Weekend Reads
I had a very rough week this past week. I spent about a week and half on a paper and then realized I did it entirely wrong, urgh. So I am now having to start over and redo the entire thing, so in actuality I wasted about 10days that I could have spent on sometime productive. Oh well, I did learn quite a bit about the media industry and the impacts of the Internet on it in the process, so I guess all is good.
I did have a few hours here or there where I just kinda said screw it and I spent time on other things so I have lots I read this week. If you talked to me any this week most of these stories probably aren't new, I talked about some of them quite a bit.
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Ahhh its the Holiday season. You can always tell right when the holiday season begins because its right when a right wing Christian declares its boycotting something. This year its GAP by the American Family Association due to GAP's holiday adds where they said "Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanzaa, Go Solstice" I don't see what the big deal is, looks like GAP finally gave in and is now trying to please everyone. There are some people your never please.
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On the subject of please people I read an interesting article about a solider who found a gun and turned it into the police and then was arrested and charged for having the gun! Poor solider was just trying to please the police by doing the right thing. This story blew my mind, come on, we make the rules that means we can follow them how we see fit. This is just plain laziness by the police and the judge, instead of trying to find out where the gun came from they will instead just place blame on the person who tried to help them. I hope this goes to a higher court and is overturned, and I hope this police chief is fired for such a stupid move!
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When it comes to stupid looks like Florida may have a lead in the race. We were been rated the strangest state when it comes to news stories. Funny, all my friends have been telling me this for years and I didn't believe, guess they were right.
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But not to worry Florida hasn't won it all. Looks like Oregon, and of course California, beat us in a rating of states in fiscal peril. I agree with the writer though that Oregon is much better than Florida, though I disagree its because they tax the rich. I think it has more to do with their sprawl laws that he just briefly mentioned.
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While on the subject of money I found a graph this week that shows where Fortune 500 companies are located, I was surprised to see how many were in Texas. Charts like these help me remember data and internally process it better, I wish we had more charts likes this!
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Robert Scoble this week blogged about the worst things new starts up can do. It made me think about how I am wanting to start Causation. Its easy for me to see how it will run once its up and going, its so difficult to see those first few baby steps though.
I was reading the book Silicon Alley this week and after this blog entry it pointed out all the wrong things that companies like Razorfish did. I hope that I learn from their lessons and that Causation is a success due to its strong founding.
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One thing that I want Causation to be focused on is being environmentally sensitive. This story about GE being focused on smaller options made me think about what each individual can do. My father had the opportunity to invest in some of this technology a few years ago so I have been following the individual wind turbine thought for the last few years, there is lots of potential here, I just hope that people realize its a financially smart move.
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This story about a tiny house inspired me. I live in a 525sq ft 2 bedroom house (yes I know IKEA had large show houses on its sales floor) and everyone makes fun of my tiny little house with 6 lightbulbs (yes it only takes 6 lightbulbs to light up my entire house and one window unit AC to cool it!) so this video of 96sq ft home challenged me to maybe have my next house be even smaller!
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One of the reasons I love the Orlando Sentinel is because its trying to make the news interactive. This feature on how people are moving out of Florida is a great example, the article itself kinda stinks but the interactive feature on the top kept me interested in the story and through it I learned quiet a bit about where people moving to Florida are coming from and where people moving out of Florida are going.
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On a completely different note I was first impressed that they named a new species after Steve Irwin but then a read what creature it was. A man known for wrestling alligators, sharks, and other creators, who dies because a stingray attacks him has a creature named after him and its a SNAIL! come on people! a snail. how sad is that, in the future people will Steve Irwin because of some tiny small snail and not because of some crazy insane guy. strange.
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On a more serious note I read an article beginning of the week that made me rethink how we may have to deal with terrorist. I must admit that I had oversimplified the matter before reading this, I am not sure if I agree with every thing this article says but it made me realize that matter is much more difficult than most people try to make it.
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And to finish off the list I'll include an article of general interest that I read about toilet paper. I love finding out new and interesting facts about the things we take for granted. I have books and books that I read over and over filled with random stories and facts like this. I don't know why but understanding the things around me that most people never think about really interest me.
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Well thats about it for this week. I have a few other articles and entries I've been thinking about but I think those will be used in some entries this week. If not I'll post them in next week's weekend reads. Have a good weekend. I'll be home researching Personal Rapid Transit systems all weekend for a proposal I'm presenting on Tuesday. This week I'm super busy with school. This week and next are my two weeks of presentations, papers, and projects then its the end of the semester. crazy.

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