Musings of Erin

So here I am searching for Mothers Day Flowers and I find this beautiful basket. Adrian - look here

~E

God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found Him resting on the seventh day. he inquired of God. “Where have you been?”

God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, “Look, Michael. Look what I’ve made.”

Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, “What is it?”

“It’s a planet,” replied God, “and I’ve put Life on it. I’m going to call it Earth and it’s going to be a great place of balance.”

“Balance?” inquired Michael, “I’m still confused.”

God explained, pointing to different parts of earth. “For example, northern Europe will be a place of great opportu nity and wealth, while southern Europe is going to be poor.

Over there I’ve placed a continent of white people, and over there is a continent of black people. Balance in all things,” God continued pointing to different countries.

“This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice.”

The Archangel, impressed by God’s work, then pointed to a land area and said “What’s that one?”

“Ah,” said God “That’s Washington State, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, plains, and coulees. The people from Washington State are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to be found traveling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as diplomats, and carriers of peace.”

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, “But what about balance, God? You said there would be balance.”

God smiled, “There is another Washington… Wait til you see the idiots I put there.”

From Forwarded Funnies.com Link

For those of you who follow my business blog as well (and probably those who don’t) you can tell I save all my shopping for one day about every three months. Probably because I’m not the biggest fan of shopping, and even more so because there’s so much crap to choose from.

HOWEVER, i’ve found this great site, GourmetGiftBaskets.com, that I just have to tell you about. Not for mother’s day - oh, no, that would be too hum-drum for us. No, here, they’re offering Fathers Day Gift Baskets! (No affiliate links here!)

On the other blog I mentioned the Golfer’s Gift Basket, and this one is the Fishing Gift Basket. I don’t know quite why I’m so enthralled with the idea… I guess it’s because I like the ‘basket theme’ this year. I wonder: have these been out forever and I’ve never found them?

What would you consider a wonderful, unique father’s day gift for the ‘average joe’?

Not blogging - marriage. Admittedly, blogging is much easier… and more profitable.

ANYWHO - I was thinking paintball. What 20-something male wouldn’t like to go shoot a few rounds of paintball on the anniversary? So here’s what I’m thinking - get a few airsoft guns and hit a paintball course.

I think i’d be the coolest wife ever. And then, I’d get to involve myself in some unnecessary violence as well

Now, I’ll admit that I wasn’t aware that vioxx had been pulled from the market. Actually, I’ve been blatently ignoring anything with the word vioxx in it for about 6 months now. I wasn’t listening to the advertising in the first place, and when they tried to cram their way into my inbox, I stopped paying attention altogether.

It turns out it’s bad for you! I’m really not suprised to see another pharmaceutical being pulled from market. How could I be, when the possible side effects most often are scarier than the symtom the drug is trying to cover.

WARNING: Please do not take this before bedtime, during waking hours, before eating, after eating, with or without milk. Possible side effects include third-degree burns to the esophogas, skin bubbling, ear drum disintegration, a creepy burning feeling all over your abdomen, and brain explosion. Use at your own risk.

Anyway, FightingforYou.com, an legal firm specializing in vioxx lawsuits, cites a study and says:

The clinical trial, initially developed to determine whether Vioxx would be effective in preventing colon polyps, found that those taking the drug for longer than 18 months had double the risk of a heart attack or stroke as those taking a placebo. Those taking the highest daily recommended dosage were found to have three times the risk of a severe coronary event.

Now, I’m don’t believe in pharmaceutical companies advertising to uneducated consumers. In my opinion, the pharmacuetical industry’s sales practices are shady at best - I’ve heard of them pillowing doctors offices with free samples and give them nice bonuses when prescriptions are given.

This leads me to wonder, are we just poisioning ourselves because of what we see on TV? We put so much faith in our doctors and the FDA, that when something like this BLOWS UP in our faces, can we really be surprised? We’re asking for cures for aging, and symtoms thereof, when we should be asking for cures for AIDS, MS, etc. Why are cosmetic and natural-aging remedies more important than life-saving and preventative medicine?

I may never understand…

The more I think about it, the more I think Squidoo is a grownup version of MySpace - and here’s why:

1. MySpace is a community where people, usually in the 12-25 age bracket, post pages that highlight their favorite music, tell a little about themselves, and is pretty self-serving. You want to meet people, you get a MySpace page, tell about yourself, and hopefully you’ll get very very popular, make lots of friends, and boost your favorite musicians into fame.

2. Squidoo is a community where you get a ‘lens’ and create a page centered around a specific topic - anything from cooking crawdads to solopreneur marketing to the social ramifications of boingboing. Modules try to sell using amazon, ebay, affiliate links, and google adsense - all the while adding to the greater cosmos of Squidoo’s information laboratory.

Am I the only one who sees the correlation?

Now, I may have some bias in my opinions, as yesterday (4/5/06) Seth Godin mentioned my BoingBoing lens on his blog, thus driving a flock of people to my blog(s) lens(es) and website(s) - and compelling all my contacts to write me an email in regard to it.

I’m sure Squidoo has a place, as does MySpace and Second Life. But, I can’t help but wonder if all we’re doing is recreating the MySpace paradigm for the over-30 crowd.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Why? Let me know below…

Link to full sized image (via BoingBoing)

Last night my niece came to me asking for some help with her MySpace page, and I couldn’t help but ask what drew her to MySpace to begin with. As I was fiddling around with her page, she deved into these intense relationships she’s developed with other people who have myspace accounts (most of whom she knew in the ‘real world’ beforehand), the feeling of belonging (from having a bazillion ‘friends’), and just being able to post her feelings at any time. Mostly, she said, having a MySpace account makes her feel popular.

This morning, I read Jeremiah Owyang’s blog, and read a post titled, The Internet Country Club:

DJHowatt and I have been discussing the ramifications of the internet, blogging, social media, and it’s impact on society. The other night we even scribbled on a placemat at Birk’s restaurant analyzing and debating Spheres of Influence, and how the blogosphere is the same/difference.He often proclaims that while technology is an enabler and that nothing has really changed. Humans still seek and uplift experts (the A-lister hierarchy) and that massive social networks are still limited to the amount of individuals a human can have in his or her network.

And then, in another blog post (this guy certainly has a lot to say about social networking) he goes on to talk about the MySpace generation entering the workforce, and employers having to deal with the ramifications of potential employees having such a history with blogging, MySpace, and the like:

This will change the Workforce Experience
It starts with getting into college, Wanna Go to College, Watch what you blog says Shel Israel. Soon employees will “Google” applicants to see what their online presence has been like. You can use Opinmind, to figure out what people have said…(give it a shot type in ‘boss’). Be careful students, once you publish your RSS feed is locked in cyberspace, sometimes you may not be able to retrieve it. I consider my blog (this blog) as my resume –I’ll write about that soon.

They will work with you –embrace!
Online personal and online professional content will mix, as sales teams begin to read, learn, and engage prospects using blogs. I know this for a fact, because it’s happening to me. (and I think it’s a good thing too). Employees will communicate with each other using blogs, both internal and external blogs, several of my colleagues are already blogging publicly.

It is quite amazing, now that I think of it, how many of these kids are actively blogging, and becoming more and more technologically advanced than even I was as a kid (and I was a techno-geek, even then). We see people still scoffing at the internet because of the dot-com bust of the late ’90s - and this new wave of people hardly recall what happened 7 years ago. We’re looking at the future of entrepreneurs - who have learned from our mistakes, and who are already blurring the line between the real and the virtual world.

Take a look at How to Be a Successful Intern for the first bit of the next generation - it’s a amazing look at what’s to come.

Tags: MySpace, social networking, blogging

From what I can gather, the united states is trying to do a massive overhaul of the immigration system. And, while I can understand the concern, it’s been something the US has used to grow to its advantage for some time now. I wonder: will immigration reform do much good outside of politics?

First of all, the several thousand illegal immigrants we have in this country do not all come from Mexico (even though that’s the MSM picture). We have immigrants who’ve come to the US to go to school, and stayed past their Visa expiration and are dutifully paying lots of taxes in their high-paying jobs. We have middle-class illegals who are running foodstands and other necessity-businesses (as I like to call them), that (IMO) are enabling the survival of our poor. Then, there are the lower class illegals, who are washing dishes in our local Dennys, picking the grapes for our favorite Sonoma wines, cleaning the hotels we spend so much time in, etc. All of these people are contributing to society - many are working where the ‘normal’ american won’t - so why are we pushing them away?

The Senate’s answer to this: guest-worker cards. From The Albuquerque Tribune:

Two cards in fact, one blue and one gold, the nicknames used in the Senate Judiciary Committee for the guest-worker visas authorized by the bill being considered by the full Senate.

The blue card is for the 1.5 million seasonal agricultural workers the bill would authorize each year.

The gold card is for the 400,000 guest workers the bill would allow annually.

Why do people leave their home country in the first place? Are they looking for amnesty? A chance for a better life? Maybe they’re fleeing Cuban Communism or Asian family regulations. Are they educating themselves? What is their chance of being allowed into the US legally?

I don’t think immigration reform will do much good, whether we ‘build a wall’ between the US and Mexico and fund border patrols, or we require guest-worker cards. You see, what I think, is many people come here out of desperation - they have the hope that the US will bring them a better life. And, usually, they’re right.

I know I’m an idealist - I’d like to have open borders. I know that isn’t feasible. But, our system is in shambles as it is. We have to overhaul the whole thing - from public education to social security to health care. Then, there’s the whole Iraq civil war we’re involved in… Shouldn’t the government recognize there are more pressing matters at hand?

Tags: united states, immigration, immigration reform, politics, guest-worker, border patrol