Boredom is Learned

A few weeks back I took my daughter to Old Town in San Diego where there are historical exhibits from San Diego's past. We were there to get an idea of what life was like in colonial Jamestown for her schoolwork. From the artifacts you can see how slow the pace of life had to have been 100-200 years ago. It struck me that boredom must be a learned habit. I don't see how you could have functioned back then with a short attention span. I went back yesterday and took some photos to illustrate this.

"Will that be paper or plastic?" "Neither. I'll just weave a basket out of twigs and leaves."


"You should see the cool new video games, Dad!" "I've got one right here for you, honey. I carved it out of wood with a knife and painted it with pigments made from clay."


"Mr. Johnson, we'll need to fix your wheel." "How long will it take?" "About a week. I need to make spokes out of that tree over there with an axe and a knife."


"Charming hillside cottage with canyon view."


"Joe, hand me the nail gun, will you? I've got over a hundred joints in this cottage." "I don't have a nail gun. Will some sticks and twine do?"


Just thought I'd share. I would have shared earlier, but this !!@^&#%@^ computer is so slow! :-)

Technorati tags: boredom / parenting / kids / attention

This Week in the Theocracy

Hail and well met, fellow theocraticians! Theocracites? Theocrazies?

Ahem. Let's start again.

Hi!

It's me, Jacob the Syrian Hamster, loyal beadle of the Feline Theocracy here for another round up of the best posts from members of the Theocracy.


Feline Empress and Mother Superior of the Holy Order of Ocean Whitefish Kukka-Maria opens her mailbag with typically marvellous results.

Knight Protector and Defender of Yarn Balls Lawman shows the dangers of going on vacation.

The Abbess of the Priory of Small Princesses, Romeocat, has some lovely photographs in her walk with Uncle Charles.

Sister Jane of Perpetual Purring has a beautiful story about a soldier and his pen pals.

Monsignor of the Breweries may need a drink after posting this one. This isn't funny. Not at all.

Our Most Holy Ambassador to the Court of the Mainstream Media, Peggy Noonan, hits the nail on the head again as usual. If political parties tried to do what was in the best interests of the country instead of working to get re-elected, they would find themselves re-elected without a problem.

Our Official Artist has a new project. I must say I am very impressed.

Heidi, still on the protected list with a sofa in a sunbeam waiting for her when the Feline Rapture comes, shows us a video I hadn't seen before. I laughed, felt guilty for laughing and then saw some deeper observations in it.

The Anchoress has a touching Mother's Day entry.

Mark Shea, Holy Scholar, struggles to make it to Ireland.

Holy Scholar and inventor of the term WOG Squad Georgette recommends some, er, spiritual reading.

Holy Scholar Eric Scheske is turning to voodoo. Or is he? Note to Eric: it hasn't worked for the New Orleans Saints yet. I'm hoping Reggie Bush is the answer.

Holy Scholar Happy Julie makes us smile. As usual.

The Grand Almoner of England, Carl Morgan took the week off.

That's it for this week! We would love to have some new members of the Theocracy, so keep those links coming!

What Do the Simple Folk Do?

I live in the corporate world. We are a mighty and sophisticated lot, us corporate types. All the world's knowledge is at our fingertips. The engines of the economy roar at our command. We are omniscient.

That's why we constantly have new management fads and team building retreats to teach us how to "team up with the customer to create a synergistic, win-win scenario for lasting business growth." And lots of other assorted gibberish.

A scientist by training and a marketer by a series of career opportunites, I have decided to step out of my ivory tower, or perhaps ivory cubicle, and interview some local business owners to see how they handled things. Here are the first of my interviews.

Business Marketing Interview - Upholstery
Business Marketing Interview - Guitar Store
Business Marketing Interview - Tropical Fish Store
Business Marketing Interview - Florist

At my firm, we are very good at what we do, arguably the best in the world. We are not sophisticated marketers or business people. These four had been at their craft for years and had continually refined their strategies based on experience. When we do this as an organization, we invariably use some pre-packaged solution, such as Balanced Scorecard or Lean Six Sigma. Much of our time is spent learning the tool rather than honing our craft as managers and marketers.

For omniscient people, we've got a lot to learn.

Technorati tags: business / marketing / profit / retail / management

Business Marketing Interview – Guitar Store

In an attempt to learn more about retail marketing, I’ve embarked on a series of interviews with local businesses. Here is what I discovered from one such interview.

This was a treat. There was a single owner and he had owned the store since 1961. He sold acoustic guitars and repaired all manner of guitars. I asked him if he made guitars and he gave me an earful about that.

Making guitars is not worth the effort unless you are famous or you have a million dollar operation. Handmade guitars are labors of love. You lose yourself in building one and find your day gone as you carefully craft them. When you’re done the customers want to haggle with you until you are insulted as your time is taken as nearly valueless and at the end of the sale you realize your hourly wage was about $1.50.

That’s a step up from blogging! :-)

He had tried making guitars in the past and now used that specialized knowledge in repair. People would buy guitars at yard sales or on ebay or as antiques and they would need repair before they could be used. People knew about his store by word of mouth. He didn’t need to advertise. He had been there for 45 years.

He had no employees and no hours. He said that at his age he didn’t want to have to answer to anyone. I asked him if he gave lessons. That triggered another very enjoyable lecture.

He most definitely did not give lessons, nor did he allow others to give lessons in his store. He said that guitar teachers were frustrated performers and spent their time outside of lessons whining about how unfair life was and how they couldn’t get gigs at the local clubs or how one band or another didn’t let them join. Lessons required a sound proofed room, but one where the door was ajar since most of the lessons were for kids and parents don’t like their kids alone in a room with the door close. Finally, if the student was an adult, then the lesson times convenient for them was late at night and this meant he had to stay at his store late.

The guy was a real character. What he sold was specialized knowledge. He could repair guitars quickly and easily. He had been doing it for decades and people who needed them repaired knew where to find him.

Technorati tags: business / marketing / profit / retail

Business Marketing Interview – Tropical Fish Store

In an attempt to learn more about retail marketing, I’ve embarked on a series of interviews with local businesses. Here is what I discovered from one such interview.

Neon tetras! I had missed seeing them for years. For me, there is little in the natural world more beautiful than a school of neons. That alone was worth a visit to this store. It was a very modest store, small by tropical fish store standards. There was a single owner and no employees.

He had been at this location for over a decade. Most of his business came from the phone book, walk-ins or word of mouth. On occasion he advertised in bulletins at a local school. He was very reluctant to talk about his business.

One product he sold was uncommon – koi. Koi are large and require an unusually large tank that most stores don’t have. If I had been in his position I might consider working local home and garden shows or advertising in koi magazines. He might already be doing that.

He was not a very good ambassador for his store.

Technorati tags: business / marketing / profit / retail

Business Marketing Interview – Florist

In an attempt to learn more about retail marketing, I’ve embarked on a series of interviews with local businesses. Here is what I discovered from one such interview.

The florist was the most fun to interview by far. She was positively radiant with enthusiasm for her work. Her biggest customer group was brides. She ran a one-person shop with a very modest storefront in a location unlikely to get much walk in traffic.

She told me that her best marketing tool was a satisfied bride writing on message boards on the Internet. She also worked bridal shows and advertised on The Knot. I asked her if she was affiliated with any local churches and she said she had advertised in a local church bulletin with disappointing results. Bridal flower orders were much more likely to come from word of mouth than any other way. The girls all talk to their friends and there’s always one more with a wedding coming up. Customer satisfaction was key. An unhappy customer would let people know in many, many ways.

A friendly attitude and an excellent product is what sold for her. She mentioned that she had worked for a larger organization and left it when an operations manager had been hired to cut costs. As she spoke it occurred to me that for an artistic worker like her, a cold-blooded accountant type would be the worst possible person to work with. Her warmth and gentle nature blossomed, so to speak, in an environment where she could work her craft for happy young women.

I’ve seen that one in my own job. Harsh, unpleasant people rarely make good teammates. On occasion their skills are worth more than the bruised feelings they cause, but not often.

Technorati tags: business / marketing / profit / retail

Business Marketing Interview – Upholstery

In an attempt to learn more about retail marketing, I’ve embarked on a series of interviews with local businesses. Here is what I discovered from one such interview.

The upholstery store I visited did custom covers for furniture, pillows, drapes and related home decorations. The owner was somewhat reluctant to talk to me and seemed to wonder just what my purpose was. Having worked at stores like this I realized immediately that this woman probably gets a couple of salesmen a week just walking in and trying to get her to buy something.

The store was quite modest. The staff seemed to consist of the owner and one employee. It was more of a workshop than a store. They had arranged furniture and completed pieces of work in the front window to both display the quality of their work and to conceal the working space behind it.

After a bit of convincing her that I hadn’t shown up to sell her anything she told me that she markets not to the end users so much as interior designers. She works with the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). Here in San Diego there are regular events where the ASID gives tours of private homes that have been decorated by their members. The houses are always spectacular. This woman always has at least one room in one house on the tour where her work is highlighted. Her contact information is prominently displayed there.

She also gives discounts to interior designers that work with her regularly. To her, it was the quality of her work that sold it. When the interior designers were happy, she got return business.

It’s easier to sell to existing customers than it is to sell to new ones. The existing customers know your work and if they are satisfied then they are unlikely to try and find someone new and risk being disappointed.

Technorati tags: business / marketing / profit / retail

Staring Into Space

It looks like K T is seeing things that aren't there. Is she communicating with the Spirit World?

Be sure to visit the Friday Ark, Weekend Cat Blogging and the Carnival of the Cats!

Course Correction for The Scratching Post

This weekend we chart a new course for The Scratching Post. I will be de-emphasizing the political posts and focusing more on business posts. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons.

I'm writing this as a free thought exercise, so saying "a couple" means I don't have to have the whole thing planned out before I write it. I am so clever! :-)

The first reason is that I am trying a new line of work and I want to use this blog to share my experiences with you and to provide myself with a diary of my discoveries. I am currently the lead business development manager for a $1.4B organization. I do strategic planning and marketing at the corporate level. It is loads of fun. I want to start moonlighting as a business consultant for small businesses. I will be the first to admit that I don't think my specific training translates well. For example, I know nothing about direct marketing like mail, radio or flyers. After having read books and journals, today I start the direct education process by meeting and interviewing business owners. This blog will detail what I learn.

The second reason is that political blogging is a crowded field. It's also a noisy and contentious one. So many others have valuable things to say that I'm not sure I add anything to the mix. Many of my blogging friends do this better than I do, so I'll just haunt their sites and leave comments when I'm inspired. Unless something really hits me as needing a post here, I'm getting out of that line.

Some things will stay. Cats, hamsters, the Feline Theocracy, the World of Good and Thursday 13s will stay. I know that flies in the face of the advice of more seasoned business bloggers who recommend tightly focusing your blog, but I enjoy those too much to give them up. In any case, this blog isn't making any money anyway, so there's not much point in tuning it for that purpose.

If there is something you like or something you would rather me drop, let me know.

And thanks for reading this blog. I can't tell you how fun it is to turn on the PC and go to sitemeter and see how many hits I have for the day. When you read this blog, you're giving me an irreplaceable gift - your time. I am very grateful for that.

Is My Font Readable?

I recently changed the template for this blog. When I start up IE and go the blog, the text is illegible because it is so small. For some reason, my IE starts with View->Text Size = Small. Once I set it to "Medium", the blog is readable. I've considered moving to a fixed font instead of a scalable font, but I don't know if anyone else is having this problem.

I would be very grateful for any comments you could leave. Also, if you know how to set the default text size in IE to "Medium" I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks in advance!

More on Blog Advertising

Or is that "Moron Blog Advertising?"

There's one place where the print media has an advantage over bloggers and that's advertising. A recent post about Adsense posting ads for hair loss was a joke, but that and a comment from Zeus the cat touches an essential truth. Advertisers are scrambling to find what works on the Internet.

[Digression]Congratulations are in order for Zeus and his human. She just took the GRE and did quite well. Outstanding![/Digression]

In the newspapers, advertisers pay to be seen. If this were a newspaper, I would earn money for simply hosting the ads you see above and to the left. It wouldn't matter if you read them or clicked on them or if they lead to any business. I would still get paid. In that model, it's the advertiser's problem if the ads don't work.

On the Internet, where results can be measured much more accurately, we only get paid when someone clicks on the ad. Having seen the results from my Adsense effort over the last few weeks, no one clicks on these ads. Even on days of huge traffic, like when that troglodyte, Patriot Boy, linked to me and thousands of his unwashed minions tramped across my site, all I got was a distinct need to shower. No clicks on the ads.

In the newspapers, the measurement of advertising success is much more indirect. A company runs an ad campaign and then weeks or months later examines their sales. Cause and effect is murky because in those intervening weeks and months, any number of other factors could have led to sales fluctuations. With bloggers, they can cut through the fog and see exactly where buyers are.

There are a few ad companies that pay on the old newspaper model, such as Blogads, but they don't seem to have the client list that the Pay Per Click (PPC) groups have. Blogads spots are often found empty, waiting for buyers.

I've spent a lot of time reading other blogs about how to make the advertising pay and in essence, you have to attract a readership that is shopping at the same time they are reading your blog. At least then they are interested in the ads at your site. Social, political and pet blogs don't seem to attract that kind of clientele.

Another blogger even used posting pictures of hamsters as an example of what not to do if you wanted to earn money on a blog.

Oh well. What can I say? I'm just a really photogenic guy.

I Think I'm Being Mocked by Adsense

I did a post on helping out kids with cancer who have lost their hair and now my blog is getting adsense ads for hair loss.

Just what are they trying to tell me?

Great Line from a Movie

I Tivo'd the classic movie The Sisters with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Errol has just met her at a dance, gets her alone and has this great bit of dialog:

Errol: Do you want to hear the story of my life?
Bette: No.
Errol: No?!? But it's exciting! It hasn't got a point, but it might serve as a warning to you.

I love it.

Thursday 13, Blog Goals Edition

Today I list 13 things I want to do with this blog.

Every organization can use a mission statement that answers the question, “Why do we exist?” Today’s Thursday 13 thrashes around with that question for this blog. It doesn’t answer it, but it lays out a set of thoughts about why I’m doing this. I’m not quite sure where this will lead, but the exercise itself will help clarify the matter.

1. Learn from others about life. Jake Silver, Lawman, Arizona Cheesehead and Angel lead lives very different from mine. They have expanded my horizons tremendously. I vicariously live tiny parts of their lives through their blogs.

2. Teach my children about communicating. When you are trying to make a point, what’s the best way to do it?

3. Learn about charitable organizations first hand. Because I blog, I can advertise myself as a citizen-journalist and get access to their events.

4. Publicize acts of kindness. The world is not what you see on TV nor hear on the radio. All the shouting and reading from police blotters warps our perception of the world as a dangerous place filled with evil. It simply isn’t reality.

5. Attempt to prove that kindness is profitable. The best salespeople become their customers’ teammates. Who ever heard of a good teammate who was unkind to you?

6. Encourage calm conversations. Rage and vitriol can be exciting in the short run, but of limited long term value. Anger is appropriate when dealing with nihilistic maniacs like Zarqawi, but hardly fitting when discussing George Bush or Hillary Clinton.

7. Keep current with technology. Once upon a time I was a scientist and an engineer. Now I’m a marketer. Blogging helps me keep up to date.

8. Improve my business case analysis skills. I learn best by doing things. I’m trying to use this blog to examine the world through the lens of a businessman.

9. Improve my marketing skills. Getting people to read your blog is an act of marketing. What do readers want and how can I deliver it?

10. Make social connections through the blogosphere. For all practical purposes, the connections across the blogosphere are infinite. Who can I reach today?

11. Improve my writing skills. Tighter, cleaner, crisper. I find that I have to go back two and three times over my posts to remove excess words.

12. Make readers smile. Hopefully I can blog with humor.

13. Hear what you have to say.

That’s all for this week. Please visit my weekly World of Good posts if you get a chance. Links to those are always gratefully accepted!

Other Thursday 13 Sites

Pupski
Cheryl
Jackie
Eve
Mandy
Mar

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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World of Good Blogburst, Hats for Cancer Style

This one’s for you, Tyler.

This week’s World of Good (WOG) post is kind of whimsical. It’s about haircuts and hats. A friend of my son’s who was recently diagnosed with childhood leukemia inspired it. Fortunately, his prognosis is good, although the treatment will be long and painful.

One of the side effects everyone recognizes about cancer treatments is hair loss. In the process of killing off cancer cells that are reproducing quickly, other bodily cells that reproduce quickly are killed, too. This includes hair. While adults can rationalize the hair loss, it can be hard for children. Being bald is no fun when you’re 8. There’s something you can do to help.

There’s an organization in the Midwest called Hats Off for Cancer that provides hats and hair for children with cancer. Can you help? You bet! Just send them a hat! I'll wait here while you go check them out.

Did you go and do it? Excellent. Now how hard was that?

If you’re really in the mood to give and you’ve decided to change your hairstyle dramatically, consider donating your hair. It's used to make wigs for the kids. Confidentially, I tried to donate mine by collecting all my shedding in one big bag, but they didn’t have any need for cat hair. It made them sneeze. If you want to donate your hair and don't live near Hats Off, contact Locks of Love.

Here’s some photos of hair donors to inspire you.



A local girl scout troop got into the act, hand-made some blankets and donated them to the cause. Too cool! Here’s the story about that donation.

One troop provided HO4C some great hand made blankets for the kids with cancer. They knew that hospitals are always cooler and the children's treatments make them always cold.

If you look closely, you'll see that a feline figures prominently in the blanket. Very appropriate, I'd say.


While you’re in the mood, go vote for your favorite donated hat.

The WOGFather himself, Joe over at A Tic in the Mind’s Eye, has his WOG post up. Check it out! Bloggers who link to our WOG posts get to join the WOG Squad. Membership in the WOG Squad has many mysterious benefits, including cures for baldness and the ability to transfer millions of dollars of Nigerian money into your bank account! We also offer attractive blog link incentives. Feel free to drop us an email if you'd like to join. Operators are standing by!

Photos used without permission.

Previous WOGs at The Scratching Post:

WOG, Navy Style
WOG, Aussie Style
WOG, Katrina Style
WOG, Hospice Style
WOG, Boy Scout Style
WOG, MS Style
WOG, Amy Hawkins Style
WOG, Chiapas Style
WOG, Special Olympics Style

Coming Late to the Party

The MSM continues to live up to its dinosaur reputation. Like the mighty sauropods whose nervous systems were so primitive that it took several minutes for them to realize that they had died, the Washington Post is just now realizing that the left is overwhelmed with hate. They published a Richard Cohen column that is so staggeringly out of date that it makes you wonder if he wrote it two years ago and they just sat on it until now. He wrote a column vaguely dismissive of someone from the left I’ve never even heard of and his email inbox promptly filled with digital sewage from infuriated lefties. Here are key sections of his column.

It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me…But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred…I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations.

Well, duh. I did two posts on the Special Olympics and I got hateful comments from some moonbat still enraged that I said that one of their standard bearers, Patriot Boy, was a hate-filled hack unworthy of their time. Criticizing hate got me…hate.

Now I have support from the MSM. Riding to the rescue is none other than the mighty Richard Cohen. Boy, do I feel relieved. Of course, he pulls up short in his column when at the end he says he understands the source of their hate. Thanks for nothing, Ricky.

There’s no excuse for the hate. Period.

The Moussaoui Scoreboard Roadshow

So our dear friend Moussaoui didn’t get the chair or the syringe or the firing squad or a grand piano dropped on him, cartoon-style, from the top of a ten-story building. Instead he got life in prison. The Alliance has asked us to recommend an alternate punishment for him. I’ve got one. I call it The Zacarias Moussaoui Scoreboard Roadshow.

Jim Rome listeners will recognize the shorthand term scoreboard.

Zac is a loser. His attack on the US set in motion of chain of events that has his buddies on the run all across the globe. They’ve lost two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and have managed to tick off other Moslems the world over by blowing up innocent civilians. I know it’s un-American, but we need to be poor winners here. We need to rub Zackie’s face in it.

First, let’s remove his vocal cords. Moose-man isn’t a doer, he’s a talker. He didn’t actually fly the planes; he just talked others into doing it for him. “I’d love to go with you boys, but I’ve got these library books to return and you know how those fines add up!” Without the gift of gab, old ZM is totally unarmed.

Next, I suggest we give him a multimedia road trip to show him what winners look like. We start with a tour of Southern Baptist Churches. There are few things more enjoyable in life than a good Southern Baptist Sunday service. Scoreboard, Zackster. Who looks like they’re having more fun?



Next we send the creep up to New York to visit the offices of the Wall Street Journal. While there he can get a lecture on the comparative performance of the economies in the Grand Caliphate to those of the Coalition.

Per capita incomes of the Caliphate

Iran - $8100
Sudan - $2100
Gaza - $600

Per capita incomes of the Coalition

US - $41,000
England - $30,900
Australia - $32,000

Scoreboard, baby.

Finally, the ultimate torture. He gets to spend a day with the Puppy Blender himself, Instapundit. After sharing Schnauzer Shakes, Glenn can lecture the Zack-man about the spread of information. How the lights are going on all over the world. He would learn how it is getting harder and harder for people who rule through autocratic control of the media (this includes you, MSM) to keep things under control.

That would end our roadshow. He’d have had his face rubbed in defeat over and over and over again. Utterly humiliated, unable to respond, he’d be crushed.

After that we’d take him out behind a barn and shoot him like we would a mad dog.

You didn’t think we’d ever let him live, did you?

Time to Talk with Iran?

Where does the Washington Post uncover these fossils? Robert Hunter has a column in the WaPo today with the following idiocy.

American and Iranian leaders are talking a great deal about each other -- when they should be devoting far more attention to talking to each other. Both sides are throwing sharp verbal punches with increasing frequency...

How erudite! How enlightened! How nuanced! We should just sit down and talk. We'll find out just how much we have in common. We'll find that we can come up with a win-win, synergistic scenario over coffee at Starbucks.

Perhaps we can start with blotting Israel out of existance. That's where the Iranians want to start. They said so. In so many words. After that we can all just drop dead. That seems to be Iran's second wish. With these as a starting point, I'm sure we can craft a compromise. Like maybe if we just kill half the Jews and enslave the rest. For #2 on their hit parade, maybe we could just convert to Islam. All of us. Including Mr. Hunter.

How about if we don't.

Not having smoked crack, I can't seem to make much sense out of Mr. Hunter's article. You're dealing with an intractable, sworn enemy who is bent on obtaining nuclear weapons and then using them on Israel and then on you. I do not inhabit the same reality as Mr. Hunter. We asked the Europeans to talk with the Iranians for the last few years. The result was more mania from Iran and closer nuclear war.

My favorite part of his post is how he considers the US and Iran equivalent. It's implicit, but it's there. If that's true, then it should be just as safe for him to wear a yarmulke and speak Hebrew in Tehran as it is in San Diego. Let's try it, shall we?

You first, Mr. Hunter.

Ramses the Cat, Come on Down!

Here's some great photography from a friend of mine and his neighborhood cat, Ramses coming down from hunting birds on the roof.

This Week in the Theocracy

Hi, everyone! It's me, Jacob the Syrian Hamster, loyal beadle of the Feline Theocracy here with another edition of This Week in the Theocracy.


We've worked hard all week on our new template and we hope you like it. Please let us know. One of the advantages of the new template is that we've now listed all the members of the Theocracy in a group on the right hand side bar.

Without further ado, here's our favorite posts of the week from the members of the Theocracy.

Feline Empress and Mother Superior of the Holy Order of Ocea Whitefish, Kukka-Maria, has a post by her blog-mate, Brach, that is a great rundown of the birds at her bird feeder. I loved the last photo in particular. Our human said it reminded him of when he lived in Virginia.

Our Knight-Protector and Defender of Yarn Balls, Lawman, has a typically insightful take on the latest developments at Duke.

Carl Morgan, Internet Marketing Novice and Grand Almoner of England, has a book review and a new blog.

RomeoCat, the Abbess of the Priory of Small Princesses, gives a cool video with some amazing urban gymnastics.

Sister Jane of Perpetual Purring has a post near and dear to this beach bum hamster's heart. If you haven't heard about the Mt. Soledad cross yet, read about it here.

Ogre, the Monsignor of the Breweries, has a story I had not heard until he posted it. Wow.

Peggy Noonan, our Most Holy Ambassador to the Court of the Mainstream Media, has a column on the Moussaoui trial.

Our Court Artist, Justin, presents us with a conundrum.

Heidi, whose name has been placed on the Protected List, has an excellent post on the immigration debate.

And now for the WOG Squad. First, let me thank Georgette of The Chronicles of a Meandering Traveller for her suggestion of the name WOG Squad. I love it! I just realized it works even better because we really have a Julie and we have lots of Links! :-)

Actually his name on the show was Linc, but what the heck.

The Anchoress has been under the weather lately and hasn't posted a WOG link in quite a while, poor thing. Send her some get well wishes when you get a chance.

Mark Shea, Holy Scholar, has a link post with a great title.

The aforementioned Georgette, another Holy Scholar, whups up on that anti-Catholic piece of trash, The Da Vinci Code.

Eric Scheske, Holy Scholar, has a post about the mind-boggling decision by the Mexican government to legalize drugs. Build the fence now!

Finally, Happy Julie, the Happy Catholic and Happy Holy Scholar, gives us a review of the excellent movie, Monsoon Wedding.

That's it for this week. We're looking forward to another great week of blogging in the Theocracy.

All the best,
Jacob the Syrian Hamster

E J Dionne - Still in Wonderland

I hope Alice is bringing Mr. Dionne some pills to make him big again. I made the mistake of stopping by the Washington Post editorial section today and read his article on Republicans rebranding themselves. Included in his article were these howlers about Republicans porking out at the government trough.

It's also a response to the failure of conservative policies and to the declining appeal of conservative rhetoric. Conservatives are trying to save themselves by offering progressive-sounding criticisms of the status quo, much as liberals offered ersatz conservative critiques two decades ago.

What on Earth is he talking about? Has he seen the federal budget lately? Spending on poverty is absolutely colossal. It hasn't gone down, it's gone up, up, up. Smaller government? I don't think so. Here's a great quote from Rick Santorum who is petulant because his supporters expected him to behave like an adult with their money instead of going on a six year bender.

Poverty is a big deal to him, Santorum explained, because "if you want me to be honest, I'm a Catholic." He added: "How many times did the nuns beat into your brains: the poor, the poor, the poor, the poor?"

Santorum has got his hand in the cookie jar all the way to the elbow. Entitlement spending has gone up 4.7% and domestic spending has gone up 7.1% per year after inflation for the last six years. Dionne knows this. Santorum knows this.

Santorum is frantically buying votes with our money and Dionne is just flat out lying.

Warning: Cat and Hamster at Work!

There will be changes made to the blog template this weekend. I'm moving to a three-column template with fixed width side columns. Please leave me a comment if things aren't working or don't look right.

Thanks,
K T Cat and Jacob the Syrian Hamster

A Volunteer

There's a house I know with an all volunteer front yard. Miraculously, one of the volunteers is this one.


Beauty amidst the weeds.

Thursday 13, Special Olympics Edition

Last Saturday I went to a local Special Olympics event. I blogged about it here. Here are 13 things I learned from going.

1. The athletes are of all ages. One of the first things that I saw was middle aged participants. On TV you always see young adults and kids, but there were participants in their 60s.

2. The athletes are really into the events. I watched a pair of them diagnose their performances with each other.

3. For the most part, the volunteers were unrelated to the athletes. There were lots of students from the university that hosted the events and plenty of folks from local Kiwanis clubs.

4. The recurring theme from the volunteers was "God has been so good to me, I want to give some of that back."

5. Point Loma Nazarene University was the host. The students certainly lived up to their Christian principles.

6. Everyone had fun. Here's a typical photo from the event.


7. The athletes had been practicing for the events. The shotput contestants had great form. Here's a picture of one.


8. Whatever you think of race relations in the US, this event certainly said good things about how we get along. Disabilities are rare enough to make it nearly impossible to have a race-based Special Olympics. For example, a hispanics-only Special Olympics would be too small to be interesting. The volunteers and participants cared only for each other. Here's one of my favorite shots.


Click on the photo for a larger version. It was a murky day so there wasn't enough light to get the coach's features in a small jpg. A larger one shows them better.

9. If you went some distance from the event and looked back you saw America. All races and creeds working together to help each other.

10. I need to work on my photography. In every single shot I cut off the people's feet. I center the photo on the head when I should probably be aiming at the chest.

11. The event was very well organized. I didn't realize it until long afterwards, but the whole thing went very smoothly.

12. It's a tough, unending job being a parent of a disabled person. This event seemed to be a welcome, fun respite for them.

13. This was enormous fun. I'm coming up with all kinds of other groups to visit and blog about.

Other Thursday 13 Sites

Eve lists the 13 video games she likes to play.

When Caryn gets bored, here are 13 things she choses from.

Cheeky gives us 13 alternatives to swearing.

Annie lists 13 springtime flowers she likes.

Robin gives us 13 lessons from college.

Yellow Roses has 13 things she can't live without.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

World of Good Blogburst, Special Olympics Style

Welcome to this week’s World of Good (WOG) post here at The Scratching Post. Today we celebrate the Special Olympics. The purpose of the WOG is to highlight and honor acts of kindness and charity because good deeds are contagious.

On Saturday I went to the San Diego Special Olympics event at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU). It was one of the most surprising and enjoyable things I’ve ever done. I heartily recommend working with them in your town.

I've taken a couple of runs at writing this post and I've decided to let the pictures tell the story. I took over 100 photos and had a hard time culling them. This is going to be a long post. You can click on all of the pictures to get bigger versions of them. Do it, it's worth it.

The first thing I noticed about it was that the majority of the volunteers were not related to the athletes. They were people from all walks of life who came to help out. First, there were the students of PLNU. PLNU is a Christian university affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene.

Here, some of the students run the registration table. The student who organized the event told me she started working on it a month in advance and put a couple of days a week into it. That's no small task when you're a full time student!


Another group were the local Kiwanis clubs. They provided a large number of volunteers as well.


An army travels on it's stomach. So do athletes! You can see what a gray and murky day it was. I chose not to use the flash on my camera because I wanted candid shots. Many of them came out a bit dark, but if you click on them and look at the larger versions, the details come out better.


The athletes began the event with a parade around the track while the Olympic anthem was played on loudspeakers. They were organized into teams based on where they live. Another thing that struck me was how happy and enthusiastic the athletes were. Their joy was infectious.



After the national anthem was played, one of the athletes recited the Special Olympics Oath. "Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me brave in the attempt."


Finally, there was a torch ceremony where the Olympic torch was carried around the track by various athletes.




The Olympics featured several different kinds of events. One of my favorite sequences of photos came from the standing jump. Here, the woman "calls her shot". I think she was telling everyone how far she was going to go.


1-2-3 and...


airborne!


The team coaches came from all over. Many of them were high school PE coaches. Here, a runner gets some last minute tips before his race. Did they help?


You bet!


His mom was really proud.


The PLNU students acted as chaperones, counselors, cheerleaders and support staff. There must have been almost a hundred of them. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Time for a pep talk.


One athlete gets a massage.


I went to college. I don't think I was ever this cool, though.


An olympian and student ham it up for the camera.


The athletes were really into the competition. While I was walking between events, one of them told me how hard she had been practicing. I got some candid shots of the athletes comparing their performances and discussing what they could have done better.


This guy was totally focused on the shotput competition.



The shotput competitors were impressive. Dig these two.



I want to close with one last photo that captures the spirit of the event. A PLNU student who could have been studying or socializing, but this weekend was giving her time and affection to a determined athlete instead. Words fail me.


I have to admit that there were a couple of times I got choked up during the event. I stopped and tried to take it all in and it dawned on me that this was America. People pitching in and helping each other, making it a great day for some very special Olympians. Thanks to all of you for memories that I will always treasure.

Thanks also to the WOG Squad for their links and support. Check in on The Scratching Post this weekend to see their blogs highlighted with our weekly This Week in the Theocracy post. If you want to participate in the weekly WOG with stories or links or just want to be notified when they are posted, please send me an email at ktcat -at- san.rr.com.

Comments are very welcome!

Previous WOGs at The Scratching Post:

WOG, Navy Style
WOG, Aussie Style
WOG, Katrina Style
WOG, Hospice Style
WOG, Boy Scout Style
WOG, MS Style
WOG, Amy Hawkins Style
WOG, Chiapas Style

Transrodental Meditations - Calm Discourse Edition

Greetings, fellow travellers on the path to enlightenment! It is I, your Swami of Seeds, Jacob the Syrian Hamster to lead you in another in a series of Transrodental Meditations.


First, let me remind you of the basics. In order to achieve Higher Consciousness, you need

Simplicity of Thought,

Purity of Heart and

Buckets of Sunflower Seeds.

Find a quiet place and assume a comfortable position. Clear your mind of active thought and fill your cheeks with pecan pieces. Once you have done this and the winds of clarity have blown the clouds of confusion from your mind, let us contemplate the following mystery:

In an era of plenty, what drives people to excessive, hysterical commentary on blogs?

Captain Ed has an excellent post today about this.

Of course, we have seen a lot of vitriol flung our way by the same people who usually do nothing but fling vitriol anyway. Yesterday we saw some goalpost-moving as the lefty bloggers attempted to equate "chickenhawk" with child molestation

The gentle Captain quotes from the blog A Shot in the Dark, which has further examples.

The Scratching Post itself has seen our Dear Leader assaulted by people who are angry beyond all reason at things smaller than a gnat. One commenter, when asked to stop referring to fellow Americans as Nazis replied,

You're right. I do feel comfortable describing Americans who hate brown people and want to see them marginalized and killed as neo-nazis. You seem to think they don't exist, but they do and can cause real harm here in America. The biggest problem I have with Miss Ego is that she transmits their hateful ideas and rhetoric to the mainstream.

All of this frustration and fury does nothing but clog our mental pathways with negative energies. Let us open those pathways with some gentler images that could not have been found in previous decades.


Release your negative thoughts as you meditate on the people around you applying themselves to advances in medical technology. They cannot have given us this if they had been clouded with hate.

Could this little one have provided comfort to others had his mind been filled with anger and jealousies?

In early September, 5-year old Jack approached his mother with an idea. He wanted to have a sale and use the proceeds to help those in need. With the help of this parents, Jack put up signs in his neighborhood to advertise the sale. Friends and family donated items to be sold, helped to spread the word and helped to run the sale. Strangers stopped by with trunkloads of donations, many customers paid more than their purchases were worth. Many customers enjoyed lemonade and cookies from Jack's lemonade stand as well.

The sale raised over $2,000 in just two days. Jack made a donation not only to Operation Iraqi Children but to many families after Hurricane Katrina.

Others of calm mind are working daily to bring us cleaner air.

Breath deeply and slowly and contemplate the wonders of life around you. How so many of your neighbors efforts make your world a better place. Know you their innermost thoughts? Can you fathom their political views? Can you delight in their inventions all the while cursing their philosophies?

Rage and hate is poorly matched to the world we live in. In general, life grows ever sweeter and longer thanks to the people around us. If life is getting better, then our ancestors lived through worse. If they did not fall upon each other with fire and sword, then we owe it to them to find gentler ways of dealing with our fellow man.

Does Bad News Really Sell?

How valuable is the old Mainstream Media (MSM) saying, "If it bleeds, it leads?" That is, what evidence is there that bad news is more desired by information consumers than good news?

I'm starting to think that bad news isn't a demand-driven product, but a supply-driven one.

This weekend I did some volunteer work for the Special Olympics. I brought along my camera and told everyone I was going to blog about it for my weekly World of Good post. They loved the idea. Everyone wanted to tell their story. It was a huge amount of fun. In the course of the conversations, they all talked about how tired they were of the constant drumbeat of bad news from the MSM.

Either these consumer interviews were wrong, or the MSM is selling an inferior product.

I would argue that bad news is cheaper to come by than good news. Remember that the MSM is out to make a profit and profit is income minus expenses. Compare the cost per story of watching the police blotter and listening to the emergency bands on the radio versus sending a crew out to the Special Olympics. By listening to the police band, you could pick up several stories a day. The Special Olympics takes a whole day and gets you one story.

It's immediately apparent that bad news is cheaper to get. I've done a cursory search for market research that indicates that people want bad news, but haven't come across anything. As a matter of fact, it seems that focus groups tell you the exact opposite.

What happens when the blogosphere is able to deliver the stories consumers want and the MSM is clinging to it's old way of packaging the news? You get declining ratings and declining stock prices.

Bingo.

Previous business analyses of the MSM can be found here.

Technorati tags: msm business marketing profit

I'm Ready for My Close Up, Mr. DeMille!

I finally found a good way to photograph Jacob. In a previous post I described how difficult it is to get a good picture of the zippy little rodent. I discovered that if I put him on a windowsill, he tends to stay put long enough to get some good shots.

Since he is nocturnal, I did this at night with the room lights dimmed. I turned the flash off on the camera to eliminate the red eye effect. I really liked these to photos. I hope you do, too.