A Dose of Reality

Here's a great commercial that doesn't promise to solve all your problems or make your wildest dreams come true.

Two Birds...

Taxes are one of those things we all despise but can't avoid. I have always been frustrated by taxes that discourage positive things like saving and investing when they could be used to stimulate actions that improve looming issues too gradual to spark immediate public mandate for reform. Its easy for politicians to pander to the public but what about making the tough decisions they don't want but need? An increased gas tax, while wildly unpopular, would contribute to solving both the climate change crisis and that thing called US debt that nobody likes to talk about. Its Christmas Eve and I am tired so I will let David Wessel explain this better than I could have anyway.

Mind On My Money and My Money On My Mind

Climate change has been a hot topic of debate for some time now. Considering few people like to wade through the boring scientific evidence of it all, most turn to media sources to formulate their opinions. The chart above shows an interesting trend regarding how people feel about the media's representation of climate change. While public opinion about the over-exaggeration of climate change tends to fluctuate, the actual reporting does not.

Due to the fact that political coverage drives media ratings significantly more than scientific coverage, reporting on climate change has always been extremely limited in proportion to its potential impact on society (and all of civilization for that matter). Another contributor to the consistency with which climate change has been reported on is the media's own bias added by their attempt to appear unbiased. In the day to day coverage of political news stories it is important for media channel members to represent each side of an opinion. However, when reporting on concrete scientific evidence, giving each side equal claim while evidence on one side is more substantial distorts viewer's perceptions of the situation being reported on. For instance, you don't see an equal amount of stories about the harmful and beneficial effects of tobacco products because the majority of scientific research indicates that tobacco use is harmful. Due to the fact that climate change has begun to be perceived as more of a political debate than a scientific one, reporting has remained consistent while scientific evidence favoring the existence of climate change has gotten much stronger.

If reporting on climate change has remained so consistent then why has public opinion fluctuated? In my opinion the seriousness with which people approach climate change is dependent on the level of priority they assign to it. One pattern that has a direct correlation with the perceived accuracy reporting on climate change is GDP growth. Notice that the two major spikes in skepticism of reporting occurred during the last two major US recessions (04, 08/09).If people are more concerned about something else, say the monetary stability of themselves and their families, climate change then becomes comparatively less of a threat.

Whopper Sacrifice

Earlier this year Burger King launched a marketing campaign that I absolutely loved called the "Whopper Sacrifice". The idea behind it was that for every ten Facebook friends a person deleted they would get a free Whopper. This campaign brings up an interesting point. How much are your Facebook friends worth to you? Everyone loves to pretend they don't care about how many "virtual" friends they have but if this were true we would all have cashed in our friends for a delicious heap of flame broiled (and then briefly microwaved) Whoppers. Facebook friends are a valued currency but the question is what kind?

The more Facebook friends a person has, the more influence they posses over the Faecbook world. For instance, since I usually post links to new blog entries on Facebook, the amount of traffic this blog receives is directly influenced by my number of Facebook friends. This currency is less monetary as it is reputational. An increase in friends equates to an increase in overall social capital. This is why Chris Anderson describes Facebook as the world's largest closed market of reputational currency. A blogger named Jason Kottke used the Whopper Sacrifice to estimate Facebook's overall value.

"Facebook has 150 million users and the average user has 100 friends. Each friendship requires the assent of both friends so really each user can, on average only get credit for ending half of their friendships. The price of a Whopper is approximately $2.40. That means that each user's friendship is worth around 5 Whoppers, or $12. Do the math and:

$12/user x 150M users= $1.8 billion valuation for Facebook."

I ask anyone who reads this to leave a monetary value for what it would be worth for them to not lose 100 Facebook friends. For me personally I would say it is around $15-$20.

The Google Rule

Twice a year students are subjected to what feels like the worst two weeks of their lives. Finals are an excruciating aspect of the college experience and in my opinion a highly unnecessary one. The library this time of year is less so a temple of knowledge as it is a vacuum of humanity. As I sit here in the Milne library at Geneseo I am surrounded by the hollow shells of human beings amidst a two week stimulant binge. Every trash pale is overflowing with coffee cups and energy drinks while in the background the only sounds are made by the involuntary tapping of pencils and feet. As you navigate the library those still pining for some sense of human connection frantically glance up at you praying you are someone they know or at least an empathetic stranger willing to offer some eye contact.
What prompts such a dismal existence? The answer is the large scale memorization of unnecessary facts and definitions that must be briefly acquired before being regurgitated and forgotten forever.
The majority of these facts come straight from textbooks that in any realistic situation could easily be looked up again. It is safe to say that thanks to modern technology and the ease with which information is accessed, most college graduates will never be at a loss for a definition or fact that is not moments from their grasp. Finals week at colleges is a prime example of what William Ogburn describes as cultural lag. Technology has progressed, yet society has failed to keep up in its adaptation, thus becoming dysfunctional.

Even my mother, who works as a nurse, has an itouch application that allows her to look up any conceivable medical problem in an instant. I know that I personally would prefer medical treatment from a doctor or nurse with instant access to up to date expert opinions than someone who did a pretty good job cramming for their med school final back in the 70's.
Obviously a college education cannot be supplemented by my Blackberry Curve (or as my grandmother mistakenly refers to it, a raspberry). However, the mechanistic memorization of facts is an unrealistic waste of our time when we could be learning actual problem solving and research skills.

On behalf of present and future college students everywhere I beg professors, if a question on your final exam can be answered within the first five suggestions of a Google search result, please remove it from the final because you are wasting our time and energy drinks are expensive.

Gold, Women and Sheep

Investors today are in a constant panic to find safe investment opportunities. At least Prescott Financial gets it.

Social Media

I would like to thank everyone who commented back on what a horrible person I am and how disgusted they were, it really meant a lot to me. Two of my favorite comments being;
"I'm disgusted and outraged, my fists will tell you so the next time we meet" and
"That cant be real. She must have been photoshoped in there."



Recently "social media" has been tearing through the business world like a Dane Cook album through a middle school. As far as buzzwords go, social media seems to be the Twilight to Globalization's Harry Potter. Everyone loves to talk about what a significant revolution it is but how many really understand it? Yesterday after a lecture about social media given by my marketing professor I was talking to him about starting this blog and linking it on Facebook. "ah very good, blogs ... facebook...social media..." However after further discussing the idea of statuses, comments, and how to reach various sub-networks within social networks it became increasingly obvious that he had no idea what I was talking about or how social networking sites really worked.

Today almost all "cutting edge" products have Facebook pages but still seem to miss the mark. Social media is not just about traditional marketing ideals of increased exposure but direct interaction with both individuals and communities.
How much more does the marketing head of Nike really understand social media than the thirteen year old members of Dane Cook's Facebook group fan site?

Most Good Blogs Probably Don't Start With Apologies

I should probably start this blog off by apologizing to everyone who followed the link I posted on Facebook with the warning "EXTREMELY MATURE AND OFFENSIVE CONTENT!!!" While somewhat deceitful and certainly a moral gray area you must admit it was successful considering you are here reading it. As an experiment in viral marketing I ask anyone who reads this to respond to the Facebook post with a comment about how offended and upset you were by said hypothetical content. Even if you are disapointed or embarassed by this deceit you might was well drag as many people down with you as possible. If nothing else this is an observation of the tipping point between where people consider an action and actually follow through with it.

I've never written a blog before and have always been somewhat self-conscious about the idea of it. However after visiting MarkDougherty.blogspot.com and discovering that not only does it already exist but is headed off by some sort of poem about impotent salmon (read for yourself) I figure my reputation amidst the blogosphere can only improve.

If you know me at all (or have read the description under the title) you already have a good idea as to the content of this blog. I will try to keep it as relevant and interesting as possible for both your benefit and my-self esteem's.