Musings of Erin

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

Thanks to the Me, Myself, and I blog, I’ve had a chuckle today:

Four Catholic ladies are having coffee together,
discussing how important their children are.

The first one tells her friends,
“My son is a priest.
When he walks into a room, everyone calls him “Father.”

The second Catholic woman chirps,
“Well, my son is a bishop.
Whenever he walks into a room, people say, ‘Your Grace’.”

The third Catholic woman says smugly,
“Well, not to put you down, but my son is a cardinal.
Whenever he walks into a room, people say ‘Your Eminence’.”

The fourth Catholic woman sips her coffee in silence.
The first three women give her this subtle “Well…?”

She replies,
“My son is a gorgeous, 6′2″, hardbodied, well hung, male stripper.
Whenever he walks into a room, women say, My God….”

Link

It’s just amazing what some people will do for attention.

Scott Allen, of The Virtual Handshake and Entrepreneur.com fame (he blogs for http://entrepreneur.about.com) has been joe jobbed! A Joe Job, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an incident of spamming designed to tarnish the reputation of an innocent third party.”

What they’ve done with Scott is taken his name and email addressed and spammed the hell out of a lot of blogs… some of which hadn’t heard of him. They’ve sometimes inserted his telephone number, and other times used his wife’s name.

Thankfully, he’s taken some sage advice and reported the incidence(s) he’s aware of to the FBI internet crime devision. Since the joe jobber has implicated About.com, I’m sure their mighty legal department may have something to say regarding it. If you want to help the case, and help clear an honest man’s name:

How You Can Help

If you have received one of these bogus comments in my or my wife’s name (Jayne), please do the following:

1. Leave it up until I can capture a screen shot as evidence.
2. Make a note of the raw IP address.
3. If you can, please make a note of any other comment spam from the same IP address. This is particularly important.
4. Contact me with the information.
5. Once I’ve confirmed back to you that I’ve got the screenshot, delete the comment.

If you would like to support me in helping keep my name clear and catch this perpetrator:

1. Please post about it in your blog and link back to this post.
2. If you see fake comments in my name like the ones above, please contact me with the URL so I can gather evidence and contact the blog owner.

Link

Tags: Scott Allen, joe job, spam

My birthday went fine - I went to see the movie Curious George with my daughter. It was quite good, for a regular animated flick. The animators managed to breathe this life into curious George that I didn’t anticipate. He is portrayed very authentically - like a small child full of curiosity and love. Being a long-time fan of the book series, I wasn’t disappointed. Even more surprising is the fact that I saw a kids flick on my birthday and still had an awesome time.

I was never much of a party person anyway - it was nice, peaceful, and I got to do everything I wanted. I even went to B&N and bought a (*gasp*) fiction book.

After spending entirely too much time wandering around B&N (which is exactly why I shop for books online - I can never remember the titles I want to read, or those that people have recommended to me) my daughter was getting pretty PO’ed that she was still following me around, waiting to read her new book at the coffeeshop. I decided that I was bored with the hunt as well, and called upon an old routine of mine.

Up until a few years ago, I would make my weekly bookstore trip with the intention of finding someone to recommend a book to me. The only rules: 1) The person shouldn’t be too involved in their task; and 2) has to be a total stranger.

So I’m wandering around, following the flow of books from self-help to business to new releases, science fiction, then regular plain ol’ fiction, and I stumble upon a B&N employee who is oh-so-excited to be restocking a few books.

He was about as noticable as a shadow - for sure he had stringy brown hair and was average height. I didn’t catch his name, although theoretically his name tag should have been right at eye-level for me. I’m pretty sure he was somewhere in the 18-45 age bracket. Needless to say, pretty forgettable. Interestingly enough, it’s usually the forgettable people who recommend the best books - thereby making them remember-able. I intend on returning to B&N to find out “dude’s” name.

So anyway, I approach Dude and inquire, “If you could recommend one book, off the top of your head, what would it be?”

“What kind of books do you like?” Responds Dude.

“Not fair,” says I. “Off the top of your head.”

“Do you like fantastic-reality type books?”

“I like stories. Plain and simple.”

(For the record, as a sidenote, he was speaking about the cyberpunk genre)

“Have you read Murakami?” Dude asks. This sounds like some alien-speak - of which I have no babel fish. I shrug my shoulders and trust that the Universe will find me a decent book to read.

Dude hands me a book, with a face on the cover. “It’s kind of a heart-wrenching book.”

“Aren’t all good stories, to some extent, heart wrenching?” I say.
Laughingly, Dude replies, “I’ve been through at least three copies of it. It’s the best I know”

I smile, he smiles, my daughter looks irritated - we part ways. And after buying the book, ordering my coffee, and settling in for a little quality reading-time at The Starbucks at B&N I notice the title: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami. (That word finally clicks in my head. Murakami is not alien, nor do I need a babel fish. What I need to do is become familiar with Japanese surnames)

That title alone clicks with me - I don’t know why I didn’t notice it sooner. I flip frantically to the first page. Must read first paragraph, must read first paragraph….

“The elevator continued it’s impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. But let’s just assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I’d circled the globe. How would I know?”

I like it. Really. The writing style is very engaging - you will definately see a book review from me on this work. There are some very good reviews of Hard-Boiled Wonderland on Amazon… I’m not nuts