Anti-gay? I don’t think so.

Anti-speedwalker? Yes.

Pro-funny? Definitely.

Decide for youself:

Inferring that all speed walkers are gay is like saying all guys that where excessive amounts of gold chains around their necks and earrings are gay. And even though Mr. T. is probably about 70, I pity the fool that questions his sexuality.

And in a somewhat related issue, here’s a drawing of Mr. T kissing Chuck Norris.

A fella from Chicago is demanding that Bono retire:

“Bono’s philanthropy efforts are self-righteous, ineffective, & counter-productive;… The grassroots leaders of the global fight against AIDS didn’t ask for Bono to be their frontman. Its time for Bono to step down. We’ll all pledge donations to the Global Fund, but no pledges are collected until Bono retires from public life.”

So far this campaign has raised $1,002, which is nearly equal to the amount of money Bono raises scratching his butt. Although, the money will not actually be donated unless Bono does retire. Go ahead and donate a Gazillion-bazillion dollars because chances are you’ll never have to pay.

The main target of the campaign is not Bono, it’s the RED campaign. Bono is the angle to get people talking about it. I for one don’t want Bono to retire. Sure he’s got a big ego, but he’s got an even bigger fan base that he educates about poverty whether they like it or not. Plus, who doesn’t love U2?

It is almost always annoying when celebrities confuse their worldwide fame for being a worldwide expert. I’ve read that even the other members of U2 get fed up with Bono’s rants. But in my eyes, talking about poverty and AIDS is better than not. You gotta respect when someone tries to use their fame to do good. An argument can be made that his intentions are self-serving, but in that regard are there any true acts of charity?

I’ve planned from the beginning to donate a portion of my earnings from “Where am I Wearing? to organizations that work with garment workers, but I have thought better of it. I don’t want to be accused of using this as a marketing angle to sell more books. But even if I did include such a note, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that a win-win for both charity and author?

I will be donating, but I won’t be shouting it from the rooftops. Unless you consider this post shouting and this blog a rooftop and, in that case, feel free to criticize my charity. I can take it.

As for the RED campaign, it probably does need to be looked at if, in fact, they have spent $40 million more on marketing than it raised from selling RED products. But what is the value of raising awareness? Maybe the message funded by the $40 million discrepancy has reached 40 million people who are now more aware about AIDS in Africa or poverty in general. What’s that worth?

Read the RED manifesto: , browse their products, or if you think it’s all a bunch of hooey donate to the “Bono Retire” fund.

Decide for yourself.

On a different note, The Point is pretty cool site. You should check it out.

Gates in the pages of Time magazine:

As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can’t pay. And the world will make lasting progress on the big inequities that remain — problems like AIDS, poverty and education — only if governments and nonprofits do their part by giving more aid and more effective aid. But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that’s tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

Naturally, if companies are going to get more involved, they need to earn some kind of return. This is the heart of creative capitalism. It’s not just about doing more corporate philanthropy or asking companies to be more virtuous. It’s about giving them a real incentive to apply their expertise in new ways, making it possible to earn a return while serving the people who have been left out.

A great place to turn for discussions about Creative Capitalism is THIS BLOG. The contributors list is basically a who’s who of authorities on economics and globalization. The posts and discussions from the blog are going to be anthologized in a book by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008.

In the most recent post Stephen Landsburg criticizes Gates’s example of fair trade as a form of creative capitalism:

Never mind the fact that “fair trade” seems to be a euphemism for the enforcement of monopsony power (enriching some producers by pricing others out of the marketplace); this isn’t the place to get into that debate. But this much is directly to the point: Lots of people feel a moral obligation to help poor people in general. No sane person feels a moral obligation to help poor coffee farmers in particular. So the “creative capitalism” solution serves a non-existent goal—and this was one of the best two examples the authors could come up with! (KT: the other was the (Red) program)

In fact, the whole fair trade thing is an excellent illustration of creative capitalism gone insane. You can pay an inflated price for your coffee and put a farmer out of work, or you can buy ordinary coffee, contribute to CARE, and feed a starving child. Please oh please don’t trick people into thinking the former is a good deed.

The questions at hand:

1. Is it better for a consumer to NOT pay a premium for products produced under ethical conditions and to take the money they saved and donate it to charity?

2. Is it better for a business to maximize their profits by whatever means possible and then use the maximized profits to do good?

My thoughts:

Bill Gates talking about how capitalism can cure inequities is kind of like the United States, which wasn’t hindered by environmental regulations during its own industrial expansion, telling developing nations to stop polluting. Bill gates got where he did with cutthroat capitalism, not creative capitalism and the Unites States got where it did by burning unclean fossil fuels.

Gates is more of an example of earning boatloads of cash via cutthroat capitalism and then taking all of his money and trying to change the world. And few would argue that there are any individual philanthropists doing more than Gates to help the world’s poor at this time.

Companies doing “good” would be great, but I think that’s shooting a bit high. I would settle for companies “doing no harm” – to the environment and its employees. A company that donates money to a good cause, but has its products manufactured by workers treated unfairly – unpaid overtime, working off the clock, underpaid, overworked, abused, etc – or does unnecessary harm to the environment, more than negates whatever good their philanthropy does.

Before a company tries to do right in the world, they should do right in their own house.

That said, I think marketing fair trade products is a perfectly legitimate niche. There are people that want to buy products made ethically, and they should have the option.

I find the debate very interesting, and hope to check out the Creative Capitalism blog regularly. I’ve added it to my Blogroll on the right.

Exercise training or higher levels of physical activity are known to exert anti-inflammatory effects. CD14+CD16+ monocytes are potent producers of inflammatory proteins, and elevated levels of these “inflammatory” monocytes have been implicated in disease development. Little is known about the influence of exercise training on this cell population.

People back home often refer to Kyle as the smart one. An argument that I disagree with by pointing to tales of lost keys, drowned cell phones, and temporary lapses of common sense as evidence that he is not.

Although, when I read stuff like this, I start to agree with them.

If Kyle is the Smart One, I guess that makes me the Dumb One.

DOH!

COMING TO A LIBRARY NEAR YOU….THE BROTHERS TIMMMERMAN!

There are three copies total, and two of them are hardcover. When I first saw them I figured they were just advanced advanced readers copies that Wiley gave out at BookExpo America.

Either that or they are fully-edited and fact-checked copies from the future. If that’s the case, they are drastically underpriced.

What she had to say about the overstatement: “There will never be another J.K. Rowling. That’s a lot of pressure on me, isn’t it? I’m just happy being Stephenie Meyer. That’s cool enough for me.”

Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, and Lebron James all have said a similar version of that.

As fans we’re rarely satisfied with what we’ve got, so we always search for the second-coming of what we had.

That said, she is hugely successful, prolific, and writes about a subject near and dear to my heart – vampires. Her teen vampire series that features a love triangle made up of a teenage girl, her love interest a vampire, and a werewolf, at first thought, sounds somewhat familiar. Although, I don’t think her teenage protagonist is a butt-kicking vampire slayer.

Her plans for next year: “I’m just going to try and stay home and write five books next year.”

5 Books!

That’s why I would like to make the transition to writing fiction one of these days. Between the travel and research, it would be impossible for me to write 5 WAIW-like books in a year. From the outside, making stuff up seems much more efficient, or at the very least, less expensive.

Meyer’s latest book, Breaking Dawn is out tonight at midnight. You know you’ve made it big when stores stay open to midnight to sell your book.

Ferrets are little children in fur coats

The car’s license plate: WOOZLE

Awww, wook at the wittle ferret…

“Is it a print-on-demand book?” he asked, as he searched for it on his computer.

“No.” I never know how to respond to that. I mean it isn’t a POD, but, still, I kind of find that offensive. I don’t want to come across as if publishing by the POD method is beneath me, but what about me makes this fella, and a host of others that I’ve met, assume that a publisher wouldn’t have paid me to publish my work?

Is it the flip-flops?

Or, perhaps, my inability to pronounce the word worm? Although, I don’t think I used the word yesterday. Did I say, “Bookworms will love it?!”

Or, is it because I refuse to learn the difference between effect and affect? The a(e)ffects of worms on zombie brains is grossly under-studied?”

He looked the book up on the computer and seemed surprised that BAM would be getting it in. All I needed to do was contact him a few months before the Big Day – December 1 – and have them get in extra copies for the event.

I thanked him, and browsed a little before heading for the door with my advanced copy still in hand. I felt a bit awkward.

What if someone stopped me?

“Excuse me sir,” I imagined one of the booksellers would say. “Did you pay for that?”

Here’s the response I settled on, if asked: “This book cost me over 10 grand and two years of my life. Any chance I can return it?”

They didn’t ask.

But here’s a thought…

If an author shoplifted their own book, would that be good publicity? Or just stupid?

Any of you who are authors, give it a try and let me know.

Obama is in Germany speaking to 100’s of thousands of people, and McCain poses for the photographers in front of a Weiner Schnitzel Hut in Ohio. DUMB!

Obama speaks behind an Obama seal that too closely resembles the President’s. DUMB!

The New Yorker’s cover featuring the militant Obamas – DUMB!

I’ve written about Nike’s Marty McFly Hyperdunks already. So far the shoes seem like a good idea, and they look okay. When I first read about their new ad featuring the shoes, it didn’t sound like a bad idea either. From Gawker.com:

Nike’s new ad campaign for its Hyperdunk shoes features a series of pictures of basketball players getting dunked on in what’s considered the worst way possible: the dunker dangling off the rim…in the face of the man being dunk-ee. They all have dynamic slogans like “That Ain’t Right!”

When I read that I immediately pictured Vince Carter dunking on that Russian guy. Seems like an okay ad to me.

Then I read about the controversy around the ads. They were labeled homophobic and insulting to the black community that is already heavily hit by AIDS. “Come on people,” I thought, thinking this was just another case of people taking political correctness to ridiculous levels. Then I saw the ad…

Uh, yeah, that ad ain’t right.

Does the defenders face have to be so buried into the dunkers crotch? It looks like his throat is taking a charge. Gross. That is offensive. I feel uncomfortable. Yet if the fella being dunked on was turning his head, I think it would be an acceptable ad.

How many millions of dollars did NIKE spend on highly paid consultants and ad professionals to design this ad, when they could have just pulled someone off the nearest corner to tell them that it was a bad idea?

Whether it’s men vying to run the country or corporations the size of a country, they each could benefit from a little more common sense.