An image that I was pondering recently served as a huge help to understanding something that had been giving me some problem in my simple brain. I can forgive my brain for not getting to grips with it as effectively as I would have wished as it was a problem that I am sure every man women and probably some other living things have had difficulty with.
You see when dealing with right and wrong … there can only be pain as a result. I don't mean just to the pain of the man swinging at the end of the noose adjudged to be the one in the wrong, nor the pain felt when a woman wins custody of her children after being adjudged to be in the right. The pain will be a result for all as there is neither wrong nor right, but only what is.
I know this is not something that strikes a chord with your thinking brain and that is no surprise as there are just too many layers disguising the misgivings of seeing a polarity in most everything we do. Add to that the presumption we make - that people are all the same, that we perceive things in very similar ways when in fact this can be varied to such significant extents that we do not have the option to decide whom is right and wrong, add that and we have little chance of ever giving up on an argument. In fact we are all just doing what we will do and there is nothing else that can occur.
These two polar bear dudes or babes are clearly having a fantastic go at each other. Probably to survive by fighting over a piece of a reindeer carcass just to the left (did you look for the carcass? Oh go on … you've seen the pic already and know there is no reindeer. Look sharp!) or to protect those mini polar bear cubs. The thing is …and this is what got my attention a few seconds into having a look at this fracas … the thing is you see, they have got exactly the same strike as they go straight for the killer bite to the jugular vein. It's natural for them both to do so. It is deadly and decisive, but it is full-on and it's natural. There is neither right nor wrong and there will be no winner nor looser. Well you say the one that bleeds to death in the snow has lost I should think, but then you are missing the whole vibe.

Post script: How fortunate we are to be able to be sitting in front of our computers to witness this lesson from nature. It's one of the many credits to man and his ability to potentially do wonders. To be able to admire these bears going at each other is something that for many centuries perhaps only the Inuits had opportunity to partake in … it is the kind of experience that they built there society on. A functioning society, until encroached upon and told what is wrong and what is right.

Magical

I recently took part in a trail running event as a guest of the organiser and as a representative for Runner's World Magazine. I am the Gear Editor there on a freelance basis and nobody else from the magazine could go so I took up the invite. That was 4 months back and between then and now when I was super strong and fit, I did the movie vibe and lost all the training I had done.
So I arrived at this event on about 45% full as only ended up having 3 weeks to train and some of that needed to be recovery from the training ... anyway I did about 6 runs totalling 100km in those three weeks and rocked up at the event with running buddy Greg Goodall who would do the three days with me.
The event turned out to be as tough ... so tough in fact that I struggled to overcome the challenge ... I just managed it though so was happy with that.

Anyway that's not what the blog is about. I wanted to write about what happened on the 2nd night of the event. It was all well catered and comfy for 300 competitors. Greg and I managed to find an extra tent to avoid having to spoon in a tiny one together as many others ended up doing. There was a 'chill out' tent where a surprising amount of beers were drunk and a large tent for dinner and prize giving each night. Now, on the particular night in question, I noticed that those sponsors and brands involved with the event were being called up to be introduced to the audience of competitors and to hand out the odd prize or do a lucky draw or something of that sort. Each time the DJ dude would play some old classic track to spice up the occasion and keep everyone interested. I realised that as the Runner's World Magazine representative I was likely to be called up to present something and I thought to myself how cool it would be if they did call me up, the DJ would play Eye of The Tiger. You see I was wearing a black hoody and I thought it would be cool to put the hood up and do some sparring as I walked up to Eye of The Tiger.
So there I sat waiting to see what was next in the agenda. A guy was called up to do a lucky draw as a promotion for his race that was tacking place on Table Mountain in September. Its a popular race and costs over 200 bucks. The draw was done on a laptop and picked randomly from the 300 competitors. A lady won it and went up for the prize. Cool. Then the music started. For the first time that night the DJ decided to spin Eye Of The Tiger ... I looked around as if people could read my thoughts. I felt so strange, as if everything was open and I was able know anything and in control. There was one more name to pull from the lucky draw. I knew it would be mine. I felt light and content ... the guy called out the number followed by the name RYAN SCOTT.

I was not surprised at all but did feel a bit awkward. Did everybody else know what I knew? Of course not. One of the strangest things that has ever happened to me fore sure. So strange and so powerful in a non intrusive way. What an incredible experience.

And like that ...pfffff .... it was gone.

See below for a brilliant article on how the most popular social network sites and YouTube may not be with us forever. At the moment, and for a few years now in the case of YouTube, they have not been able to find a solution to making enough $$$ even with so many followers. It's the venture capitalists that are making it possible at the moment, but are they looking for returns on what they have handed over? You would think so. Read on to see what Advertising Age has to say about the possibility of loosing your favourite platforms.

The Coming End of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook Socialism

Thank God for Tech Moguls Who Redistribute VC Wealth So We Can Cybersocialize Freely. For Now, That Is.

by Simon Dumenco

Published: May 04, 2009

Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone should thank God it was just a cardinal, and not the pope.

Last week, according to the Times of London, Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland told the country's Catholics to "Make someone the gift of a prayer through text, Twitter or e-mail every day. Such a sea of prayer is sure to strengthen our sense of solidarity with one another."

LET US PRAY: Cardinal Sean Brady wants you to tweet for Jesus.

Photo Credit: Niall Carson

Oh, my. That's a nice sentiment, but Twitter really doesn't need more users around the world tweeting in ways that can never be monetized. Ireland's got just 4 million Catholics, but the Vatican counts more than a billion baptized Catholics worldwide. If the pope endorsed tweeting prayer, Twitter could be out of business by the end of the year! The 3-year-old company, remember, still lacks a revenue model and just burns through more venture capital every time a new user signs up. (Fortunately, given how retro-conservative Pope Benedict is, he seems more likely to issue a papal encyclical condemning Twitter. We all know it's more likely to enable sin -- pride! sloth! -- than piety.)

It's telling that Cardinal Brady grouped Twitter with texting and e-mail. The former, of course, is a paid service and a massive profit center for cellular carriers around the world, and the latter you also pay for, albeit indirectly, as a service bundled with your monthly internet access or by allowing yourself to be subjected to advertising. (As a Gmail user, I decided to see what would come up when I e-mailed myself the Lord's Prayer. The ads Google served included ones for BeliefNet and Don Helin's paperback pulp thriller "Thy Kingdom Come." Ka-ching!) But when it comes to Twitter, we not only don't pay, but we all take it for granted that somebody's going to keep footing the bill for the rapidly expanding server farms needed to process and store zillions of tweets per minute.

It's sweet, really, that venture capitalists have ponied up millions so that we can all keep tweeting. It's also more than a bit scary. Because more and more of us are increasingly addicted not only to Twitter, but to other services that lack workable business models. What happens if the "dealers" who feed our habits disappear? (It's been known to happen. Last week, for instance, Yahoo announced it was shutting down last century's hot social-networking-esque service, GeoCities, for which it paid $3.5 billion in 1999.)

I've been thinking about all this a lot since I wrote, a few weeks ago, about how Susan Boyle has been on what I called the "Google Dole" -- her fame fueled in a nonsensically nonprofit manner by Google's YouTube unit, which hemorrhages cash serving up too much video with nowhere near enough advertising support. (I'll again refer you to Benjamin Wayne's Silicon Alley Insider piece, "YouTube is Doomed," which deconstructed the recent Credit Suisse report that puts YouTube's estimated 2009 losses at nearly half a billion dollars.) You'd think a clip of Boyle singing a song from "Les Misérables," one of the most popular musicals of all time, on one of the most popular TV shows in the world would be semi-monetizable. (I mean, geez, at the very least stick a pop-up overlay on that video with a link to the "Les Miz" soundtrack on iTunes.) But no. Adam Ostrow at Mashable further proved my point with his piece, "Susan Boyle Video Profits: $0," which explained that disagreement between "Britain's Got Talent" owner ITV and YouTube over pre-roll vs. overlays prevented ad placements in Boyle's YouTube streams.

And then last week The New York Times reported about the hazards of international expansion for the likes of Facebook. Getting million of new users in the Third World, it turns out, really sucks, because Facebook will never really be able to meaningfully monetize those eyeballs. It's tons of cash out (bandwidth, data storage, personnel) with little hope of cash in.

Weirdly, some of the management at these companies don't even seem to be trying that hard to make money -- a consequence, perhaps, of still being awash in millions of dollars of VC money ("venture charity," as I like to call it). In fact, Abbey Klassen, Ad Age's digital editor, tells me that she once heard a Facebook exec joke to an agency exec, "Didn't you know we're a nonprofit?"

I'll go one step further: They're socialists! OK, yes, I'm using the dumbed-down definition of socialism championed by numbskulls like Sarah Palin, but regardless of the finer points of economic theory, you've got to admit that at some level the boys at Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are actively choosing to redistribute the wealth. They're taking money from venture capitalists and deploying it so that millions of people far beyond Silicon Valley can get something for nothing. Entertainment, information, and self-marketing opportunities, mostly.

And, oh yeah, a sense of "connectedness" -- cyber companionship -- which makes this particular era of VC-wealth distribution all the more ... touching. (Let's all be friends -- on someone else's dime! Let's all be perpetually jacked into the hyper-insta-now global hivemind of human consciousness -- for free!)

I am so appreciative. Seriously. I love YouTube, I've made some interesting connections through Facebook, and I enjoy Twittering. (Last week, for instance, I tweeted about an astonishing bit of information I came across in Britain's Daily Telegraph: YouTube "reportedly uses as much bandwidth as the entire internet took up in 2000.")

But I also know it can't go on like this. The digital Robin Hoods can't keep redistributing the wealth forever, because eventually the wealth runs out. Investors get sick of propping up private ventures that don't have viable business models, and shareholders of public companies, like Google, get cranky about flushing cash down the drain.

So what can we do? Not much, I suppose, other than enjoy it while it lasts -- and maybe twitter a prayer for VCs everywhere.

~ ~ ~
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco

"Ideas are like Babies. Once you’ve had a baby, you can’t put it back." – Andrea Age 6

I was riding my bike at 6am this morning. Actually that is not quite accurate and for the purposes of this blog I better actually get more specific.
So I was riding my bike on the way to meet my buddy Blue at Giovanni's on Somerset Road - it was 5:55am, when the idea came to me about this quote that I had read and then the story that I would write about it when I got home a couple hours later; once the ride was done.
The ride was incredible and we talked most of the way out to the top of Chapman's Peak where we turn for home. The half way point some would say. By the time we got to Blues apartment it was just before 8am and by the time I got home 8:15am ... so all in all a good session. A ride we do at least twice in the working week unless it's raining. Now a few hours before I got home, and when the idea had first come to me about the blog, I had backed myself to remember the idea and was looking forward to bashing it out onto PlanetPi.
The thing is, when I turned on my Diesel (if you heard the noise my laptop makes when I punch the power up button you will know why I call it my Diesel) I could not recall the idea. I have taken the whole day to try and retrieve it, but now its 20:05pm and I still have no idea what the idea was. I thought that meant the blog opportunity had gone missing as well.

Then I had the epiphany of just starting the blog with the quote and the idea would present itself. Well it did not BUT I realised the irony in the whole situation in that whole subject of the blog was about ideas that can't be put back. Well I am not saying that I have put this mornings 5:55am idea back Miss Andrea, but I am certainly not sure where I misplayed it and I am not about to retrace my steps all the way back to the top of Chapmans Peak to see if I dropped it while heading that way so early this morning.

Andrea is so right though. The idea has not been put back (even though there is plenty of space where it came from), it has just been put somewhere else. I am still totally aware that it was conceived of, just not sure where it is now.
What does all this mean you ponder? Perhaps just that I am not quite ready for babies.

Post script: Come back next Thursday sometime as I will be riding the same route that day and perhaps I will find it while out there.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can ... Terry Pratchett

I heard about a guy who makes his living earning substantial amounts of cash by just presenting concepts. When attempting to explain his job title to those that enquire, he refers to himself as an IMAGINEAR.

What an awesome way to make a living. Too many of my buddies need to keep themselves busy all the time. Too few people can sit and just spend time inside their own heads. Take some time out and let your mind go.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it ... Bert Einstein

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it ... Bert Einstein

If I think back to some of those ideas that were originally regarded as absurd, it gives me hope for some thoughts that I have swimming in my head. The obvious one's are things like: the guy who first said the earth was round when all the world new it was flat, or the dude who decided the sun does not revolve around the earth and was nearly executed for it.
What about the inspired individual who first decided to dip a biscuit in his tea though! Genius I say. And the first person to look at a sheep and announce he was going to stick its woolly coat in his slippers. Surely they went through vast amounts of ridicule. One wonders how they handled this pressure from the doubters all about them. I can assure you that in 1988 while watching Commando, if my buddy had mentioned Arnie Schwarzenegger would be Governor of California at any time in my existence I would have spilled my slush puppy over him in a fit of laughter.

So, tell me what you think about my swimmers. A portable toilet. Not like the cesspits the poor builders have to use. I mean something you can sling over your shoulder. Sounds bizarre, but just wait, someone will be hailed a genius over this one … I have never had a girlfriend that can hold it in. Everyone will want one. Don’t think there were pooper scooper's for dogs around in the 1700’s but those are now considered kosher right? Exactly. What about sneaky disguise like face masks? Only this one is your face, just better, and you wear it all the time. A step up from a wig say. In fact a wig-mask combo would clearly be a big hit for the ugly baldies. Eternal youth is probably the most elusive target out there. Absurd? I reckon I could be too late on this one. Jessica Simpson must wear a mask – no human face is really that perfect.

Post script: Chris Columbus was one of the first to postulate the Roundness of the earth, Nic Copernicus the geeza whose head they wanted chop off about the sun/earth issue. Not sure about the first to dunk a biscuit but I thank him for it and Woolies rusks.