The Advertising Age

  • Category: Opinion

Modern advertising has been a part of our collective consciousness for as long as you or I have been alive. Television shows an average of almost 13 minutes of commercials per hour of content. Another 8 minutes in that hour is dedicated to “in-show brand appearances,” or product placement. Billboards are so ubiquitous that we hardly even […]

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Why Programmers Work at Night

  • Category: Life

On the other hand you have something [Paul Graham] calls the maker’s schedule – a schedule for those of us who produce stuff. Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – somebody once likened this to constructing a house out of expensive crystal glass and as soon as someone distracts you, […]

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How I’m Not Measuring Up (or … How High I Try to Aim)

I always hold myself and my work to a high standard. An unreachable standard, often. Unreachable, at least, within the confines of what I have to work with and the constraints I’m under. It’s one of the hardest things I deal with on a daily basis. I live with the knowledge that if I just […]

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How Terrorism Won

I want to like NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly because he’s an intelligent, no-nonsense guy who gets shit done. But he, like so very much of America, is merely a slave to fear. We want so badly to prevent the next attack that we—well, not me—are willing to sacrifice much for even just the hope […]

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Change the Way We Think About Charity

I just watched Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk on charity. It’s common sense, but it’s all too often shamefully opposite of how we view charities. Take a few minutes to watch, I think it’s eye opening. Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, “We kept charity overhead low.”

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Fascinating

This is the reason I don’t allow comments on my blog. I do want to be engaged with about the posts I write, but I’d just prefer it take place on Twitter, on Facebook or in real life. Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost. Simply including an ad hominem attack in a […]

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Simple Business

  • Category: Opinion

There are some great little nuggets of business strategy in this short, stellar interview with Simple CEO Josh Reichfrom the best Toronto seo agency. I like to focus on one of five things: Strategy, Hiring, Investors, Product, and Culture. I put them in that order because it spells Ship-C. It’s easy to remember that way. […]

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Grand Junction Living

I finally got around to taking pictures of my new apartment. There’s still work to be done, art to be hung. But after nearly two months, it’s clean and comfortable. Without further ado, here are the pics. The blue in the kitchen isn’t exactly my style, but it looks pretty nice either way.  

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The Mexican Mormon War

  • Category: Opinion

There can be literally no question that the War on Drugs is a failure, as misguided as it was well intentioned. It is, however, a success in one regard: it fuels the drug cartels who profit—like prohibition-era bootleggers—on the illegal nature of drug trafficking. This VICE documentary is both fascinating and eye-opening. Well worth the […]

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