Spooky Note: Jonathan is a colleague of mine in our Authentic Response research business. [Me] Hey, I heard you moved back to New York (from Boston) [Jonathan] Yeah, the travel was getting to be too much. Plus, a buddy of mine was looking for a roommate [Me] Where’s the place? [Jonathan] Murray Hill [Me] Oh – I lived there years ago. Where? [Jonathan] Near 2nd and 34th [Me] What building? [Jonathan] It’s a small walk-up – you wouldn’t know it – 633 Second Avenue [Me] NO WAY. I used to live there. Which floor? [Jonathan] Third [Me] Yup – that was my old apartment – from 15 years ago! What a weird, weird, weird, thing.
Category
Current Affairs
7 Years On
7 Years On My last September 11 as a New York City resident. I walked down to the World Trade Center site this morning as I have each of the last six 9/11s and rang The Bell of the Unforgotten, which is the New York City Fire Department’s port-a-memorial that they bring out for the day. As a long-time member of the lower Manhattan community, the day always bring out a lot of reflection for me. Seeing the memorial flood lights on tonight will do the same and bookend the day. The main thing I was thinking about this morning was why there’s been nothing really built yet on the site. World Trade Center 7 (which is actually adjacent to…
Half as Long, One Third as Hard
Half as Long, One Third as Hard (Post written on Saturday, August 23.) I ran the Mesa Falls Marathon & Half Marathon near our house in Teton Valley, Idaho today. I ran the 1/2 and Brad ran the full marathon as part of his quest to run 50 marathons, one in each state, by the time he turns 50. Return Path is a proud sponsor of Brad’s running, donating $1,000 for each race he completes to the Accelerated Cure project for Multiple Sclerosis. Brad chronicled the race here. The run was set up well for us. I wasn’t up for training for a full marathon, and this race had a half marathon that started at the halfway point of the…
Please, Keep Not Calling (Thank You!)
Please, Keep Not Calling (Thank You!) It’s been three years since the federal government passed one of its better pieces of legislation in recent memory, creating the Do Not Call Registry which is a free way of dramatically reducing junk phone solicitations. At the time, registrations were set to expire every three years. When I signed up my phone number, I stuck a note in my calendar for today (three years later) to renew my registration. I was planning on blogging about it to remind the rest of the world, too. To my great surprise, when I went to the site today, I saw this note: Your registration will not expire. Telephone numbers placed on the National Do Not Call…
Driving Out of the Bubble
Driving Out of the Bubble It’s easy for those of us who live in the Internet bubble to confuse the words “startup” and “entrepreneur” with the word “technology.” Every once in a while, I am struck by a fantastic entrepreneurial idea that’s low-tech or no-tech. In the last few weeks, I’ve learned of two of them — oddly, very similar ideas. They’re both going after the New York City black car limo market (all those car services that take business travelers to and from airports and meetings), which is a lucrative but kind of gritty business. I’ve used black car services for 16 years now, and while I’ve found one that’s pretty good, they all have massive customer service problems…
Morning Chuckle
Morning Chuckle From an internal email thread we had here, mainly from Angela, our VP People: So, I’ve just checked in at the Westin, I mean Wonderland. AB: walk up hotel driveway, notices woman carrying odd looking dogAB: looks more closely, not dog, pigAB: looks again, pig is snorting, she is carrying said pig like a baby Check In Desk AB: hi, what’s up with the pig in the lobby (singular)?Sally: oh yeah the pigs are here this weekAB: they are staying in the hotel? In the guest rooms?Sally: uh huhAB: blank stareSally: they all have namesAB: hmmm, really, pigs? Is there a convention? (I mean really, I was here during the bison convention, this seems like a logical question)Sally: oh no noAB: blank stareSally: they’re here for the ____ balloon festivalAB: ?Sally: they’re the only pigs allowed…
Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short)
Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short) It’s unusual that I blog about a book before I’ve actually finished it, but this one is too timely to pass up given today’s news about newspapers. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen, at least the first 1/2 of it, is a pretty intense rant about how the Internet’s trend towards democratizing media and content production has a double dirty underbelly: poor quality — “an endless digital forest of mediocrity,” no checks and balances — “mainstream journalists and newspapers have the organization, financial muscle, and and credibility to gain access to sources and report the truth…professional journalists can go to jail for telling…
Book Short: Smaller is the New Small
Book Short: Smaller is the New Small Last month, it was Microtrends. This month, it’s MIT Professor Ted Sargent’s The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives. It seems like all the interesting things in life are just getting smaller and smaller. (Note to self: lose some weight.) Sargent’s book is geeky but well-written. He dives into a couple dozen examples across many fields and disciplines of how nanotechnology holds extraordinary promise for solving some of mankind’s toughest scientific challenges — while creating a few new ethical and economic ones. The science is for the most part beyond me, but the practical applications are fascinating: – making solar power the sole source of global energy needs a possibility…
Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy
Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy As I said in this post, sometimes calling for the boss’s head is a mistake, and that an alternative — an honest apology, some kind of retribution, and a clear and conspicuous post-mortem can often be a better way for an organization to move forward after a leader-involved crisis. But not today. Elliot Spitzer has to go. The hypocrisy he displayed in running a law and order campaign, administration, and career, using his office as a bully pulpit and unnecessarily ruining innocent people’s careers to stroke his own ego, while willfully breaking the law himself in the manner that he did, is way too much for an elected official at that level. I just…
Voting in Manhattan
Voting in Manhattan I’ve written about this before. I won’t focus on the pre-war (unclear which war) voting machines. But here was the conversation I had with the voting inspector when I checked in to vote this morning: Her: Name? Me: Matt Blumberg. Her: Sign here…ok…head over to booth #1. Me: That one? Her: Yes. Republican or Democrat? Me: Don’t you know that from my registration? Her: No. You have to tell me so I can disable half the ballot. Me: You mean it doesn’t matter which party I’m registered with? I can just pick one on the spot? Her: Welcome to Manhattan. Me: Huh. Ok. Republican. Her: Really? Huh. First one of the day. Not a lot of you around here. Poor Rudy. At least the Giants won.
Bad Side Effect of Tropical Heat Waves?
Bad Side Effect of Tropical Heat Waves? I love David Kirkpatrick’s weekly column called Fast Forward. In his most recent edition, he talks about the connection between technology and world peace, which is insightful. But it also led me to click on a link in the first paragraph to Wikipedia and its great map and listing of ongoing global conflicts here. I’m not sure if anyone has ever done any research on this — I’m guessing the answer is yes — but what jumps off the page for me is that all of the ongoing global conflicts today are clustered around the equator. I do know that crime in urban areas swells in the summer when it’s hot out and…