My kid loves BAND-AIDs. She believes that, any time she’s wounded, a BAND-AID strip will make it better. I’m not talking about bleeding, here – I mean, if she sprains her finger, the dog steps on her foot, or if she has a stiff neck – a BAND-AID will fix her right up. My apologies to the fine folks at Johnson & Johnson, but that ain’t necessisarily so. Don’t get me wrong…adhesive bandages serve a useful purpose in the healing process, but they are not the one-size-fits-all, universal cure that my daughter would have me believe. (If they were, I wouldn’t mind our anual expenditures for BAND-AIDs, which seems to be a significant portion of the family debt, since she’s taken to putting them on EVERYTHING…) [Read more…] about BAND-AID® Marketing.
Media
EUReKa!…I think they’re on to something.
I love creative things. In particular, I’ve always loved science fiction (which gives writers a way to violate reality to serve their story ideas) and humor (which requires both creativity and intelligence to do really well). So when the SciFi channel launched EUReKA, a show that combines sicence fiction with humor, I quickly became a fan. Then they did something that, at the time at least, was creative in a marketing sense. They created a website that was a “we’re going to pretend as if all this is real” kind of thing, that somehow made the show that much beter. It was cool. The show was cool. And they were doing some pioneering work in how to use the web to market a show.
Season Two just started, and they have pulled off yet again another innovative idea in marketing – they’ve blurred the lines between product placement and conventional advertising, and in the process have forged something new, different, and in many ways, pretty scary. [Read more…] about EUReKa!…I think they’re on to something.
My two cents.
I’ve been in the business of using computers, in one way or another, since 1982. I wrote my first college paper on an Apple III. I owned one of the original IBM PCs (Hercules Graphics Card! 512K RAM! Two full-height 5 1/4″ Floppy Drives! Dot Matrix Printer! DOS 2.0! Ashton-Tate Framework! All for the low, low price of $4,000!!!). I’ve worked as a software engineer, product manager, project manager, marketing manager, and user interface evangelist for software publishing companies. I was around for the birth of Windows 1.0, the life and death of COMDEX, the rise of the common user interface, the Year of the LAN, and a slew of other things, long consigned to the dust bin of computer history. I’ve been a user, author, coder, beta-tester, evangelist, designer, and planner. In short, I’ve held just about every job you can hold in the software industry.
Now I’m writing reviews. [Read more…] about My two cents.
The Problem with Miley.
Know what a “Tween” is? Unless you’ve been living under a rock (which might not be such a bad idea, actually), you know a tween is the trendy label for those ages 9 to 12 – not quite a child anymore, but not quite a teenager. A “tweenager,” if you will. I’m the proud father of a tween. She’s obsessed with all the typical things that girls her age are – fashion, Miley Cyrus, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and fashion. The problem is, I’m not sold on the idea that all those obsessions are the right ones.
Here’s the deal. I had a great childhood. Idyllic, really. I want the same for my daughter. But we live in a radically different world today, and I’m afraid she’s being exposed to a lot of things that are stealing her childhood right out from under our noses. [Read more…] about The Problem with Miley.
Don’t Buy This Book.
I love to read. I read just about everything I can get my hands on – from mysteries to histories, tech books to cook books. My favorite for light reading are in the techo-thriller genre…books about heroic Americans fighting the spies and soliders of other countries or terrorists. Glenn Beck (one of my favorite radio/TV guys) had author Christopher Reich on his show recently, to plug the book Rules of Deception. Beck mentioned that he’d not yet read the book (never a good idea to plug something you haven’t read, Glenn), but he was amazed that, as the story revolved around Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium for the express purpose of building nuclear weapons, that the New York Times had given the book a glowing review. Little did I know when I bought it that there was a good reason the NY Times loved it. [Read more…] about Don’t Buy This Book.
Zig Obama.
I’m a conservative. (Note I didn’t say “I’m a Republican.” In today’s world of RINOs – Republicans In Name Only – running the show, I can’t claim kinship…the word “Republican” has no real meaning any more.)
As a conservative, I’m against practically everything Obama stands for. You know – socialism, higher taxes, less national defense, more appeasement – that sort of thing. Frankly, Obama scared me silly from the begining, as I see him as the perfect candidate for this age of political parties held hostage by radical fringe groups and a mainstream media who has abandoned their traditional job as neutral observers and become a bunch of cheerleaders for a single candidate (Obama, if you’ve not been paying attentition to the blatant media bias). But last night, as I watched The Annointed One address a political rally in Germany (?!), I realized what REALLY scares me about this guy. [Read more…] about Zig Obama.
On Hypocricy.
Here’s the deal. Ever since the MoveOn.org crowd decided that the morals of a politician were nobody’s business but their own, we’ve lived in a world of double standards. Both those on the Left (Sen. Edwards, Jesse Jackson, Rep. Jefferson, etc.) and those on the right (Larry Craig, Ted Stevens, etc.) try their best to convince us that their private behavior has no bearing on their public fortunes.
That’s a load of B.S.
This is an issue of trust, and if someone is a hypocrite, you simply can’t – or at least shouldn’t – trust them. [Read more…] about On Hypocricy.
Why doesn’t Islam practice excommunication?
Whoo, boy, am I opening a can o’ worms on THIS one. Exhibit A to the left here is one of the cartoons the Danish papers had the courage to print. Now, it’s not that the cartoon is really in bad taste – not when we Christians have to content with the ‘art’ of Robert Maplethorpe, and countless other depections in the media of Christians as narrow-minded, biggoted simpletons – but it is not the cartoon itself (nor what it implies) that I want to talk about tonight. No, campers, it is the reaction to the cartoons – not by the radical Islamists, but by everyone else. [Read more…] about Why doesn’t Islam practice excommunication?
The War – Here and Abroad.
Got some news this morning. My Marine Reservist son is scheduled to ship out to Camp Pendleton in April, then out to Iraq in September.
A lot of people have wondered openly if my support for President Bush and the Iraq War would change if my son was involved. I’m happy to report that if it has, it’s only made me more resolute in my support.
What the mainstream media and the left fails to grasp are several fundamental truths. First, when someone wants to kill you (Al Qaeda) you have to choose: fight or flight. They carried the fight to our shores, so there is nowhere to run (even if we were so inclined). It’s far better to fight on their turf than ours. You’ll notice that a large number of fighters captured in Iraq are from parts beyond Iraq. Therefore, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (but evidently more braincells than Alec Baldwin posesses) to see that the terrorists have traveled to where the fight is (Iraq) to fight us.
Here’s a clue for you liberals out there. This is a good thing. [Read more…] about The War – Here and Abroad.
The (Un)importance of Being Oscar
I skipped the Oscar broadcast Sunday. I’m not alone. So did millions of other Americans. From what I hear, the ratings were off 10% from last year, which were down significantly from the year before. In fact, Uncle Oscar’s been slipping quite a bit in recent years. For the life of them, Hollywood can’t seem to figure out why.
I think I know.
I’m a red-stater. Proud of it. I’m one of the ones with which George Clooney admits to being “out-of-touch.” At one time, Hollywood proudly made movies that I was interested in seeing. Star Wars (the first one…you know…episode IV), Patton, Young Frankenstein. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Big budget – small budget – I didn’t care. As long as it was entertaining, I didn’t care if it was a war picture, a western, a comedy, even a love story. Along the way, though, Hollywood forgot about entertaining me, and decided their mission was to indoctrinate me into their cause célèbres.
[Read more…] about The (Un)importance of Being Oscar