping tight layers of material around the body. The trick is to make a suit that is skintight but stretches with the body, allowing freedom of movement.
It all sounds good to me–better yet it would be great if astronauts wear uniforms like in Luc Besson’s Fifth Element (one of the best movies of ALL time). What I DO think is that it’s fascinating that we are planning to get ourselves onto the Moon or Mars soon and are building the gear for it. Cause that means this stuff might happen in our lives. Think about that–Virgin Galactic is just the beginning people. Welcome to the future.
