Karmablast

UNFUCK The World

2011-10-18T07:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I saw this picture on Facebook.

It made me think: Wow, people are starting to realize that no one is going to take us out of the mess we're in. Not the government, not the church, not any association. The only way out is individual action. We have to take the matter into our own hands and act.

By the way, if you'd like to order an Unfuck The World t-shirt (and help a charity at the same time): Change The World T-shirts

The RFP Delusion

2011-07-27T00:02:00.000-04:00

You can bet there are a couple of RFPs behind our problem of a stadium

I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract. - John Glenn, american astronaut

I already wrote about my hate of the RFP process in The worst way to choose a digital agency.

If you're buying a commodity product, a Requests For Proposal (RFP) might make sense because it is easy to compare vendors on a few, easily isolated variables like quality, price, speed, etc.

But when choosing a digital agency or for any kind of complex service, it is guaranteed to fail miserably.

To believe otherwise, you need to be either:

1. Retarded: You have no clue.

2. Be an accountant: You believe that anything worth measuring is easily measured.

3. Working in a purchasing department: Keeping your jobs requires you to not understand.

4. Employed by the the government or a multinational: You're not rewarded for results, you don't care and it's not your money.

Not only are RFPs inefficient in finding the right service provider, but you don't need to be a genius to figure out how easy it is to manipulate this kind of process. Humans are clever and imaginative and there are many many ways to work around the system. To believe otherwise would be foolish.

Marketing directors have the hassle to constantly deal with legal and IT and you think that they can't run circles around the purchasing guys? C'mon.

I can't recount how many times competitors have called me to play dummy on a RFP they wanted to participate in. Or how many marketing directors I have seen warp the process to favor the agency they wanted.

And I'm not the only one ranting against the RFP process.

How to Hire a Marketing Agency (if even Mr Nice Guy Mitch Joel is against it, there is a reason)
Why RFPs Don't Work (for the client OR the agency)
RFPs sucks - don't take my word for it
RFPs Sucks
Why Finding a Marketing Agency by RFP Sucks

Wake up and smell the coffee Ms Bueller.

If you know someone who still believes in RFPs, please forward him this post. Who knows, they might wake up.

Psychological Obesity

2011-07-20T18:16:00.000-04:00

In a previous post (The Great Divide), I stated the importance of feeding your mind.

I am presently reading The Filter Bubble, an amazing book by Eli Pariser about how the Internet is filtering and shaping the information that is presented to you (thanks @fredericg for this one).

This paragraph stuck with me and I'm sharing it with you:

Our bodies are programmed to consume fat an sugars because they’re rare in nature… In the same way, we’re biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We’ll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole. – Danah Boyd

You Started a Company...

2011-07-06T14:49:00.000-04:00

You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office.

It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.”

It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you.

It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake.

It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.

I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through.

The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.

- Chris Dixon

Walk the Other Way

2011-06-28T23:05:00.000-04:00

How many people you know are really happy and enjoy life to the fullest? Probably not that much.

Do these same not so happy and quite boring people give you advice? All the time.

And why would you listen? If you apply the same recipe, you'll end up with the same meal.

Each time someone gives you a piece of advice, always ask yourself how great is that person really doing in that specific field and in her life in general; especially if you didn't ask for her opinion in the first place.

Common knowledge and social norms are worth challenging and never, ever do something because "everybody is doing it" - that's the lamest excuse and an insult to your own sound judgment. It has been used to justify anything from genocides to looting and riots - even bureaucracy.

Do something because you believe it is right; not because everyone else is doing it.

Always be wary of crowd movements. When a herd moves, it generally is toward the slaughterhouse.

Blaze your own path. Walk the other way.

***

The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Chose one or the other with great care.

Cocaine Culture

2011-06-25T23:45:00.000-04:00

There’s no question in my mind that the dangers of cocaine have been wildly exaggerated by the antidrug lobby. Oh, I’m sure it’s not good for you, but you can certainly enjoy it recreationally, assuming you have disposable income and you hate yourself.

Unlike pot or mushrooms or liquid Vicodin, it doesn’t shift reality; it just makes reality louder, brighter, and more interested in the availability of fashionable footwear. It makes you feel like you’re walking down the street – minding your own business- and the smartest, most attractive person you’ve ever met suddently jumps out from behind a bush and gives you a compliment. This sensation lasts between 16 and 21 minutes, after which you become singularly obsessed with finding more cocaine.

That desire forces you to enter “cocaine culture” (at least for one night). Cocaine culture contains the worst of everything: the worst conversations, the worst friendships, and the worst kind of unspeakable joy. But the instant you’ve received a powdery compliment from this imaginary stranger, entering cocaine culture becomes the goal of your entire evening.

People who want cocaine will lie about anything; people will surrender integrity they never had to begin with. To get free cocaine, women will have sex with men they normally wouldn’t dance with. Cocaine makes you more popular, but also less likable; cocaine makes you feel guilty in advance.

When you snort cocaine, you consciously allow yourself to become foolish in the hope of seeming cool, and that’s the worst choice any smart person can make. This is why I am not a Cocaine Person, and this is why I will (probably) never become a Cocaine Person.

- Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live

These are the things you should invest in

2011-06-08T21:19:00.000-04:00

Most people buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.

Not that I wish you such a misfortune, but let's imagine for a second that you lost your job, status, money and all physical possessions: house, car, clothes, accessories, etc.

What would be left? Would you still be you?

The answer lies in what cannot be taken away in such a sweep:

1. Your physical health
2. Your good memories
3. The sincere relationships you have with decent people
4. Your knowledge and skills

These are the things that truly make you YOU.

These are the things that you carry along when the rest has been taken away.

These are the things you should invest in.

The Forgotten

2011-06-07T22:27:00.000-04:00

I am not sure that Watchmen is that great of a movie, but I sure like the camera works and imagery. Oh! And the intro to the Dylan song The Times They are a changin is awesome.

Made me wonder about alternate past and futures as Richard Bach liked to call them, but most of all about everything we forget so fast and how the little we remember is warped by the passage of time.

As Chuck Klosterman said: the strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality.

Twiggy, 1967

Here's a quick list of people and things buried by the sands of time. Do you have any to add?

Supermodel
We already barely remember Cindy Crawford and Elle McPherson, supermodels of the '90s; but who can remember Twiggy? Yet she was the first international supermodel and a fashion icon of the '60s and '70s.

Scientist
R. Buckminster Fuller as you certainly don't recall, was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He published over 30 books, invented the geodesic dome (you can admire on in Montreal by the way - the Biosphere on île Ste-Hélène was designed by Fuller as the US building for Expo 67) and was awarded an incredible number of patents. His book Critical Path remains a must read by any serious thinker.

Car

Duesenberg, 1935

The lavish Duesenberg was among the most popular luxury cars of the '30s as well as a status symbol in the United States and Europe, driven by the nobility, rich and famous like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Al Capone, Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, Mae West as well as members of the European royalty such as the Duke of Windsor.

Book
She, published in 1887 by British novelist H. Rider Haggard is a classic of the lost world genre. It sold 83 million copies in 44 languages, that's more than Da Vinci Code and twice as much as Harry Potter. Have you read it? Take a look at the most popular books of all time.

Music Band
The Backstreet Boys were all over the place in the '90s, and where are they now? Ok, ok, I know, they are on tour with fellow '90s boys band New Kids on the Block and they're even coming to Montreal on June 7th. But hey, it's an anecdote. Back in the days, these teens sold 130 million albums! 130 million f**ing albums!! That's more than Billy Joël, Britney Spears, Bryan Adams, Depeche Mode, Guns'N'Roses, Kiss, Pavarotti, Mettalica, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Scorpions, Eminem, The Doors, Iron Maiden, Prince, Van Halen, Bob Dylan, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Lady Gaga, Motleÿ Crüe, Oasis, Nirvana, Pearl Jam or REM...

Airport
50 years ago, Gander Airport in Newfoundland was the busiest airport in the world and was lavishly renovated in 1959 to be Canada's flagship airport and impress the rest of the planet. Today, it sees only cargo and local flights. See my previous post The Forgotten Airport

Sea

Remains of the Aral Sea

The mighty Aral Sea in Central Asia was once the 4th largest lake in the world. In the 1960's the soviets decided to divert its waters to grow cotton and cereals in the desert. Today, it lost 90% of its surface while its salinity increased exponentially. The surrounding landscape is littered with dying land and rusting ships clouded in dust storms.

Billionaire
Andrew Carnegie was a steel magnate who dominated the US business world of the late 19th and early 20th century. Technically, he was not a billionaire, but his fortune evaluated at $485 millions would be the equivalent of roughly $300 billions in today's money. A Scottish immigrant who started from scratch, Carnegie rose to success through his intelligence and hard work. At a very young age, he decided that he would spend half his life amassing wealth, and the other half giving it all away. And he did! Those having read Napoleon Hill's Think & Grow Rich will remember him talking profusely about the old Scott. He is also mentioned by Jim Rohn in his book Living and Exceptional Life, but the vast majority of the world has no idea who he was.

Actress

Ursula Andress

Ursula Andress was the first Bond Girl. She played alongside Sean Connery in the iconic Dr. No (1962). Although Jean-Paul Belmondo is one of my favorite actors, I must admit I am quite jealous of the sabbatical he took to sail around the world with the beautiful Swiss actress and her famous white bikini.

Author & Journalist
Joseph Kessel was probably the most influential writer and journalist of the French speaking World during the 20th century. The guy was everywhere: The Irish Civil war, WWI, with the artists of L'entre deux guerres in Montmartre, the Bolshevik tide and the fall of the tzars, the rise of Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the French Résistance, and any significant event of the 20th century. Hell, he even managed to get the 1st visa ever issued by the newly formed state of Israel. Yes, he was first there too. He was elected at the prestigious French Académie Française and published over 80 books. At one point in time, he had met everyone that mattered and rubbed elbows with the stars, royalty, spies, army officers, artists, chefs and of course, renegades, mobsters and outlaws. Personally, I consider his classic Tous n'étaient pas des anges one of the best adventure books of all time. Yet, try to find any of his work in bookstores today. Good luck.

Airline
Pan Am (Pan American World Airways) once was a cultural icon of the 20th century and the unofficial flag carrier of the United States. It went bust in 1991.

And there are thousand other kings, queens, cities, cultures, civilization, languages, empires and conquerors once believed to be eternal and whose names are now forgotten.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (and it was quoted in Dead Poets Society, another forgotten movie).

It has been said that we are alive as long as other people remember and tell our stories.

What about you? Who will remember you?

Reverse Thinking on the Stolen Day

2011-06-07T10:42:00.000-04:00

Let's say that instead of having a normal day today, you just didn't wake up this morning and slept until tomorrow morning. Or that some kind of Adjustment Bureau folks just erased the whole day.

Ultimately, what kind of a difference would that unique stolen day make in your whole life? After all, if you live to be 80 years old, that makes a total of 29 220 days.

I think this one should be analyzed in reverse.

If removing a single day from your life doesn't make a difference, then you're not living intensely enough.

Life is just that: a sum of individual days.

If every day is awesome, it is impossible to have a bad life.

So, make every single day count. Starting today.

How good is your coffee?

2011-05-16T23:26:00.000-04:00

Every time you visit a business, be it to buy a product, sell your services or apply for a job, it is always a good idea to try to read between the lines and feel what the people you meet aren't telling you.

Take a look at the employees: Young? Old? Cheerful? Tired? Looking at the carpet?

What does the place looks like: Old dusty furniture? Ugly expensive stuff? Bland and corporate? Messy or structured in an obsessive-compulsive way?

I could go on and on, but there's one easy and fail-safe way to judge a business: its coffee.

Trying a company's coffee is akin to visiting a restaurant restroom to get an idea of its kitchen salubrity.

If the coffee is bad, it can only mean 3 things:

1. They hire dumb people. I mean, how hard is it to make relatively good coffee?

and/or

2. They tolerate mediocrity and don't care about drinking bad coffee all day. It's just the way it is.

and/or

3. They are cheap bastards saving nickels and dimes on the coffee they serve their employees and clients.

In any case, it's off to a bad start.

***

For all of you coffee lovers, go and raise the bar.

If you're a small group and want to simplify your life, try small automated machines like the Nespresso or Jura.

If you're purists, get a real espresso machine, a water filter and some great coffee in beans.

Here in Montreal, the best place to get great coffee and espresso machines is Terra Café. Carlo Granito, the owner, is not only a real coffee aficionado, but his passion is contagious and he gives really good service.

Ugly People All Over The Country

2011-04-24T23:37:00.000-04:00

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.  - Mark Twain

It's election time again in Canada.

What a great moment to ponder not only about the broken promises of so many politicians, but even more so about the fact that the vast majority of voters don't remember (and don't care) what those unkept promises were. The best argument against democracy, said Winston Churchill, is a 5 minutes conversation with the average voter.

This year again, I will vote for 2 reasons: The first one is that I'd rather cast my vote for what I consider the best part of a bad choice (selecting the tallest midget) rather than trust the rest of the population to do it for me. The second and most important one is that it will give me the right to bitch for the next 4 years or so. Because if you don't even care to vote in a democracy, you don't have the right to complain.

There's one thing that amazes me though and that is, in my opinion, a powerful testimony to the fact that our politicians are old timers stuck in the past (even the young ones) and that the voters are a bunch of sheep (I was about to say morons, but I'll keep it to myself): those damn blue, red and orange placards all over the country.

My God! How low can we go? Ugly people's faces placarded from Newfoundland to Vancouver. All of them with fake smiles, lousy haircuts and cheap three-piece suits. Beyond the visual pollution and the insult to our intelligence, what a f**ing waste of money and unnecessary pollution.

Let me finish by quoting H.L. Menken: « Democracy is also a form of religion ; it is the worship of jackals by jackasses. »

Clown Country

2011-04-21T22:39:00.000-04:00

I am in the process of reading The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook by Albert Batès. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, even if I don't agree with the author's vision of the World that I find a bit simplistic. But hey, I don't have half his credentials so who am I to judge?

I couldn't resit sharing this quote I found in the book:

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physignomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clown-mobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns. We perceive God to be an elderly comedian. Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. “Bang! You’re dead!” – James Howard Kunstler, 2005

Oh, and for my fellow Canadians always looking for ways to laugh at the Americans (little kids always bitch about big boys - usually behind their backs), we're not that better here than in the States.

The Love Brigade in NYC Subway

2011-04-17T21:39:00.000-04:00

Hats off to these guys.

I'm seriously thinking about buying a megaphone and having the same kind of fun every morning on the Montreal Subway.

The Pirate Who Vowed to Save the Whales

2011-04-03T22:55:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, I dreamed, among other things, to someday be a modern day Captain Nemo that would hunt down and sink whaling ships and other criminals of the seas.

Well, while I was only dreaming, a gruff and brilliant sailor went ahead and did it - in spades.

The Gojira

Captain Paul Watson dedicated his life to save the whales and dolphins. He's no ordinary activist, and staging protests and signing petitions is not his forte. He is a man of action, driven by results.

In fact, he left Greenpeace 35 years ago because they were too soft and founded his own organization Sea Shepherd.

His life reads like a novel. He rammed whaling ships, was imprisoned, shot at, infiltrated criminal organizations, rubbed shoulders with movie stars and is at the helm of a fleet of black, fearsome ships sporting pirate flags.

Armed with a flair for media attention, a talent for fundraising and, most of all, an impressive list of accomplishments, he is raising an army of good pirates to help protect the sea creatures.

Basically, he does what governments should be doing - enforcing international law.

I strongly suggest you visit the Sea Shepherd Website and YouTube Channel and, if possible, support to the cause.

The wicked are always surprised to find that the good can be clever. – Marquis De Vauvenargues

The Secret of Success

2011-04-02T23:28:00.000-04:00

Someone (I think it was Elbert Hubbard) once said: The secret of success is that there is no secret of success.

I kinda agree. There are multiple factors involved in achieving a certain degree of success. The first one is being able to define success. That is where problems usually start.

But if you had to point out the most important success factor to be happy in life and succeed at anything you wanted, what would it be?

Here's my take: Surround yourself with great people.

Corollary: Flush out all the negative people, the energy vampires, the one-person recessions, the amoral, the boring, the average and well, 99% of humanity. Stick with the 1% that matters.

It is impossible to fail in life if you're only surrounded by bright, talented, kind, curious, generous and happy people.

On the other hand, you only need one negative person to ruin your life.

In a previous post (It Doesn't Really Matter How Big Your Network Is), I talked about a network's depth vs its spread and stated that:

True wealth is the number of doors in the World where you can go knocking uninvited and crash on a sofa for the night.

But to attract great friends, you must yourself work hard to be the best friend you can be. This is the hardest part.

***

I just got back from a snowboarding trip in Fernie (BC) with awesome friends. Exceptional people endowed with a great attitude, hyperactive intellects, unbridled curiosity, a wonderful sense of humor and outstanding ethics. What could have been an average ski trip became an experience that I'll be happy to remember 10 years from now.

They provided the inspiration for this post.

It's always the same thing. It doesn't matter where you're going. What matters is who's coming along for the ride.

Rooftop Farming

2011-03-20T22:10:00.000-04:00

I love crazy ideas. Especially crazy ideas that have the potential to make the World a little better.

What can be better than green rooftops? Green rooftops that you can eat.

Hats off to Mohamed Hage and his team at Lufa Farms in Montreal.

They built a 31,000 square foot greenhouse on top a Montreal office building where they grow 25 varieties of vegetables and plants without using pesticides or herbicides of any type.

The farm uses a variety of hydroponic and drip farming techniques and by doing so, gives the plants exactly what they need for optimum growth and results in the same crop yields of a farm more than 10 times its size.

The farm also incorporates many energy and sustainability features – among them: collecting rainwater for use on the farm, recirculating all irrigation water, and providing an energy-saving shield to the office building below.

Here's why they decided to become urban farmers:
We concluded that the fundamental problem getting fresh food was that food is often grown far away from where it is eaten. This meant that our food – whether grown in Quebec or in South Africa – would be handled, packaged, shipped, stored, refrigerated and reshipped perhaps dozens of times before it could appear on our dinner plates. And all along the way, it would become less fresh, less nutritious, less tasty, and be exposed to more potential hazards. The obvious truth was that it would be almost impossible to be truly fresh.

Our vision is a city full of rooftop farms. Some see our farm as small, but we have discovered that it has a big potential. It does more than grow vegetables. It allows land previously lost to urban development to be farmed again. Its year-around farming operations help and the roofs they protect will combat the warming of our cities. It minimizes the distance, time, and handling of food between you and us and it allows us to grow traditional and highly nutritious produce instead of only semi-tasteless varieties that ship and store well. Not least, it directly involves the consumer in a relationship with a local farm.

And there's another very good reason to grow more food locally: reducing transport.

1. This gives fresh, local and organic food an advantage over food imported from halfway over the World.
2. It reduces pollution emanating from transport.
3. It significantly reduces future transportation costs.

Let me explain. The price of gas will go nowhere but up in the future as we have passed World Peak Oil Production in 2005. Oh, sure, there is plenty of as left. Maybe for another 30 to 50 years, but it's farther, deeper and of lesser quality than what we've been extracting so far thus, it will be more expensive.

I bet that in the near future, we'll see more and more urban farmers.

Dreamers

2011-03-12T23:10:00.000-05:00

All men dream: but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds wake in the day
to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers
of the day are dangerous men, for they may
act their dreams with open eyes, to make it
possible.

- T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

The Greatest Tool In The World Has No Owner's Manual

2011-03-06T21:31:00.002-05:00

"The brain is the most complicated material object in the known universe. If you attempted to count the number of connections, one per second, in the mantle of our brain (the cerebral cortex), you would finish counting 32 million years later. But that is not the whole story. The way the brain is connected – its neuroanatomical pattern – is enormously intricate. Within this anatomy a remarkable set of dynamic events take place in hundredths of a second and the number of levels controlling these events, from molecules to behavior, is quite large." – Nobel laureate Dr. Gerald Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute

When I was a kid, we were told that the average human used less than 2% of his brain's real capacity. Looking at the World today, it think it might be even less.

However, we can try to do better. And with that idea in mind, the compulsive reader that I am has read a couple of books on the subject.

Here are three that stand out and can help you learn a little more about your brain and how to use it more efficiently. They are he closest we have to an owner's manual.

1. Making a Good Brain Great - Daniel G. Amen

2. Brain Rules - John Medina

3. Seeking Wisdom, From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin

Read them. You'll be AMAZED.

And please, spread the word.

If enough people make an effort, maybe we can reach 3%...

Keep People Afraid So They Don't Think Too Much

2011-02-25T00:13:00.001-05:00

A well intentioned friend of mine (who happens to work in the Internet Industry) recently sent me this video: Smartphones pictures poses privacy risks in an e-mail that read:

Hi everyone, something all BB users should be made aware of ...
You MUST see this, the consequences are scary.

            If you have a Smartphone you need to watch this...

            This is something that everyone needs to watch...........Think children or grand children

***

If you listen to the video from NBC Action News, it jumps at you at how stupid they think their public is. This is an all surface no depth story focusing on the lowest form of manipulation to make parents fear that someone will stalk their kids using the Internet.

Notice at how the policeman calls criminals "the bad guys". If you've seen a couple of recent war documentaries (No End in Sight, Restrepo), that's exactly how a lot of US soldiers call enemy troops: "the bad guys". This illustrates very well how chillingly simplistic is the reasoning process of some people we allow to carry guns and who are supposed to protect us.

I'm glad a few lucid people commented on this video on YouTube.

Before panicking, consider a few simple things:

1. Isn't this retarded news story giving ideas to the stalkers out there?

2. How easy is it to extract the geographic info from the pictures posted? I mean, if you spend your time stalking kids in parks, you don't have too much time to develop computer skills.

3. If someone has access to pictures of your kids online (via Facebook mainly), it normally is because YOU gave them access. Therefore, we can safely assume they are not stalkers. Otherwise you're pretty dumb and you already have bigger problems than anythings the news can teach you.

4. If someone wants to stalk your kids, do they really need an internet connection? Isn't it just as easy to hang around schools and parks? Remember, stalkers existed before the Internet.

5. How many kids fall victims to stalkers in the USA every year? Few (115 in 2007 - for a population of approximately 300 million), but since each is a real tragedy, the emotional impact is huge. However, statistically, it remains very improbable.

6. Why are they (news/TV networks/Big media conglomerates) trying to scare us? Remember in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine when it mentions that: "...over a period when homicide rates were falling, media coverage of murder increased by 600%."

Do I think it is important, especially as parents, to be careful about the info we publish online. Absolutely.

Do I think that "bad guys" are lurking in the shadows and following my every move online. No.

There's a fine line between being prudent and being paranoid.

You want to protect your kids from life's sharp edges? Teach them to think.

A good start would be to turn off the TV and open a book.

The Worst Way to Choose a Digital Agency

2011-02-20T22:03:00.002-05:00

There are many ways to choose the wrong digital agency, but some are better than others.

The Good Old RFP
First among the list is the infamous Request For Proposal (RFP) where a large number of agencies are invited to read dry documents about the "scope of work" and "deliverables" before responding in written form. This way of doing things comes from the purchasing department and is mostly found in very large corporations and governmental entities where the buyers are more interrested in covering their asses than delivering results. It comes from an era where the only things you bought were tangible, standardized products, not complex services. Generally, great digital agencies don't even participate as they know that the RFP process will put them at a disadvantage and generally prevent them from doing great work.

A good old fashioned RFP is usually won by mediocre or average agencies specializing in paperwork, politics and in dealing with large entities. Typically, a good deal of their staff is dedicated to answering RFPs, not producing great digital work. They know how to win by saying exactly what the buyers want to hear and by bidding very low. Later in the process, they will find ways to stretch the timeline and raise the price by invoking loopholes in the contract. The words "not included" are generally used. RFP usually make for below average results with skyrocketing costs and postponed deadlines. Ever heard of a government project that went as planned? Everything goes wrong, but no one is to blame. That's an RFP process.

And after the bitter lesson, you know what buyers do? They start working on a better, stricter and improved RFP process...

The Creative Pitch
Straight from the advertising world of the '70's, the creative pitch's purpose is to flatter the buyer's ego as well as to allow the agencies to demonstrate how creative they are. It is a shallow process focusing on catchy words, fancy concepts and beautiful images, but without any depth because all the work is done before the client and the agency really start collaborating. It might have been useful in the old days of limited media channels and push advertising, but in today's complex, interconnected and ever changing digital world, the only way to produce great work is for the agency to really partner with the client and delve deep into his business process. And that requires a lot of time - that's why it is done only after the agency has been selected. Furthermore, creativity is not enough. Intelligence, strategy and technical know-how are also required.

The creative pitch is usually won by old school advertising agencies whose best talents are working on pitches, not doing actual work for clients. As the president of one of Toronto's most creative agencies once told me: "When a client calls a pitch, he's sure of paying more for lesser quality work. Because the agency that will win the pitch will soon have its best talent (A-Team) work on the next pitch while the rest of the staff (B-Team) works on projects for existing clients. And because no matter how great you are, you lose more pitches than you win, the winning client has to pick the tab for all the pitches you lost."

Maybe it's just me, but I think it is pretty easy to get an idea of how talented an agency is by looking at their portfolio and calling a few existing customers. If you take aside the client's ego trip, the creative pitch really is a waste of time.

While we're at it, here are 13 other dumb ideas to make sure you choose the wrong agency:

1. Keep your budget secret
That way, you'll be sure of receiving really differing and hard to compare offers. The Web is scalable and there are more than one way to answer the brief, depending on the amount of money the agency has to work with. And if you won't necessarily choose the lowest bidder, then why not give your budget?

2. Do not let anyone know which agencies you invited
I never understood the logic of this one. What are you afraid of? Price collusion? Anyways, it's a small (and interconnected) world and the invited agencies will end up knowing who's competing anyways. In the meantime, a couple of great agencies will have refused to participate because they won't want to end up competing against smaller firms or desperate agencies practicing price dumping.

3. Invite a dozen agencies, preferably a mix of small, medium and large ones
It is a sure way to let everyone know that you didn't do your homework by pre-selecting agencies and that you have absolutely no idea of where you're going. As a bonus, you will receive an array of offers so different they'll be impossible to compare intelligently.

4. Do not validate technical proficiency
This will make for interesting surprises along the way. From bugs, to crashing servers and escalating development costs.

5. Do not call previous clients
Go ahead, trust your instincts and what the agency says during the pitch. Making a few phone calls and e-mails takes so much time and effort relative to the importance of the project that you may dispense with it.

6. Do not use LinkedIn to do some background check on the agency (including turnover rate)
It is easier to trust what the agency is telling you. Besides, the fact that all their best employees are leaving the boat doesn't mean it's a bad agency.

7. Make the brief as confusing as possible with gaping holes for interpretation
That way, you can get all the agencies confused. The smart ones will irritate you by asking a thousand questions and the dumb ones will interpret the brief in the way that is most advantageous to them. In the end, it doesn't matter because you'll chose the lowest bidder and he won't even have read the brief.

8. Have an impossibly tight deadline
This will tell all the smart agencies that you have unrealistic expectations and don't have the faintest idea of the level of effort required to complete the project. Starving agencies swimming in red ink and with a lot of idle hands will jump on the occasion to promise you the moon.

9. Involve as many providers as possible (strategy, design, content, integration, hosting)
Ideally, they should have incompatible values and overlapping business offers in order to compete against each other. You will have the impression that by playing them one against the other you'll be able to squeeze more work for less dollars. In the end, the good ones will just leave and let the sharks eat each other. In that zero collaboration, flying knives atmosphere, your project will bleed.

10. Choose your agency without meeting the team that will work on your project
It is much simpler to read the proposals and compare specs, features and price. Everything is there, isn't it? Can the human side of things be that important?

11. Go for the lowest price
After all, it's just a Website. How complex can it be? Even your brother-in-law can program one.

12. Chose the agency that said what you wanted to hear
A yes-agency is great for your ego and easier to present to your boss and colleagues. And since you're always right, smart people usually share your opinions anyways.

13. Once you choose the agency, try to negotiate the price
If you can lower the price in a significant way, it means one of two things: (1) The agency tried to screw you the first time around. (2) It is in dire financial health and desperate for any dollars it can get. In both cases, good luck.

Better, Cheaper, Faster: Pick Any Two

2011-02-09T15:26:00.000-05:00

13 Reasons to Fire Your Clients

2011-02-06T22:50:00.002-05:00

1. No Respect or Trust
You should never invest yourself, be it business or personal, if there is no respect and trust between you and the other party. Not only will it be impossible to build something great, but you'll degrade yourself in the process. Don't be a mercenary or a whore. Work with smart and trustworthy people and do it with all your heart.

2. No Passion
If the work you have to do doesn't interest you, quit and find some that will spark your creative juices and bring some glitter to your eyes. Life is too short to spend it doing uninteresting things. The more passionate you are, the more great things you'll produce, attracting more interesting people and opportunities.

3. Soul Twister
The problem with the Rat Race is: even if you win, you're still a rat. Never ever compromise your integrity. Refuse to do anything that goes against your values, regardless of the amount offered. In these times of shallow relationships, opportunistic individuals, information overload and ever increasing social media powered word of mouth, trust is the new currency and high integrity individuals will dominate the business world.

4. Unrealistic Expectations
We've all had a client who wanted the best product or service in the World but had absolutely no idea of the required costs. These are the ones that will tell you they want something like such and such dominant player in the industry (Facebook, Google, Nike, eBay, Red Bull, etc.) but will fall from their chairs when you'll present a budget equivalent to less than 1% of what the big players are spending. In the end, it all comes down to that simple equation: Better, Faster, Cheaper: pick any two.

5. Not Enough Time
This one is a classic. The client comes to you already late and wants his project delivered in an absurdly impossible short period of time. He will say things like: "How bad do you whant this job? How fast are you guys really are? I don't care if you have to work nights and week ends. Etc, etc." What he should be asking is: How desperate are you to accept this job? And you can bet that you'll rush for nothing because the client will eventually postpone the project several times.

6. Not Enough Money
You can generally spot this client as: (1) He will refuse to give you his budget for the project and (2) he will say things like: "Money is no object." and "If the value is there, we'll pay the price." Run away, he doesn't have a dime!

Some other times, as your business grow, earlier, smaller clients won't be able to afford your services anymore. You should both acknowledge it and admit that it is perfectly OK to part ways given the circumstances. If you're smart, you'll help these client find a new smaller partner to replace you.

7. Outside Your Area of Expertise
Sometimes the client is great, the project is interesting, but is falls outside your area of expertise. Better refer the client to someone who will be better able to help him. You might lose money in the short term, but you won't kill your reputation with a failed project and your client will respect you and might work with you in the future if he has an opportunity.

8. Too Big
This one killed more small businesses than can be counted. The one in a lifetime opportunity, the big project that will help you join the major leagues can also be the one that will kill you. Big clients are notoriously demanding. The processes, meetings and politics will take insane amount of time and eat your profits. Because they have so many people knocking at their doors, the big clients will make you work longer, harder and for less - because they can. Finally, the bigger the client, the slower they pay. Late payments on huge projects have a very damaging impact on cash flow.

9. Clueless
The client that wanders way out in the left field but thinks he's on top of his game. Will come up with absurd ideas and won't listen to advice from people more competent than himself; because in his World, no one can be better than he is. Will end up working with a yes-agency intent on taking as much of his money as possible before someone at his company realizes that the guy is incompetent and swings the ax in his direction.

http://clientsfromhell.net/

10. Doomed Project
Some projects are born to fail. You just can feel it by the way strange people are always involved (overconfident, naive, lunatic, untrustworthy, psychotic, bipolar or outright criminal) along with bad planning, missing info, tight cash flow, unclear expectations, overly optimistic projections and unrealistic expectations. Avoid the trap.

http://clientsfromhell.net/

11. Idea of the Century
Every day, someone comes up with this game changing idea, the next big thing after peanut butter and Harry Potter, but doesn't have a penny to make it happen and you have the incredible chance of being offered a partnership in this new business that will revolutionize the World. In the meantime, you get to work for free and take all the risks while your genius clients doesn't risk a dime. In the very unlikely event that his idea does work (after 20 years in business, I have yet to witness such an event), your genius client will make more money than you, without any risk or effort. What a great plan - for him.

A variant of this one is: Work for free or at below cost price and, since I'm such a big shot, I will bring you a lot of business in the future. Will never happen. Ask yourself how come such a successful businessman cannot afford your services at the regular price.

My great friend and overly successful businessman Jean-Claude Bouillet once rightfully told me: "The longest distance in the World is the one that separates the mouth from the wallet."

12. Bad Timing
At some other time, this project and client would have been perfect, but the timing is not right. Maybe you presently have more job than you can handle or you need to replace a key player in your team or have pressing personal issues that need to be addressed. Better pass your turn than take a project that you'll turn into a fiasco.

13. Only Money
If the only reason your are working with a client is money, walk away. If there's no interest, passion, excitement, respect and fun, what are you doing? This is your life! Are you really willing to do anything and interact with anybody just to make a buck?

***

The hardest thing is learning to say no. The appeal of money is hard to resist, especially if you're an entrepreneur and have bills to pay.

In the long run, however, if you only invest yourself in great projects and constantly deliver quality, you'll attract enough smart clients that you'll never have to worry again about having enough job.

A WORD OF CAUTION
Of course, to be able to do this, you need 3 things:

1. Strong sales skills - to replace your bad clients with newer, better ones
2. A great product or service - to attract and keep great clients
3. A financially healthy business - so you can afford the luxury of refusing money in the short run

Ditching clients is not easy, and a few will be frustrated. Some people in your industry might label you as cocky, pretentious, snob or crazy; but in the end, you'll earn yourself a strong reputation for honesty and quality with like minded people and you'll attract great clients: smart, knowledgeable, organized, fair and demanding business partners that will help you grow your business as well as grow as a person.

***

P.S.: There are always clients worse than yours. For a good laugh, visit Clients From Hell.

Individuals > Businesses

2011-01-23T22:22:00.002-05:00

Individuals matter more than the businesses that employs them. A lot more.

Businesses don't make decisions. Individuals do.

Businesses don't have friends, a social conscience or a soul (BP anyone?). Human beings do.

If you think that you can trust a business, any business, you're wrong. But you can trust some individuals within a business.

What can a single individual do to a business? Ask Steve Jobs.

History abounds with companies that were resurrected (or killed) by a handful of individuals.

What does that mean if you're a business owner? Be very careful about the people you add to your team. Hire only the very best, create an environment where they can excel and make sure to keep them. A high turnover is the sign of a sick business.

If you're working for a company, big or small, do not lower your arms. Challenge the status quo and strive to make a difference. If your employer won't let you do your best, find a smarter one.

If you're a salesperson, you have to realize that your clients are not companies, but rather individuals within these companies. Therefore, when you present them your product or service, do not only think of what will be good for you (poor), their company (average), but rather, what will benefit them individually (better). If you're doing a great job at helping other people, they will work with you again and again, regardless of where they are employed.

As sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer famously said: "All things being equal, people would rather work with their friends. All things being not so equal, people still want to work with their friends."

I still have a lot to learn, but after 15 years in business, if there is one advice I can give you, it is to never play games. Never work just for the money. Never invest time and energy with people you don't like or respect. And above all, surround yourself with bright, smart, honest, competent and positive people. If you can only do this, the rest will take care of itself.

Healing Permanent Injuries with ART

2011-01-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

In his most recent book, the 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss explores different ways to heal permanent injuries. One of the the suggested methods is Active Release Technique (ART).

I had already tried Active Release Technique (ART) a few months before reading the book so I can attest its usefulness.

***

Following a whiplash accident, I was left with chronic pain, stiffness and limited range of motion in my neck.

I was introduced to Active Release Technique (ART) by Jean-François Thibault of JFT International here in Montreal and I was referred to him by my friends and clients at Atlantis Strength Equipment.

Jean-François Thibault is well known on the Canadian health and fitness scene. His clients include UFC Champion Georges St-Pierre as well as the Canadian Olympic team.

After a few months working with Jean-François Thibault, I have made more progress toward recovery than in the previous year and a half.

Although Jean-François used an array of techniques including: posturology, strength training, ELDOA and stretching, a key treatment was Active Release Technique (ART).

What is Active Release Technique (ART)?

Here's an explanation from: www.activerelease.com

ART is a patented, state of the art soft tissue system/movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.

How do overuse conditions occur?
Over-used muscles (and other soft tissues) change in three important ways:
    •    acute conditions (pulls, tears, collisions, etc),
    •    accumulation of small tears (micro-trauma)
    •    not getting enough oxygen (hypoxia).

Each of these factors can cause your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up, muscles become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons causes tendonitis, and nerves can become trapped. This can cause reduced range of motion, loss of strength, and pain. If a nerve is trapped you may also feel tingling, numbness, and weakness.

What is an ART treatment like?

Every ART session is actually a combination of examination and treatment. The ART provider uses his or her hands to evaluate the texture, tightness and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements.

These treatment protocols - over 500 specific moves - are unique to ART. They allow providers to identify and correct the specific problems that are affecting each individual patient. ART is not a cookie-cutter approach.

What is the history of Active Release Techniques?

ART has been developed, refined, and patented by P. Michael Leahy, DC, CCSP.

Dr. Leahy noticed that his patients' symptoms seemed to be related to changes in their soft tissue that could be felt by hand. By observing how muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves responded to different types of work, Dr. Leahy was able to consistently resolve over 90% of his patients' problems. He now teaches and certifies health care providers all over the world to use ART.

***

I suggest you try ART before any other form of treatment as it has a good chance of providing a faster and more efficient treatment than other techniques.

Will it solve all your problems? No, but as renowned coach and trainer Charles Poliquin says, ART is 100% effective on 70% of the people.

If you live in the Greater Montreal area and want to try ART, I strongly suggest the services of Jean-François Thibault as he's one of the best practitioners of ART in Canada.

Insights from the Ultimate Obsessive Compulsive

2011-01-20T01:07:00.000-05:00

I tend to like obsessive-compulsive people because once they delve into something they tirelessly analyze every detail and put a ton of effort, way beyond the point of diminishing return. In terms of efficiency, for them, it is so not worth the effort (it is, after all, a mental disorder). But for people benefiting from their findings, it's a blessing. You can be sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they have tracked the whole universe in search of the last grain of sand pertaining to their favorite subject.

My wife is obsessive compulsive for a lot of things like finding the perfect vacation spot (once a year) or the perfect house (once every 5-7 years). Fantastic for me.

Another obsessive-compulsive is my good friend and Web expert JP Cyr. Not only has he a laser like focus, but once he sets his mind on something, Sherlock Holmes looks like an amateur. If he's investigating breathable fabrics one day and there's a Russian fellow testing a new Gore-Tex membrane in some God forsaken corner of the Kamchatka peninsula, you can bet your piggy bank that JP will be popping up from behind am iceberg to interview the guy.

These are classic examples of obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

TIM FERRISS

But obsessive compulsive people have a demigod. His name is Tim Ferriss.

His first book The 4-Hour Workweek (Escape the 9-5, Live anywhere, and join the new rich) was an instant bestseller. I so liked that book that in a little less than 3 years, I ended up buying more than 50 copies to give them to friends.

Do I now work 4 hours a week? No. Not even close. But in 2 years, my vacation time has been multiplied by 10 while my revenues more than doubled. Not bad. Also, when you love what you do, maybe 4 hours per week is not enough.

THE 4-HOUR BODY

In his second book The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss uses the same recipe for success that worked so well with his previous book:

1. Bold claims to help people achieve their dreams / solve their problems : An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Hard to say no...)

2. To the point, precise advice on how to obtain desired result - all in an easy to act upon format

3. Recommendations backed by years of research interviewing world class professional operating outside the realm of common knowledge.

4. A fun, easy to read prose

The aim of the book is not to give final, dogmatic answers to every situation. Rather it opens new possibilities and pathways for readers to explore as well as tools to challenge the status quo.

I am presently reading The 4-Hour Body, and although I won't give you a full review yet, I can tell you that I started testing the fat loss methods suggested and they work. Actually, I tested only one and went from 201 pounds to 186 pounds in 5 weeks without that much effort.

In my next post, I'll tell you more about another technique Tim Ferriss suggest to heal permanent injury and that I recently tried: Active Release Technique (ART). Astoundingly effective!

Mom and Pop Strike Back

2011-01-17T22:30:00.000-05:00

www.brooklynfare.com

Last Friday, as I was walking to work, I came across my good friend Octavian from Rock & Social.

Octavian, along with Sacha Declomesnil, is one of the foremost social media experts we have here in Montreal. He's also a smart guy and decent human being. And every time I collide with an intelligent person, I leave with new ideas. Sometimes theirs, sometimes mine and more often than not, a mix of both.

One of the ideas we succinctly explored that morning stuck with me and I'm sharing it with you as is. Now, I don't have any data to support it and I didn't do any research. It is just my antennas buzzing.

Mom and Pop Strike Back - The Revenge of Local Commerce

The last 25 years or so were the realm of anonymity, information overload and faceless corporations. A fertile ground for the rise of worldwide retail brands like Starbucks, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc. It was not always the best choice available, but in doubt, it was a safe bet. Good perceived value.

When you were in an unfamiliar part of town or in another city, trusting the small shop was a big risk. Most people went for the safe choice with the brand they knew.

What has changed? I'd like to say: everything! But I'll be more specific: mobility, Internet, peer review and social media.

What if I'm lost far away from home and looking for a restaurant. That small café next to a Big McDonald has a name. I can ask my contacts via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook and get an answer in seconds. I can check the café's review in a dozen of websites or apps like Trip Advisor, Yelp, Dine.com and Urbanspoon.

All of a sudden, I don't have to take a risk anymore. The McMeal is no longer the only safe alternative.

What if the small shop can't afford the costly location on the main avenues? Hey, I have a GPS in my car and on my smartphone that will direct me to it.

Times are changing.

I smell a better future for the Mom and Pop shops.

Letters Against The War

2011-01-15T23:30:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, there was this great Italian journalist and World class traveler Tiziano Terzani who happened to be in Afghanistan when American troops landed in October 2001.

His book Letters Against the War didn't get published in America and the UK. I discovered it when Swiss friends sent me copy. Here's the fascinating story of that book as told by the author as a preface.

Florence (Italy) early December 2002

Dear Friends,

the year that is about to end has been dramatic for all of us. Never before has each one of us been so unequivocally confronted with the question of war and peace. Back from a long trip into Pakistan and Afghanistan, I started the year publishing, first in Italian and then in various other European languages, a booklet dedicated to my three year-old American grandson, Novalis. The book “Letters against the war” was meant to raise questions about the way to face the situation created by the events of September 11th and to suggest that violence might no longer be the best solution for this and future conflicts of mankind.

The book was an immediate success in Italy (for 18 weeks it was among the top 10 best sellers). It was well received, reviewed and sold in France, Germany and Spain. Somehow, continental Europe with her, by now almost genetic, memory of war and destruction, seemed extremely responsive to the neo-pacifist appeal of the “Letters”. Wherever I went to talk about my experiences as an old war correspondent turned “Kamikaze for peace” (this was the title of a one hour documentary by Swiss TV) big crowds gathered to listen and to discuss.

Unfortunately this was not at all the reaction of the Anglo-Saxon world, particularly of the U.K. and the U.S.A. whose governments and press have taken a very bellicose, pro-war stand. All attempts to have the “Letters” published in English failed. All the English and American publishers who has printed my previous books responded with a “No, thank you” note. I did not give up. I had the book translated myself and offered it again to all kinds of publishers in London and New York.

To no avail. Even my offer to give the book for free failed.

Finally, a publisher in New Delhi (India Research Press) dared to take up the offer and his Indian edition remains the ONLY English version of the “Letters against the war” available in print. Now to allow as many people as possible to have access to the book, I decided, together with Massimo De Martino who in his spare time, generously run the T.T. fan (“fun”) Club founded three years ago, to post the whole book on the Internet. You can download it for free and I would be most grateful if you circulate text among your friends and...”adversaries”.

It is time to think, to discuss, to argue and finally to raise our consciousness and to save ourselves. Nobody else can do it for us.

Thank you very much,

tiziano terzani

Download Letters Against the War in PDF

Don't Be Afraid of the Common Cold

2011-01-15T16:46:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, my 6 year old son was affected by mild fever and vomiting. Seemed like a minor case of Gastroenteritis and after a day of rest, he's already feeling a lot better. On Monday, he won't even remember being sick.

What astounded me was people's reaction around us. Upon hearing (or reading on Facebook) that my kid was sick, some friends wouldn't shake my hand or come to our house. Another family came over to pick a package, but they wouldn't stop by for a coffee for fear of getting sick. A friend that was here for supper yesterday was told by her sister that she couldn't visit her family this weekend because they didn't want their daughter to get ill.

What's the hysteria all about?

We are surrounded by bacterias, viruses and fungii and some of them can make us sick. That's why we have an immune system. And like a muscle, the immune system gets stronger with use.

It's ok to fear really dangerous diseases (Ebola, Black Plague, AIDS, etc.) but a common cold or flu. C'mon...

I never ran away from someone with a cold, or refused to shake someone's hand because they had the flu. Did I end up getting a runny nose a few times as a result? Sometimes. Did I ever become seriously sick because of it? Never.

Granted, I was born in Africa in the '70s and my exposure to viruses and bacteria might have been substantially higher than that of the average American or European kid. But I believe it is my lifelong exposure to cold, flu and other minor diseases along with healthy eating habits and a decent fitness level that keep me in good shape.

In the last 15 years, I was seriously sick (bedridden) and missed a day of work only once. And that was after getting a vaccine.

Once again, I think we fear the wrong things. Looking at my previous posts What Are You Afraid Of ? and When Playing Safe becomes Dangerous, it is becoming a recurring theme.

All these people scared of the common cold or flu are carelessly exposing themselves to much greater threats:

SMOKING: Such a good way to get cancer and die prematurely. How insane do you need to be to still smoke in the 21st century?

STRESS and NOT ENOUGH SLEEP: Not only will it cause you health problems, it is a sure way to decrease your immune system's strength.

SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER ALL DAY and NOT ENOUGH PHYSICAL ACTIVITY: Our unhealthy lifestyles produce back problems, obesity, poor posture and depressed immune systems.

MEDICATION: We have reached a point where the over the counter drugs are stronger than anything you can find on the streets. Do you think all this medication is tested for long term effects (5, 10, 20 years)? Of course not. Do you think that pharmaceutical companies test the combined effects of different medication? That would be too costly. You can be sure of one thing however. Every time you get a benefit form a chemical, there is a price to be paid. Whether you see it immediately or not.

CONTAMINATED WATER: The filtration plants used by the vast majority of cities in the US and Canada can clean polluted water to make it drinkable and prevent dangerous infections. However, there's a lot of things they cannot remove from the water: heavy metals, chemical products and medication. Yes, you read well. Medication. What do you think happens with the cocktail of pills aging baby boomers are ingesting? It goes out of their system into their urine, and then from their toilet bowl to your glass of water. In some waterways around cities, some fish species are experiencing sex change due to the hormone overdose caused by all these women taking contraceptive pills and rejecting the excess hormones through their urine.

DANGEROUS FOOD: MERCURY POISONED FISH, PESTICIDE LADDEN VEGETABLES AS WELL AS MEAT BASKING IN BACTERIA, HORMONES AND CHEMICALS
Industrial food production is ugly and the products we are offered at the supermarket more often than not aren't exactly health friendly. As a result, as I explained in a previous post there are far more fecal bacteria in the average American kitchen sink than on the average American toilet seat.

If your health is important for you, go and read Eric Schlosser's great book Fast Food Nation and Joel Salatin's Everything I want to do is illegal.

I also strongly recommend the excellent documentary Food inc.

***

The next time one of your friend has a cold, instead of running away, hug him or her. It'll be better for both of you.

China's Biggest Mall Sits Empty

2011-01-12T16:43:00.000-05:00

You'd think that China is booming, and booming some more, with no ceiling in sight.

Well, think again.

And beyond what it all means for China, you have to ask yourself, in our globalized World, what does that mean for us here in North America?

If the subject is of interest to you (it should) and you want information that makes more sense than what you read in the paper (surprise, surprise) or what your bank tells you (vested interest anyone?), check out this great blog: Financial Insight.

The Entrance

2011-01-12T07:14:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I saw such a great ad! (Thanks JP Cyr!)

Hats off to Heineken and their Advertising Agency: Wieden+Kennedy (Amsterdam).

I just love the soundtrack! Such a great song: "The Golden Age" by Danish alternative pop band The Asteroid Galaxy Tour and their beautiful blond singer/bombshell Mette Lindberg.

The Rise of Bitchin'Kitchen

2011-01-10T21:05:00.000-05:00

I first met Josh & Nadia at a Longboard event in 2009. They were both smart, funny, unconventional and had an incredible energy. We had lots of fun and the evening ended at my favorite restaurant Le Club Chasse et Pêche.

Since we share a love of good food, I invited them at my place a few weeks later for our traditional Friday Night BBQ (I explained in a previous post that I was a bit obsessive compulsive with steaks.) and they came over a few times.

At the time, Josh and Nadia had started a small Web TV with a unique and powerful branding called Bitchin'Kitchen that, despite its interresting fan base, was not very well known.

In less than 2 years, they have been propelled to the rank of superstars.

Nadia G. is everywhere! In addition to the BitchinLifestyle.tv Website, they now have immensely popular social media properties: Facebook page, YouTube Channel and Twitter Account.

They also managed to publish a book: The Bitchin'Kitchen Cookbook.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that they now have their own TV Show on The Food Network and its little brother The Cooking Channel?

For all I know, it is the first time (at least in Canada), that a Web series jumps into mainstream television. No small feat.

Oh, and you can buy their merchandise online on Nadia G's Bitchin'Boutique.

True entrepreneurs, armed with flair, style and chutzpah, they not only understood all the opportunities offered by the profound changes in the media universe, they worked harder than any of you can imagine.

As Josh once told me: "People think we're lucky. They don't understand that luck favors the prepared."

And finally, the show is good, really good.

With so much on their hands, you'd think they'd slow down. Hell no! They are working on a new show: Rock This House.

In my humble opinion, the World needs more Bitchin'People like Josh&Nadia.

127 Dreams: The Ultimate Bucket List

2011-01-09T17:16:00.000-05:00

In the mid 90s, I was reading a management book I had borrowed from a friend (Maverick, by Ricardo Semler - unconventional and excellent, by the way) when the author mentioned adventurer John Goddard.

It triggered some strange twist of memory as I recalled a story I had read as a child more than 15 years ago in an old Reader's Digest. I drove to my parent's place and started digging through old Reader's Digest issues in the basement. I remembered that the issue's cover featuring John Goddard was orange so I went through 20 years worth of old books and magazines until I found it.

The guy's story is just unbelievable.

At the age of 15, John Goddard wrote a list of 127 dreams.

Among them:

#1: Explore the Nile
#21: Climb Mt Everest
#38: Visit every country in the World
#50: Dive in the Red Sea
#57: Visit Easter Island
#70: Swim in Lake Tanganyika
#75: Land on and take off from an aircraft carrier
#89: Learn Ju Jitsu
#97: Write a book
#104: Learn French, Spanish and Arabic
#111: Read the works of Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Dickens, Thoreau, Rousseau, Conrad, Hemingway, Twain, Burroughs, Talmage, Tolstoi, Longfellow, Keats, Poe, Bacon, Whittier, and Emerson
#114: Compose music
#125: Visit the Moon

At 16, Goddard had already explored the Okefenokee swamps of Georgia and the Everglades with his father. He owned a horse, drove a tractor and was practicing spearfishing.

At 20, he had dived in the Caribbean, Aegean and Red Seas. He also had become an airplane pilot in the US Navy with 33 war missions over Europe.

At 21, he had already visited 21 countries.

At 22, he discovered a Mayan temple in the Guatemala jungle and started preparing his exploration of the Nile River.

And so on, year after year.

In the process, Goddard has been bitten by a rattlesnake, charged by an elephant, and trapped in quicksand. He has crashed in planes, been caught in earthquakes, and almost drowned twice while running rapids.

So far, he has completed 109 of his 127 dreams.

If you're curious, here's the full list (with details of accomplishments).

The difference between John Goddard and the average Joe is that:

1. He took his life list seriously. This wasn't just wishful thinking.
2. He made a plan for each of his dreams.
3. He worked hard to reach each of his dreams, overcoming obstacles and never giving up.

To learn more about John Goddard, visit his Website: www.johngoddard.com


Cover of the August 1984 Reader's Digest issue featuring John Goddard Story (p.82)

Inside the August 1984 Reader's Digest issue featuring John Goddard Story (p.82)

Things I've Learned

2011-01-09T00:55:00.000-05:00

1. The World is not fair and no one owes you anything.

2. You are not as smart as you think, and if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

3. Not all pain is gain.

4. Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly is to the bone.

5. The smiling counselor in a suit and tie waiting for you at the bank is far more dangerous than the black guy with the strange hairdo in the subway or the bald, pierced and tattooed biker seated next to you at the bar.

6. There's always one more imbecile than you expected.

7. You cannot make something idiot-proof. They'll come up with better idiots.

8. The person who needs your help the most is the one less likely to accept it.

9. Never follow the herd. It is generally headed for the slaughterhouse.

10. Everybody knows what to do. Very few actually do it.

11. When a man with experience meets a man with money. The man with the experience walks away with the money and the man with the money walks away with the experience.

12. The longest distance in the World is the one that separates the mouth from the wallet.

13. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

14. A good friend will come and bail you out of jail, but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying: damn we fucked up!

15. Be nice to the people you meet on your way up, because you'll meet them again on your way down.

16. The fall won't kill you. It's the landing.

17. A Smith&Wesson beats 4 Aces.

18. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Homeless Man With Golden Radio Voice Lands Dream Job

2011-01-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

It started as a homemade video of a homeless man with an amazing voice.

The video went mega viral. Over 11 million views in 3 days on Youtube...

The story on Ted Williams (the homeless man) has a happy ending: he landed a dream job. Watch story on MSNBC.

All of this in half a week.

God Bless the Internet.

Fridge Stupid

2011-01-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

If, like most people living some distance of the Equator, you experience a few cold months during the year, you probably spend a significant amount of dollars on your heating bill.

And inside the house or apartment you pay to heat, you also happen to spend money on electricity to refrigerate a cold box called a fridge.

Pretty insane with all that free cold available outside your walls, isn't it.

You see, this is a classic example of a bad habit we've inherited and are repeating on auto pilot. It just doesn't make any sense, but we do it because everybody else does it and we don't see any alternative around. But there are alternatives. Change is slow because there's still money to be made by selling appliances designed to break in a few years. Ever wondered why an old fridge from the 1960's is still working mighty fine when the new one you bought 5 years ago is already dead? But that's another topic.

Let's get back to alternatives.

Imagine a wall mounted fridge that would be a permanent fixture in the house, like, let's say, a heat pump. Since the majority of refrigerators break during transport, this would solve a problem right there. Also, the compressor could be located in the basement of the house, eliminating the unnerving humming present in every modern kitchen. Instead of a few big doors, the fridge would present an array or compartment (vegetables, drinks, meat, etc.) each with its own temperature and individual door to minimizing the cold/heat transfer between the fridge and the house each time a compartment is opened. Finally, during winter months, the cold could come from the outside, simply pushed by a fan. The remainder of the year, the compressor would do the job. Total amount of energy saved: around 80%.

Actually, this "smart fridge" has already been designed by a student of Sylvain Plouffe, professor of Ecodesign at the University of Montreal. I read about it in Jean-Sébastien Trudel's excellent book: Arrêtons de pisser dans de l'eau embouteillée (page 151).

However, I haven't seen any available in stores so far.

Someone knows a top level executive at Frigidaire, GE, Maytag, LG, Whirpool, Kitchenaid, Electrolux, Viking or Miele ?

What Are You Afraid Of?

2011-01-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

As a society, we are afraid of the wrong things: terrorism, tsunamis, weather, burglars, financial failure, etc. (I covered this in a former blog post: When Playing Safe Becomes Dangerous)

On the other hand, we're not afraid of things that should scare the shit out of us:

1. BAD FOOD: Pesticide and hormone laden industrial foods, nutrient depleted and over caloric fast food, excess sugar and caffeine that are all responsible for killer diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

2. STRESS: Another great killer. Too much worry and insane working schedules. Besides, do you you know a lot of happy workaholics?

3. NO PLAY: At some point in their life, most adults forget that the primary objective of having a job in the first place was to earn money to pay for the fun stuff. Somewhere along their career path, they developed a "lifestyle" and lost the notion of fun. Life was not meant to pay the bills.

4. TOO MUCH TV: The great inhibitor to clear thinking, personal growth and action oriented lifestyle. Too many people are turning their brain's 'off switch' too often. As a society, this is a major problem. (See my former Blog Post: The Great Divide)

5. DEPRESSION: Often a result of the 4 preceding points. Currently (at least in the Canada and the US, but I suspect the rest of the developed World is not too far), 75% of the population has taken, is taking or will take anti-depressor. While this is good news for pharmaceutical companies, it is a clear sign that something is wrong in the way we live.

6. A BORING LIFE: As someone famously said: "Most people are just stuff to fill graves with." or as Kevin Spacey yelled in The Ref: "What do you do, besides taking space." This should be the ultimate fear: a life devoid of purpose and fun, merely surviving and paying the bills. Yet, that's what 99% of people end up doing.

How many people do you know really love life, enjoy every minute of it and make a difference in the World? Strive to be one.

***

“We live in a world of negative conditioning. The three big motivators are … fear, greed, and vanity. They drive the American sales process – and they drive the American salesperson. Our society preys on the fear factor. It’s in 50% of the ads we see (the rest are greed or vanity). Ads about life insurance for death and disability, stolen credit cards, anti-freeze for stalled cars, tires that grip the road in the rain, brakes that stop to avoid hitting a child on a bike, and security systems so your home won’t be robbed. If you see that crap enough, you become “fear-conditioned” ”. – Jeffrey Gitomer, Little Red Book of Selling

"I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." - Mark Twain

“I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark  would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot.  I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent  glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” - Jack London

It Doesn't Really Matter How Big Your Network Is

2011-01-03T20:39:00.000-05:00

Picture courtesy of Dominick Ménard

(BTW, pictured FB account not his)

Having 10 000 friends on Facebook, 25 000 followers on Twitter and 3 000 connections on LinkedIn might seem like the ultimate networking achievement (especially to younger folks who don’t know what a Rolodex is), but it’s too easy to connect online with anybody, including a majority of people you don’t really know.

This is especially true as your network gets bigger and/or more valuable. Lots of vultures, leeches and suckers will try to piggy back on you like remoras on a great white shark.

A friend of mine was recently asked if he knew Mr X. His answer: The name sounds familiar, let me check on Facebook…

For him, it’s OK to have 2 500 online “friends” he doesn’t really know as his job is to drive traffic to nightclubs and he uses Facebook merely as a promotion platform.

However if, like most people, your business requires a higher trust level, you might want to pay less attention to the size of your network (spread) and a lot more to its strength (depth).

Here’s the first test of your network’s depth: To how many people can you easily borrow 500$ ?

All of a sudden, your network is a bit smaller, isn’t it?

Now, think of all the doors in the World where you can go knocking uninvited and crash on a sofa for the night.

This is the heart of your network. These are the people worth fighting for. These are the friends that make life worth living.

Don't rely too much on the others.

True wealth you see, is not measured in dollars or in absolute numbers.

The Great Divide

2011-01-02T10:56:00.010-05:00

Artist : Andre Martins de Barros

The average American reads, on average, 1 book a year, but watches 4,5 h of TV per day. (1)

You can safely bet that the time spent on the Internet follows a similar trend.

And when people do read, what do they elect to feed their minds with?

News Junk Food: newspapers and other deliverers of useless and pessimistic information. Quit reading the paper. If something is important, other people will rapidly tell you. Case in point: when 9/11 happened, did you have to wait to learn about it in the next morning newspaper? I didn't think so.

Anyways, 80% of people don't read newspaper articles past the first paragraph.

Among these functional illiterates, there always has been a rare minority of avid learners, what Mike Lipkin calls adaptive navigators. Curious people always striving to improve themselves by knowledge acquisition.

Until very recently, looking for specific and interesting knowledge in palatable form whas a full time job. If you wanted to read anything else than the current fads and bestsellers, you had to venture out of major bookstores and go treasure hunting into the all too rare giant libraries of major cities or into small unknown and dusty bookstores. Last time I was in Europe, I remember scavenging the booksellers of La Seine in Paris for worn out books of Kessel, Cendrars and Monfreid.

In order to avoid bad or average books (and thus save valuable time), you had to ask friends (in person, in a letter or over the phone...) for recommendations and you had to note everything on a scrap of paper.

But now, with the rise of Internet, it has never been easier to find arcane knowledge with a few keystrokes. There are forums of experts in every field you can imagine. There's Amazon.com and its billions of titles, there's eBay, Craigslist and other online marketplaces.

Looking for an out of print french book published in in 1937? Try http://www.livre-rare-book.com/ an online search engine to peek into the inventory of 560 booksellers with over 3 million second hand books.

Knowledge is everywhere, it is within easy reach and it inexpensive.

These are good times for knowledge hungry people!

What that means is that the knowledge gap between active knowledge seekers and passive ordinary people is getting bigger and bigger everyday.

It has been said that if you read a book a week in a specific field, within 5 years, you'll be a national expert on that subject.

When people toiled the fields or pushed levers on an assembly line, the impact of that knowledge gap would have been different. But in an era like ours, where people are paid for their knowledge and brainpower, and where sound decision making is becoming critical in an ever complexifying World, this is something with HUGE consequences.

There's a widening gap between the have and the have not, and the only way to stand on the good side of that canyon is to massively feed your brain with interesting things.

What have you read lately?

***

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who doesn't know how to read. - Mark Twain

(1) A note about video content: I know, I know, there are fantastic learning opportunities offered by TV and other video formats. We all love Discovery Channel. However, most TV programs and video content is - how could I put it? - less intellectual. Moreover, your mind works very differently when watching video (passive) than when reading (active). The former favors surface and emotional reactions while the latter favors abstract reasoning and multi-layered analysis.

What is your Superpower?

2011-01-01T22:45:00.011-05:00

I don't have new year resolutions. I have a plan.

It is quite simple: I have devised who I want to be 10 years from now and I have made a baby steps trajectory to get there.

I read it every morning and revise it once a year, usually in early January.

I have different objectives: financial, familial, physical, things I want to learn, skills I want to develop, people I want to meet, etc, etc. Not just things I want to buy.

Why 10 years? Because most people overestimate what can be done in a year and vastly underestimate what can be done in 10 years.

You see, most people (98,5%) have no dream except the ones they've been sold by our materialistic society: be rich, famous, have a Mac Mansion and a trophy wife (or rich husband) and travel the World as a Jet Setter. Not that it is inherently bad, but it is insufficient at best.

If you have no idea of What's Next? after you reach your basic material goals, you'll just feel empty and disappointed once you get there. This is the reason why Hollywood is full of of overly young, beautiful, successful and lost junkies flirting with overdose.

I believe everyone has a great talent (a superpower), that it is generally linked to a great dream and that it is something we enjoy doing.

Children have awesome dreams, but as they grow up, these "unrealistic" dreams are strangled by well meaning dreamless and boring adults.

Our job then, is to find back the dream, develop the talent and use it to change the World for the better.

Every time I get caught in the day to day and my life drifts toward the average and the ordinary, a red light flashes on my internal dashboard and I ask myself how I want to be remembered when I die; and good husband, wonderful friend or respected coworker is definitely not enough.

What about you?

What is your superpower?

What is your Big Dream?

How do you want to be remembered?

I say, this new year, we set out to change the World for the better.

What do you say?

Are you in?

***

“In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them in much the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world is more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breaths toward infecting them, when we uttered our comforting falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came from the vibrations from a woman’s glance.”
– Middlemarch

The tragedy of the average man is that he goes to his grave with his music still in him.
– Longfellow

Are you GOOD or FLEXIBLE ?

2010-12-26T21:37:00.009-05:00

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a client. It went something like this:

Client: I want this and this and that, and I want it for yesterday. I don't care if you have to work nights and week ends, I'm the client, I'm paying you and I'm always right.

Me: I hear you. I will do everything I can to give you the best possible product at a decent price in the shortest time possible; but it will not be exactly as you say because: 1) You're late 2) You do not have the budget and 3) We have other good clients in the pipeline and the word I gave them is worth more than any money you can put on the table.

Client: You're not very flexible.

Me: No we're not. But we're very good instead.

Client: And you're cocky as well.

Me: No, not cocky; honest.

Client: What you're saying is that you are walking out of this deal.

Me: Not exactly. What I am saying is that we will walk out of any deal that will prevent us to deliver top quality.

***

I am in the service business and I have a variation of this conversation at least once a week.

People are always surprised when a business refuses money, even when the rest of the deal is crappy. For them, it just doesn't make sense. When you think short term, this way of thinking is just impossible.

When you think long term however, it is the only way to go.

FLEXIBLE Business will always:

- say YES
- promise whatever is asked of them
- over-promise and under-deliver
- accept money, regardless of what is attached to it
- bend their own rules and principles

By so doing:

- they will please the client in the short run, but disappoint him in the long run
- burn their staff and lose the respect of their team
- this will lead to high turnover with the added costs, lower morale and other problems that come along with it
- their best people will leave for better (GOOD) companies
- in the end, only the mediocre, insecure and newbies will remain

The more FLEXIBLE they'll be, the more they'll need to be, because by being FLEXIBLE, they will create conditions where is is impossible to be good.

On the other hand, GOOD companies will do just the opposite. By choosing their projects well, they might lose some money short term, but over time they will excel and establish a stellar track record. And by so doing, they will gain the respect of their staff and attract superstars into their team. They will never neglect an established client to accommodate a new one in a hurry. They will also get good client referrals because they will very rarely disappoint their clients. Their word will become more valuable than all the money they will have left on the table.

By refusing jobs where they cannot excel, they'll become better and better. Their portfolio and referrals will attract other interesting customers looking for a GOOD business partner rather than a FLEXIBLE one. And these are the best and most profitable clients a business can have.

You see, it's Pareto's principle all over again: 80% of your profits comes from 20% of your clients. And that's the 20% of very good clients that never complains. On the other hand, 80% of your problems comes from 20% of your clients. These are the ones that are never satisfied, that want you to be more FLEXIBLE.

Be careful not to neglect your good (and quiet) clients to please the vocal ones asking you to be more FLEXIBLE.

What Exactly are the World Bank and the IMF doing?

2010-12-25T21:01:00.002-05:00

The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995. And the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for the International Development, the IMF, and the rest of the banks, corporations and governments involved in international “aid” continue to tell us that they are doing their jobs, that progress has been made.” – John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Luck Is Yesterday

2010-12-25T10:49:00.006-05:00

I was not a big fan of Josh Hartnett until I saw Lucky Number Slevin. Great acting, great movie.

But that's not the point for today. It's Christmas after all.

The point is in a quote by one of the characters in the movie - The Rabbi:

The unlucky are nothing more than a frame of reference for the lucky. You are unlucky, so I may know that I am not. Unfortunately the lucky never realizes they are lucky until it's too late. Take yourself for instance; yesterday you were better off than you are off today but it took today for you to realize it. But today has arrived and it's too late. You see? People are never happy with what they have. They want what they had, or what someone else has.

Besides the fact that I'm happy to deliver a Christmas message though a Rabbi, I just wanted to remind you of how lucky you probably are.

On this Christmas day, there are children in hospitals, hungry families, war torn countries and the World is unfortunately full of unhappy and unlucky people.

If, like me, you happen to be among the lucky few, take some time to appreciate and enjoy your luck and, if possible, by all means, try to share it around.

Merry Christmas to you all.

- JM

I love the World

2010-12-16T15:23:00.004-05:00

Watch video

The End of the Road

2010-12-14T21:59:00.005-05:00

I love to drive and am a big fan of road trips.

In December 2001, I drove with my father all the way from Montreal (PQ) to Los Angeles (CA) and back: 11200 km (7000 miles) in 11 days.

In May 2002, with my best buddy Sylvain "Rob" Robillard, during a long week end, we drove from Montreal (PQ) to New Orleans (LA) and back to visit a friend: 6000 km (3750 miles) in 4 days. Including 2 days of party on Bourbon Street.

In 21 years of driving, I had the opportunity to drive (from Montreal, PQ) to the Eastern End of the road (Mingan Archipelago, PQ), the Western End of the Road (Pacific Ocean) and the Southern End of the road (somewhere in the Louisiana Bayou).

The Northern End was missing in my book.

In the same vicinity, I also wanted to visit the mighty LG2 dam, the world's largest underwater power generating station.

So last June, along with my friend Pat, his 4 month old pup Xena, his white FJ Cruiser and red Zodiac boat, we drove from Montreal to Radisson (PQ) and even a little further north to the exact end of the road.

From Montreal, it is a 1400 km (875 miles) drive. When you reach Matagami (800km from Montreal), you have to register before driving futher on the James Bay road. From here it's 650km to the end of the road (Radisson) and there's only one solitary gas station (at the 350 km mark). In an entire day of driving between Matagami and Radisson, we saw a grand total of 5 cars on the road. And this, mind you, was at the height of the high season.

Upon arriving, we visited Hydro Québec dams (LG1 & LG2), the Cree village of Chisasibi (pop. 4000), Radisson (pop. 343) where black bears and wolves roam the streets, the cold shores of James Bay and last but not least, navigated the immense Robert Bourassa Reservoir (1095 sq miles, 3 times the size of Lac St-Jean).

We found an unnamed island we nicknamed Peter Island and camped in total solitude, with only the stars as companions.

This far North (53rd parallel), in early June, sunrise is before 5 AM and sunset around 11 PM so we had plenty of light to take a few pictures.

WikiLeaks - The documentary

2010-12-14T08:24:00.005-05:00

I was chatting with Twist Image's president Mitch Joel last year at a Longboard event where he was presenting his new (and very interesting by the way) book Six Pixels of Separation.

It is always fascinating to listen to what Mitch Joel has to say and there are good reasons why he's one of the most prominent Internet Gurus in the World. That day, he told me something that stuck with me.

It ran along the lines: "We're seeing a major change all over the World, this is history shifting. We just can't see it because we are right in the middle of it, but 20 years from now, we'll look back and say: I was there when it happened."

Well, one of these shift has gained momentum in the public's eye and it's Wikileaks and its controversial president Julian Assange.

Here's a short documentary relating Wikileak's rise to fame. Well worth the watch.

The 6th Continent

2010-12-13T22:27:00.009-05:00

There is a patch of floating garbage in the North Pacific.

It is twice the size of Texas.

It is so large, it has been dubbed the 6th Continent.

It is not a pretty sight and it is killing the ocean.

One of the major causes is people drinking water from plastic bottles.

In the US alone, 173 589 041 plastic bottles are dumped in the oceans every day.

Yest, you read it right, over 173 million plastic bottles, every day.

Please, stop drinking from disposable plastic bottles and switch to reusable bottles.

It will save you money and give the oceans a chance.

***

I know some of you will think: We all know this, this is old stuff. Come on man, we're in 2011.

I know, I know.

Yet, everyday, I see decent, educated, wealthy professionals using plastic bottles and I'm wondering at how disconnected from reality they can be.

If you already know how bad drinking water from plastic bottles is, go and tell all your friends. I bet some of them haven't heard the Gospel yet.

Skills vs Fame

2010-12-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

The Death of Common Sense

2010-07-05T10:28:00.003-04:00

Obituary printed in the London Times

 Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years.

No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
 - Knowing when to come in out of the rain;  
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
 - Life isn't always fair;  
- and maybe it was my fault.   

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). 

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.   

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

  It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.   

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.   

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

  Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.   

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.   

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
- I Know My Rights
-  I Want It Now  
- Someone Else Is To Blame  
- I'm A Victim   

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

P.S.: Thanks to Steph Kennan for sharing.

The Forgotten Man

2010-06-20T21:56:00.004-04:00

They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion – that the state cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it.

This latter is the Forgotten Man.

– William Graham Sumner

You are not great just because your country is rich and powerful

2010-06-17T22:12:00.007-04:00

I just finished reading Ron Paul's excellent book The Revolution - A Manifesto.

Seriously, a must read for anyone, especially Americans.

Ron Paul is truly a well educated, intelligent and no nonsense type of guy.

I couldn't resist sharing this small excerpt:

“In other words, the problem of empire-building is essentially mystical.

It must somehow foster the impression that a man is great in the degree that his nation is great; that a German as such is superior to a Belgian as such; an Englishman, to an Irishman; an American, to a Mexican: merely because the first-named countries are in each case more powerful than their comparatives.

And people who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort.”

– Felix Morley (1957), in an essay explaining Hitler’s approach

2 theories of effort

2010-06-13T22:31:00.001-04:00

Indeed, the two self-theories take very different views of effort. To incremental theorists, exertion is positive. Since incremental theorists believe that ability is malleable, they see working harder as a way to get better. By contrast, says Dweck, "the entity theory is a system that requires a diet of easy successes." In this schema, if you have to work hard, it means you're not very good.

People therefore choose easy targets that, when hit, affirm their existing abilities but do little to expand them. In a sense, entity theorists want to look like masters without expending the effort to attain mastery. – Daniel Pink, Drive

Why do old people drive so goddam slow?

2010-02-07T10:33:00.002-05:00

Why do old people drive so goddam slow? You have had the experience – stuck in a fort-mile-per-hour speed zone in a one-lane road behind some brittle, ancient creature who’s barely going thirty as he daydreams about LBJ. Meanwhile, YER in a rush but the old asshole’s driving as if he’s got all the time in the world. Hey – I got news for ya shithead. Yer eighty-seven years old. Death is not only right around the corner – he might be riding shotgun. If I were eighty-seven years old – full well knowing I might have a heart attack or an aneurysm or if I cut a hard fart the wrong way it might actually blow an internal gasket and make my entire insides explode all over my leather 1994 Cadillac Seville seats – I would drive so fucking fast you would barely be able to identify my car if I ran you over. And what if I did run you over – what’re they gonna do, give me life in jail? I’m eighty-goddam-seven! I think old people should be forced to actually drive the same speed as their age. Eighty-seven is your age AND your speed limit. You better hope I don’t hit my late eighties or early nineties because I will guarantee everyone right now – you better get the fuck out of my way. I’ll kill young people just for spite. And when I say young I mean anyone under seventy-five.

- Dr Dennis Leary, Why We Suck

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.?

2010-02-07T10:13:00.001-05:00

Such a great monologue by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

Mt Washington Weather

2010-01-10T23:20:00.001-05:00

On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, Salvatore Pagliuca, a meteorologist at the summit weather observatory on Mount Washington, had an experience no one else has had before or since.

Mount Washington sometimes gets a little gusty, to put it mildly, and this was a particularly breezy day. In the previous twenty-four hours, the wind speed had not Fallen below 107 miles an hour, and often gusted much higher. When it came time for Pagliuca to take the afternoon readings, the wind was so strong that he tied a rope around his waist and had two colleagues take hold of the other end. As it was, the men had difficulty just getting the weather station door open and needed all their strength to keep Pagliuca from becoming a kind of human kite. How he managed to reach his weather instruments and take readings is not known, nor are his words when he finally tumbled back in, though « Jeeeeeeeesus! » would seem an apt possibility.

What is certain is that Pagliuca had just experienced a surface wind speed of 231 miles an hour. Nothing approaching that velocity has ever been recorded elsewhere.

In The Worst Weather on Earth : A History of the Mt. Washington Observatory, William Lowell Putnam drily notes : « There may be worse weather from time to time, at some forbidding place on Planet Earth, but it has yet to be reliably recorded. » Among the Mount Washington weather station’s many other records are : most weather instruments destroyed, most wind in twenty-four hours (nearly 3,100 miles of it), and lowest windchill (a combination of 100-mph winds and a temperature of -47°F, a severity unmatched even in Antartica).

Washington owes its curiously extreme weather not so much to height or latitude, though both are a factor, as to its position at the precise point High altitude weather systems from Canada and the Great Lakes pile into moist, comparatively warm air from the Atlantic and southern United States. In consequence, it receives 246 inches of snow a year and snowpacks of twenty feet. In one memorable Storm in 1969, 98 inches of snow (that’s eight feet) fell on the summit in three days, Wind is a particular feature; on average it blows at hurricane force (over 75 mph) on two winter days in three and on 40 percent of days overall. Because of the length and bitterness of its winters, the average mean annual temperature at the summit is a meager 52°F – a good 25 degrees lower than at its base. It is a brutal mountain, and yet people go up there – or at least try to – even in winter.

– Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods

A fun experiment at the summit!

When Playing Safe Becomes Dangerous

2008-11-11T08:04:00.003-05:00

Picture by Kevin Steele

In the Mid '70s, when I was still a kid, my parents took me to the zoo. We lived in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (West Africa) and the thing I remember the most about that visit is the baby lion that roamed freely in the zoo restaurant and elected residence under our table to nibble at my father's leather boots.

I am not talking about a robot, a stuffed animal, a 3D image or even a leashed animal. I am talking about a living and totally free baby lion.

Imagine the same thing today, in North America. So un-Disney-esque! I mean, what about the risks, the insurances, ... What if a customer was to step on a baby lion poop with Prada shoes or if that wild animal was to attack and maim a small child. Oh my God! Lawsuits forever. Bankrupcy, prison and a life of misery.

Yet, it's funny how back in the days, nothing terrible happened. It was a time of biking without helmets, riding in the cabs of pickup trucks and children sleeping on the back seat of the car without seatbelts or padded toddler seats. And yet, we're here fine and healthy.

By wanting desperately to play safe, we delude ourselves. The only security comes from within. From our alertness and skillset. By leveling downwards to make the World a safer place for all the idiots and Darwin-Award candidates, we both fail at the task (If you make something idiot-proof, they will come up with better idiots.), but we also help creating a very dull and boring world.

Our lives have become so safe and boring that some of us need to test themselves in extreme sports, exotic travels or drug and alcohol abuse. The rest are becoming duller every day.

Personnaly, I prefer baby lions.

The Rest is Icing on Your Cake

2008-11-09T19:16:00.004-05:00

Picture by Jay Eads

I've learned early on in life that the 2 most important skills you need are:

1. The ability to evaluate people accurately (as fast as possible)

2. The ability to influence them (using what you learned with skill No 1)

The reason is simple: 95% of your success - and problems - in life are directly linked to the people you surround yourself with. In fact, you need only one really negative person (what Mike Lipkin calls a "one person recession") around to ruin your life.

Learn to identify and flush all the downers and losers as fast as possible.

Refuse to spend valuable time with average people.

Look out for brilliant, fun and inspiring people. And be sure to add value to their life.

Moreover, no matter what you need, want or can dream of, someone else already has. It is simply a matter of bringing them to give it to you (with money, charm, wit, friendship, etc.).

You can be the greatest genius of all time, if you can't get along with other people, you are doomed to fail.

However, if you can only master these 2 skills, the rest is icing on your cake.

The World Needs More Americans Like Ron Paul

2008-09-06T20:38:00.005-04:00

Texas congressman Ron Paul, is one of the few politicians in a long time I've heard saying things that actually made sense. Of course, the truth is often harsh and most Americans, especially in his own Republican Party, don't want to hear it. That's why they're all trying to silence him.

How strange that we never heard about him in Canada? Listen to what this guy has to say, it is well worth it. (BTW, he often refers to inflation as a tax and how we should abolish the Fed. For those interested, read this earlier post.)

For more of Ron Paul views:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PqL2hotdbM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD7dnFDdwu0&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_gKOCb4QBA&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=FG_HuFtP8w8&feature=related

I.O.U.S.A.

2008-09-04T20:28:00.003-04:00

We can now hear the rumble of the financial tsunami that is about to hit us, and that movie's timing is perfect. Too bad it's only playing in "10 US Major Cities".

Can't wait to see it in Montreal, if it opens here someday. Gee, it's funny how people love bad news when they are not for them and try to hide from them when they touch their lives.

Official Movie Site

Sleeping in My Car

2008-08-24T20:53:00.007-04:00

I love to drive and so far, I've embarked on a fair number of road trips. I drove to 3 of the 4 corners of North America (I have yet to see the North end of the road, but we'll fix that very soon.)

I once drove 11,000 km (6,875 miles) with my father, from Montreal to California and back in 11 days.

But my craziest roadtrip was with my buddy Sylvain, when we drove 5,500 km (3,450 miles) from Montreal to New Orleans and back in a 4 day week end. We drove 27 hours straight to get there and another 26 to get back in time to be at the office on Tuesday morning. (And we partied 2 days on Bourbon Street.)

I often had to sleep in my car. It's not that comfortable, but you get used to it and can endure for a few days.

I couldn't imagine it was a way of life for some people. I was very surprised to learn that some people who lost their jobs are living in their cars across the US. A growing number of cities even have designated parkings where they can park and sleep.

One of them is Barbara Harvey, a 57 year old mom from Santa Barbara who sleeps in her Honda CRV with her 2 golden retreivers.

We're not talking about gipsies in some remote corner of the Balkans or the Third World, it is hapening right now in California, the richest state of the richest country in the World.

The Greatest Adventurer Alive

2008-08-21T19:05:00.004-04:00

French adventurer Patrice Franceschi is almost unknow in the English speaking world - mostly, I suspect, due to a language barrier. In fact, as far as I know, none of his numerous books and movies are available in English. And yet, he probably is the greatest adventurer alive.

Unlike media magnets like Richard Branson, Steve Fossett and Mike Horn, to name just a few, Franceschi's exploits are less athletic feats and closer to the old spirit of adventure where exploration, discoveries, the quest for knowledge and sometimes a desire to change the World were the prime motivators for risking your life. The hardships where an unwanted necessity.

Today, we have a new breed of action heroes looking to push their limits and establish World records on ego inflated quests. The essential part, involving exploration and making the World a better place have somehow been lost in the process.

Franceschi's interrest lies more on that old fashioned side and less on the superlative record breaking artificial side required by sponsors and media; and that may also explain why he his not as widely known as I think he should be, considering his accomplishments.

After all, he mounted his first expedition shortly after his 20th birthday and set to explore a grey spot on the map of Congo. When his Pygmy guides turned back, he pushed farther down in the dark forest under 240 feet tall trees where he almost died from starvation in the floods caused by the rainy season.

In the early '80s, he fought in Afghanistan alongside the rebels and against the Soviet invaders.

He was first to circumnavigate the globe on a tiny ultralight plane. It took him 2 1/2 years.

In the late '90s, he discovered a lost tribe in Papua New Guinea.

Risking his life, he sneaked into Nagaland (east India) to film a documentary on the Naga headhunters.

Fond of exploration, Patrice Franceschi worked on humanitarian projects (Somalia, Vietnam, Romania) and became a writer and a film director. He is also President of the “Société des Explorateurs Français” and Member of the “Société de Géographie”.

He succeeded in the latest sailing expedition of his ship " La Boudeuse " between 1999 and 2001 in the Indo-Malaysian archipelago.

More recently, after the wreck of his first ship, he mounted a new expedition around the World with his second ship La Boudeuse, taking along adventurers and scientists.

Who knows where he'll end next. One thing's for sure, he will pursue his quest to bring back the spirit of adventure into this overly bored World. It sounds better in french: "Transformer le quotidien en romanesque."

More info

La Boudeuse's Website

Short bio (French only)

Screaming heads

2008-08-20T20:55:00.007-04:00

Thanks to Facebook's magic and to my cousin Dick Deschênes motorcycle wandering, I learned about a strange place in the middle of nowhere land.

Screaming Heads is a surprising mix between Easter Island and Scary Movie. It is located in a field in Burks Fall, Ontario, not far from North Bay and roughly 3 hours north of Toronto.

Peter Camani, the artist behind this surrealistic scenery is an art teacher. An eclectic by nature, his interests have included marathon running, martial arts, farming and aviculture in addition to painting and sculpture.

For more info, visit The artist's Website

All pictures courtesy of Dick Deschênes

Is a chicken just a chicken?

2008-08-19T21:47:00.015-04:00

Something funny happened to me this morning as I was preparing breakfast. I cracked an egg with 2 yolks. Hmm... How come?

I went online to check but the egg was perfectly edible. Turns out you have one chance in 100 to get such a double yolked egg. They are generally produced by younger hens. It is supposed to mean luck. Great then!

Being curious, I got diverted and accidentally learned that there are hundreds of chicken species. Hundreds!

For me, a chicken what just that: a chicken. White and feathery, with a little red crest. That's it. White meat and eggs. Well, just in France, they have close to 50 chicken species.

The same applies to beef, pork and lamb.

And they all taste differently.

Funny that most people have no idea of all this. They buy their eggs and their steaks and that's it.

My guess is that our profit hungry economy as spawned huge mega farms where only the fastest growing (and thus more profitable animals) are raised.

Some people are actually working hard to save some of these species from extinction, like Pierre Oteiza who is raising black Basque hogs in France's Pyrénées Mountains.

Maybe we should ask ourselves: Is a chicken really just a chicken? Have some people deliberately narrowed my choices in the meat department? What's the overall impact of reduced biodiversity on the Planet? Aren't we losing something really interresting here?

Chicken Species: http://www.avianweb.com/chickenspecies.html

The Night of the Gun

2008-07-26T15:12:00.003-04:00

The Night of the Gun, by David Carr is yet another junkie memoir in the likes of Jimm Carroll's The Basketball Diaries (Great movie with Leonardo Di Caprio) and James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

What's interresting is that it was written by a NY Times Colunist. The story is worth telling and the writing is great. That's all I needed to put it on my reading list.

Also, I must admit that the author's words grabbed me:

Here is what I deserved: hepatitis C, federal prison time, H.I.V., a cold park bench, an early, addled death.

Here is what I got: the smart, pretty wife, the three lovely children, the job that impresses.

Here is what I remember about how That Guy became This Guy: not much. But my version of events is worth knowing, if for no other reason than I was there.

The book's Website is great: www.nightofthegun.com

A review, by the author.

The Genius of R. Buckminster Fuller

2008-07-01T21:53:00.004-04:00

Thanks to my good friend Jean Lanoix, I just finished reading GRUNCH of Giants by the late R. Buckminster Fuller, a mind so brilliant that reading his book made my head spin.

Although Fuller is best known as the inventor of Geodesic Domes, he accomplished much more. I personnaly regard him as one of the great geniuses of the 20th Century.

Let me share with you an excerpt of the book where Fuller's accomplishments are listed. It is quite staggering.

[Excerpt]

There exists a realizable,evolutionary alternative to our being either atom-bombed into extinction or crowding ourselves off the planet.The alternative is the computer-persuadable veering of big businessfrom its weaponry fixation to accommodation of all humanity at an aerospace level of technology,with the vastly larger,far more enduringly profitable for all, entirely newWorld Livingry Service Industry.

It is statistically evidentthat the more advancedt he living standard,the lower the birth rate.It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. Nineteen twenty seven was the year when a human first flew alone across an ocean in one day.(In 1944, the DC-4 started flying secret war-ferryings across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In 1961, jet airliners put the ocean passenger ships out of business. In 1981, the world-around airlines flew over a billion and a half scheduled passenger miles and carried hundreds of millions of ton-miles of freight.)

This was the obvious beginning of the swift integration of all humanity, groups of whose members for all their previous millions of years on planet Earth had been so remotely deployed from one another that they existed as separate nations with ways of life approximately unknown to one another. It was obvious that the integration would require enormous amounts of energy. It was obvious that the fossil fuels were exhaustible. It was obvious that a minority of selfish humans would organize themselves to exploit the majority's transitional dilemmas.

I was convinced that within the twentieth century, all of humanity on our planet would enter a period of total crisis. I could see that there was an alternative to politics and its ever more wasteful, warring, and inherently vain attempts to solve one-sidedly all humanity's basic economic and social problems.

That alternative was through invention, development, and reduction to the physically working stages of massproduction prototypes of each member of a complete family of intercomplementary artifacts, structurally, mechanically, chemically, metallurgically, electromagnetically, and cybernetically designed to provide so much performance per each erg of energy, pound of material, and second of time invested as to make it eminently feasible and practicable to provide a sustainable standard of living for all humanity--more advanced, pleasing, and increasingly productive than any ever experienced or dreamed of by anyone in all history.

It was clear that this advanced level could be entirely sustained by the many derivatives of our daily income of Sun energy. It was clear that it could be attained and maintained by artifacts that would emancipate humans from piped, wired, and metered exploitation of the many by the few. This family of artifacts leading to such comprehensive human success I identified as livingry in contradistinction to politics' weaponry. I called it technologically reforming the environment instead of trying politically to reform the people. (I explain that concept in great detail in the latter part of this book. I also elucidated it in my book Critical Path, published in 1981 by St. Martin's Press.)

Equally important, I set about fifty-five years ago (1927) to see what a penniless, unknown human individual with a dependent wife and newborn child might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity in realistically developing such an alternative program.

Being human, I made all the mistakes there were to be made, but I learned to learn by realistic recognition of the constituent facts of the mistake-making and attempted to understand what the uncovered truths were trying to teach me.

In my Philadelphia archives there are approximately forty thousand articles published during the last sixty years which successively document my progressive completions of the whole intercomplementary family of scheduled artifacts. These livingry items include the following:

Tensegrity: The continuous-tension/discontinuous-compression structuring principle of Universe (i.e., stars not touching planets, electrons not touching their atomic nuclei) introduced to planet Earth to replace the continuously compressioned, secondarily tensioned structuring in present world-around engineering theory. Designed, 1929; prototyped, 1929.

The Dymaxion House: The autonomous, mass-producible, air-deliverable dwelling machine weighing only 3 percent of its equivolumed and equipped, conventional counterpart, single-family dwelling. Designed, 1927; modeled, 1928; helicopter-delivered, 1954.

The one-piece, 250-pound bathroom: Designed, 1928; prototyped, 1936; mass-produced in polyester fiberglass in West Germany, 1970.

Synergetics: Exploration and publishing of the fourdimensional geometrical coordinate system employed by nature. (See Synergetics and Synergetics II [New York: Macmillan, 1975, 1979].) Discovered, 1927; published, 1944.

Dymaxion World Map: Discovery and development of a new cartographic projection system by which humanity can view the map of the whole planet Earth as oneworld island in one-world ocean, without any visible distortion in the relative size and shape of any of the land masses and without any breaks in the continental contours. This is the undistorted map for studying world problems and displaying in their true proportion resources and other data. Discovered, 1933; published, 1943.

World Game: A grand-strategy program developing the design science of solving all problems with artifacts, invented by self or others, which take advantage of all scientific and technological development through studies of their effects on the total world's social and economic affairs as ascertainable from the Dymaxion SkyOcean World Map. A means of assessing the feasibility of realizing various initiatives in solving world problems. Invented, 1927; applied, 1928.

Trends and Transformation Charts: These depict the total history of all the metallurgical, chemical, electromagnetic, structural, and mechanical trendings to greater performance per given amounts of given materials, time, and energy. A compendium of all the scenarios of science and technology's evoluting advances. Chronological chart of total history of scientific discoveries and technical inventions. Chronological chart of the mining of all metals and recirculation of the scrap of those metals. Chronological charts of all major industries' performances assessed in terms of per capita human use. These charts, begun in 1928; first published, 1937, at Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.; published in Nine Chains to the Moon, 1938; published in Fortune magazine's tenth anniversary issue, 1940. This issue of Fortune went into three printings and took Fortune from red- to black-ink status. It changed U.S.A. and world economic health assessment from a tonnage criteria to one based on energy consumption.

The Dymaxion Omnitransport (for land, air, water-surface, and submarine travel): The first full-scale working prototype stage of which was the Dymaxion car, produced to test the crosswind ground-taxiing behaviors of an omni-streamlined, ultimately to be twin-orientablejet-stilts-flown, wingless flying device, which would take off and land like an eagle or duck, without any prepared landing fields (similar in principle to the forty-yearslater descent and takeoff, multijet system of the Apollo Moon Landing craft). Designed, 1927; prototyped, 1933.

Geodesic Domes: The unlimited-size, clear-span structures to accommodate both humanity's converging and deploying activities. Invented, 1938; prototyped, 1947. Since then, over 300,000 have been produced and installed around the world from northernmost Greenland to the exact South Pole; over 100,000 installed in children's playgrounds.

Octet Truss: The flooring or roofing structure for unlimited spanning. Designed, 1933; prototyped, 1949.

The Fog Gun: The pneumatic means of cleaning human body, dishes, clothing, etc., without plumbing's pipedin water supply. Designed, 1927; prototyped, 1949.

Compact, odorless toilet equipment: For conversion of human wastes into methane gas and fertilizer. Designed, 1928; proven in India; now being refined for production use.

Carbon blocks-inserted, copper disc-brakes: Invented and successfully demonstrated at Phelps Dodge, 1937.

Bunsen-burner-melted, water-cooled centrifuge: For processing low-grade tin ore. Invented and successfully demonstrated at Phelps Dodge, 1937.

Hanging bookshelves, and other furniture: Invented, 1928; prototyped, 1930.

Modeling of all geometric developments of energetic-synergetic geometry: Including tensegrity models of all geometrical structures and the hierarchy of primitive structural systems. The minimum, all-space-filling module. The foldable, seven unique great-circle models. The tetrahelixes. Discovered, 1927; demonstrated, 1936.

Twin-hull rowing and sailing devices: Invented, 1938; prototyped, 1954.

Triangular geodesic framing of ocean-sailing hulls: Invented, 1948; successfully demonstrated, I.O.R. racing sloop Imp, 1979.

Very frequently I hear or read of my artifacts adjudged by critics as being "failures," because I did not get them into mass-production and "make money with them." Such money-making-as-criteria-of-success critics do not realize that money-making was never my goal.

I learned very early and painfully that you have to decide at the outset whether you are trying to make money or to make sense, as they are mutually exclusive.

I saw that nature has various categories of unique gestation lags between conception of something and its birth. In humans, conception to birth is nine months. In electronics, it is two years between inventive conception and industrialized production. In aeronautics, it is five years between invention and operating use. In automobiles, it is ten years between conception and mass-production. In railroading, the gestation is fifteen years. In big-city skyscraper construction, the gestational lag is twenty-five years. For instance, it was twenty-five years between the accidental falling of a steel bar into fresh cement and the practical use of steel-reinforced concrete in major buildings. Dependent on the size and situation, the period of gestation in the single-family residences varies between fifty and seventy-five years.

Because of these lags, the earlier I could introduce the conception model, the earlier its birth could take place. I assumed that the birth into everyday life of the livingry artifacts whose working conceptual prototypes I was producing would be governed by those respective-category gestation lags. I assumed my livingry inventions' progressive adoptions by society would occur only in emergencies. I called this "emergence through emergency." For all of humanity to begin to break away from its conditioned reflexes regarding living facilities (home customs and styles), allowing them to be advantaged by my livingry artifacts, would take at minimum a half century to get underway. Since this was clearly a half-to-three-quartersof-a-century undertaking, I saw at the outset that I best not attempt it if I was not content to go along with nature's laws.

12 740 miles per gallon

2008-06-24T10:07:00.004-04:00

You read it right. That's the fuel efficiency reached by the Pac Car.

At 5385 km/l (12 740 miles / gallon), it holds the World record.

To learn more:

http://www.esoro.ch/english/content/kernk/nhanst/paccar/01paccar.htm#

http://www.paccar.ethz.ch/

Retirement is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance

2008-02-27T21:24:00.003-05:00

Picture by teo58

I just started reading a fascinating book by Timothy Ferris titled The 4-Hour Workweek (Wall Street Journal Bestseller).

Although there are some shortcuts and assumptions in the book, it is so far (50 pages out of 300) refreshing both by the concepts exposed and by the style of the author. I can't garantee my workweek will be shrinked by 60 hours when I finish reading it, but I will have learned a few things.

Here's and except about the irrelevance of planning for retirement that somehow relates to one of my older posts (You can't pack a lifetime into a retirement):

Retirement as a goal or final redemption is flawed for at least three solid reasons:

a. It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter - nothing can justify that sacrifice.

b. Most people will never be able to retire and maintain even a hotdog-for-dinner standard of living. Even one million is chump change in a world where traditional retirement could span 30 years and inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-4% per ear. The Math doesn't work. The golden years become a lower-middle-class life revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.

c. If the math does work, it means that you are one ambitious, hardworking machine. If that's the case, guess what? One week into retirement, you'll be so damn bored that you'll want to stick bicycle spokes in your eyes. You'll probably opt to look for a new job or start another company. Kinda defeats the purpose of waiting, doesn't it?

Maybe it's time to wash your hands in the toilet bowl

2008-02-25T21:33:00.003-05:00

Picture by Vagamundos

Anyone who brings raw ground beef into his or her kitchen today must regard it as a potential biohazard, one that may carry an extremely dangerous microbe, infectious at an extremely low dose. The current high levels of ground beef contamination, combined with the even higher levels of poultry contamination, have led to some bizarre findings. A series of tests conducted by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, discovered far more fecal bacteria in the average American kitchen sink than on the average American toilet seat. - Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

100 MPG

2008-01-27T12:21:00.000-05:00

Once again, my inspiration of the day comes from Fast Company.

This is the story of a Kansas kid who left school at 13 to tinker with used cars and who might hold the solution Detroit ingeneers have long been looking for.

Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental while cutting emissions by 80% and doubling horsepower.

After buying a Hummer H1 in 1990 and being totally disappointed, he decided to tweak the huge truck and he did it in spades. First, he worked around the anti theft system to replace the gas engine by a Duramax v8, GM's core diesel for lage trucks. Next, he coupled it with a five-speed Allison transmission. After 5 days of work, the Hummer was getting 18 mpg (twice as much as original) with double the horsepower.

To get even better mileage and power, Goodwin perfected a technique developed by Uli Kruger, a German who has spent decades in Australia exploring techniques for mixing fuels that normally don't mix.

One of Kruger's system induces hydrogen into the air intake of a diesel engine, producing a cascade of emission-reducing and mileage boosting effects.

For the show "Pimp My Ride", Goodwin converted a '65 Chevy Impala to run on biodiesel. He tweaked the car to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 hp. (It smoked a Lamborghini on the quarter mile). Watch the race.

The funny thing is that his conversions are made with 90% of stock GM parts that he assembles in clever new ways.

He's surprised himself that GM can't (or won't) build cars more efficiently from the start.

Read the full story on Fast Company: Motorhead Messiah (It's worth it!)

How Big is eBay?

2008-01-26T16:10:00.000-05:00

Actually, how big was it in 2006 (now it's even bigger, but we don't have the numbers).

Ebay marketplaces (including StubHub, Rent.com, and local classifieds): $4.3 billion

Paypal: $1.4 billion

Skype: $195 million (up 686%)

Total annual revenue : $5.895 billion

Let me repeat: $5 895 000 000 - that's a lot of zeros...

If eBay was a country instead of a single company, it would rank 131th out of 180, ahead of Nicaragua, Haiti, Mauritania and Rwanda. Check full country listing by GDP.

Source: Fastcompany.com

The Turning Torso of Malmö

2008-01-23T13:14:00.000-05:00

The Turning torso of Malmö is one of the most fascinating buildings I ever saw.

Inaugurated in 2005, it was designed by superstar Santiago Calatrava who is also the mastermind behind the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Montjuic Communication Tower in Barcelona and the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Valencia (Spain).

It is 190m (623 ft) high and uses nine five-story cubes that twist as it rises; the top-most segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor.

For more info:

http://www.turningtorso.com/

http://www.bizzbook.com/map/turningtorso.html

Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires

2007-12-30T21:37:00.000-05:00

How to spot a millionaire

I just finished reading a book I first came across 10 years ago. To my great surprise, it stood the test of time pretty well.

And, with the january credit card bill looming over the horizon, it might be a good time to start reading it.

21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires is an easy read packed with interresting ideas.

Author Brian Tracy does a good job of synthetizing the information and it probably is one of his best books.

There's no big insider secret, but rather logical and sound advice on how to become wealthy.

The downer is: it takes time and effort. But hey, as my friend Franco says: if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.

I will not give the 21 secrets here as I encourage you to read the book, but here are 2 phrases that caught my attention:

What kind of a world would my world be if everyone in it was just like me?

You will be the same person in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read.

Cashback

2007-12-25T12:17:00.000-05:00

Once again, I owe my buddy Ben in Switzerland for the growth of my cinematographic culture.

A couple of weeks ago, he FedExed me a fantastic movie by director Sean Ellis.

The flick is Cashback.

In my humble opinion, it is one of the great movies of 2007.

Great story. Great actors. Great images. Great music. Funny. Intelligent. Romantic. Stunning.

But why describe the film when you can watch the trailer on the official Website?

If you want to learn about the making of, visit: http://myspace.com/cashbacklefilm

Hijacking the Christmas Spirit

2007-12-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

picture by Danny Hammontree

Let me hijack the Christmas spirit for a few seconds and toss away all the clutter (gifts, parties, drinking, etc.) to reach the core: celebration, sharing and peace on earth.

Let us take a moment to realize how fortunate we are and think of how we can share our blessings with others less fortunate.

For 2008, let's try to find alternatives to the wars we are waging.

To kickstart the reflexion, let me quote former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Now, let's delve into the raw the numbers:

The Pentagon suggesed that the cost of the conflict in Iraq would be approximately $75 billion per year over ten years. In accepting the Niwano Peace Prize on 8 May 2003, Dr Priscilla Elworthy, of the Oxford Research Group said, “We must compare this $75 billion to the costs of building international security in other ways.

a) in the year 2000 world leaders estimated that it would require $25 billion to $35 billion annually to raise levels of health and welfare in Africa to Western standards.

b) Unesco estimates that all the world’s children could be educated if we were to spend $7 bilion dollar per year for ten years.

c) Clear water and sanitation could be provided for everyone in the world for $9 billion annually.

d) HIV and Aids now claim 5,500 lives a day around the world – more that the Black Death, and twelve million children in Africa have been orphaned by the disease. Kofi Annan has called for $10 billion annually to address the Aids epidemic.”

(thank you Mr Richard Branson for shedding a light on this one.)

And finally, no world peace speech would be complete without a few words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama:

“If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause others to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness and anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another.

Those others are watching for you know. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strenght, for understanding and for assurance at this hour. Most of all – they are lookinf for your love.”

On that note, let me wish you all the best for the holiday seasons, and big dreams for 2008!

Zoonosis

2007-12-18T21:50:00.000-05:00

When a pathogen leaps from some nonhuman animal into a person, and succeeds there in making trouble, the result is what's known as zoonosis. It's a word of the future.

The word Zoonosis is unfamiliar to most people. But it helps clarify the biological reality behind the scary headlines about bird flu, SARS, other forms of nasty diseases, and the threat of a coming pandemic. It says something essential about the origin of HIV. It's a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the 21st century.

Ebola is a zoonosis. So is bubonic plague. So are yellow fever, monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, Marburg, many strains of influenza, rabies, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and a strange new affliction called Nipah, wich kills pigs and pigs farmers in Malaysia.

The preceding excert is from National Geographic Magazine (October 2007).

They have a fascinating article on how we exchange diseases with animals and how globalization (and mostly the ease to travel averywhere) will have a major impact on our health.

And if the subject interrests you, you must also read Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize book Guns, Germs and Steel.

And you thought that extreme sports were dangerous...

Giant Speed Queen

2007-12-16T15:05:00.000-05:00

While reading Richard Branson's biography Losing My Virginity, I came across an old lady. Her name is SS United States and she is the fastest ocean liner ever built.

She truly was an impressive ship : she weighted 52,000 tons and needed 240,000 horsepower to shift her.

The speed record she set was impressive : an average of 35.6 knots (40 miles/h).

She was built in 1952 at the cost of $79 millions - not a cheap date!

She won the Blue Ribband for the fastest transatlantic crossing.

At 990 feet long, she's the largest ship ever built in the US.

She carried numerous celebrities.

She now rests in Philadelphia.

For more info

http://www.ss-united-states.com/
http://www.ssunitedstates.org/theship.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_United_States

BMW WEB TV

2007-11-25T22:17:00.000-05:00

Once again, BMW is a step ahead in terms of marketing. You'll remember their smart move with BMW films a couple of years ago. (Watch them again on YouTube - it's worth is, especially Star, by Guy Ritchie, starring Madonna.)

Now, in addition to their paper magazine, they have a new "Media" Website where you can learn about upcoming events, their cars, design, racing and much more. Of course, everything is video enhanced. Plus the site is cool.

These guys really take advantage of the Web to promote their brand. No wonder they are doing so well (yes, I admit, it helps that their cars rank among the best in the World too...)

Take a look at the site: BMW WEB TV

Too Smart to Succeed?

2007-11-20T20:38:00.000-05:00

If you had an IQ of 154 to give, your choice would be...

Having recently moved to a new house, I have thrown away a lot of junk; but I also rediscovered small treasures hiding in cardboard boxes.

One of these little gems is a paper dated 1996, by Howard Gardner (Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, and Co-Director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education).

It describes different types of intelligence and goes way beyond the simple notion of I.Q. which I always thought was overly biased in favor of educated and mathemical/left brain people - and it's not because I have a low I.Q. :o)

According to Gardner, there are 7 Types of intelligence:

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
The ability to manipulate ones own body, and control muscle movements with utmost precision (surgeons, pianists).

Musical Intelligence
The ability to understand and perform music.

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
This also includes scientific ability.

Linguistic Intelligence
Knowledge and ability to manipulate language.

Spatial Intelligence
"The ability to form a mental model of a spatial world" (i.e. sculptors, engineers, surgeons).

Interpersonal Intelligence
The ability to understand others.

Intrapersonal Intelligence
The ability to understand oneself.

This is good news for those of us who do not have stellar IQ ratings and thought that God was really unfair when he gave, on top of everything else, an IQ of 154 (genius) to Sharon Stone. I mean, Bush Jr would have needed it more, don't you think? And it's not like he has anything else. With such an injustice, can anyone really say that God loves America?

But for us ordinary people (at least in terms of IQ), there's another consolation: the average plumber earns more money than the average MENSA (high IQ society) member. (BTW, if you look at their crappy Website, it is clear that they cannot afford a decent Web Designer.)

Finally, if on top of an average IQ you are not an academic star either, you'll be happy to know that statistics favor you in the long run:

Demographics refer to the characteristics of population segments. In business, its focus is fixed on the study of consumer markets. Taken at their worst, essays on human traits can end up being nothing more than a stereotyping of individuals into a common group because of age, sex, education, location, or some other social indicator. At best, the interpretation of demographic data is about as accurate as weather forecasting. Demographers may generalize about the relevance of education to success, but they cannot explain why 50% of North American millionaires never finished college. Nor can they provide the slightest clue as to why more than half the CEOs and U.S. senators and presidents graduated in the bottom half of their class. – Roger D. Touchie, Preparing a Successful Business Plan

Expectations

2007-11-18T18:27:00.000-05:00

"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

6 Degrees of Separation

2007-11-15T18:13:00.000-05:00

The latest trend of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn made us realize all too well how a small World it is.

It seems we're all related in some way and, in fact, we are.

It's not a new concept. There was a site built around that concept in 1999, www.6degrees.com - check it out on the Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/19991116034501/http://www.sixdegrees.com/

Of course, it was too early and the site died in the implosion of the Dot Com Bubble.

For movie enthusiasts, there's a really cool site called The Oracle of Bacon that will tell you how far away an actor is from Kevin Bacon (by the way, Kevin Bacon is not the most connected actor).

For example, if I type in Reese Witherspoon, here's the answer:

reese witherspoon has a Bacon number of 2.
Reese Witherspoon was in Importance of Being Earnest, The (2002) with Colin Firth Colin Firth was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon

Try it out! : http://oracleofbacon.org/

And for the real fanatics among you, go ahead and read LINKED, a really fascinating book on networks written by the fantastic mathematician Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.

Titan of the Seas

2007-11-10T07:50:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 1994, while we were getting tired of being assaulted by the crowd in Virginia Beach, my friend Burt took us to visit The US Naval base in the Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia - the largest naval station in the World.

After the usual tourist visit and guided tour, on our way to leave the base, we took a wrong turn and came across what looked like a really tall building. As we got closer, we realized that the building was in fact a huge ship.

We asked an officer about the boat and were told that it was the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was not open to the public but he was kind enough to show us around (this was before the 911 events).

Boy, what an impressive ship it is!

Launched in 1975, it is the second of 10 Nimitz class aircraft carriers.

The asphated deck is so long (1092 ft.), that you can jog along it. It is 252 ft. wide.

The height, from keel to mast is 244 ft. (equal to 24-story building)

It is propelled by two giant nuclear reactors connected to 4 screws (66,200 lbs. each) up to more than 30 knots (54 km/h).

More than 6 200 men can live aboard.

Number of anchors: 2

Weight of anchors: 60,000 lbs. each

Anchor chain: 1,082 ft. on each anchor (365 lbs. per link)

Total anchor weight including chain: 735,000 lbs. each

Distillation plant capacity: 400,000 gals.

Number of light fixtures: approx. 29,000

But these are just numbers. When you are face to face with that giant, you are awed...

For more info:

http://www.eisenhower.navy.mil/stat_facts.html

http://www.navybuddies.com/cvn/cvn69.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Dwight_D._Eisenhower_(CVN-69)

Billion Dollar Home

2007-10-26T21:38:00.001-04:00

As I was reading the last issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, I came upon a modern tale of feudalism and one of the worst example of nouveau riche attitude.

Mr Ambani, India richest man, ordered an insanely extravagant house to be built on one of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) most expensive street.

Designed by Chicago Perkins and Will and estimated at $1 Billion, the 60 stories, 173m (570 ft) tower will boast a 168 cars garage, an entertainment center with a 50 seats cinema, several floors of greeneries, terraces and balconies, a health center with a swimming pool, gym, and 3 helipads on the roof.

As you've probably guessed by now, his employees do not exactly enjoy the same kind of lifestyle, not even close, and that's exactly how revolutions start...

Read the full article on Conde Nast Portfolio Web site: Rich Man, Poor Country

Why Spammers Spam

2007-10-22T10:16:00.000-04:00

If, like me, you dream of strangling spammers wit your bare hands, here's some info about the ennemy.

Montreal based Vircom is on the forefront of the Spam War with their award winning Modus spam filter. I have been personnaly using their filter so I can testify to its efficiency. It filters over 90% of junk mail and blocks very few legitimate e-mails.

They wrote a very interresting white paper: Why Spammers Spam that will give you an insight into the spammers' life and motivation.

To download the document, go to this page

Plain Jane

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-04:00

Plain Jane Couture is probably Montreal's most original clothing company. Founders Zoum and Hardip Manku unusal duo have come up with audacious and provocative designs and an unmistakably sexy logo.

Check out their collection: http://www.plainjanecouture.com/

Something like a phenomenon in Time Square

Jessie Hollywood turning heads in NYC

Ben Z cruising his Riva on Lake Leman in Switzerland

The New Demotivators

2007-10-18T17:29:00.000-04:00

The new demotivators are out on http://www.despair.com/! Go and check it out.

P.S.: Even if running in front of killer bulls is not the fast track to a Nobel Prize, I have been to the fiesta of the San Firmin in Pampelona (the 3rd largest party after Rio's Carnaval and Munich's Oktoberfest) and I must admit that no people on Earth know how to party like the Spaniards!

Let My People Go Surfing

2007-10-14T21:09:00.000-04:00

I am in the middle of Yvon Chouinard's amazing book Let My People Go Surfing and I couldn't wait to finish it before urging you to dive in it.

As founder of outdoor equipment and clothing manufacturer giant Patagonia, Chouinard is a well seasoned businessman. But that's the less interresting part.

What is fascinating is the story of this crafstman who became a reluctant businessman through a series of successes and failures.

And, more than anything else is how he uses his company and its ressources to make the world a better place. First by creating an inviting environment for his staff (and leaving them time to go surfing), then by investing millions of dollars of his profits to finance grassroots environmental organisations and inciting other companies to do the same through the 1% for the planet progam.

Finally, his vision and commitment turned his company into an example to follow for all of us business people who strive to change the World for the better.

Growing Fast Food

2007-10-14T09:12:00.000-04:00

In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computers software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined.

- Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (excellent book, BTW)

Crazy Carpets Down The Mountain

2007-09-29T17:18:00.000-04:00

Adirondacks, New York State, March 2005

Together with my hiking buddies Jessie and Rob we went up the very steep face of Mt Algonquin though the Avalanche Pass Trail. Overall, it was a long ride and it took us all day to reach the top in adverse conditions.

It had snowed A LOT in the past weeks, and no one had gone up that route so we had to dig our own path with white powder up to our thighs (with snowshoes on) and a slope so steep that every 30 feet, the snow would slide down and we'd have to climb back again on the ice beneath.

When we reached the top, it was 10 PM, 25 degrees below and a blizzard was raging. Rob managed to have an eye frozen for a few seconds while trying to find the way down. It was an eerie moment because it was snowing in reverse as the fierce wind pushed the snow flakes upwards.

Once we went down into the treeline, everything was suddently quiet. No more wind, and instantly warmer.

Going down was one of the best thrills of my life. 45 minutes of crazy carpeting non stop in 4 feet of snow. Everything white in our headlamps ray and pitch black around, no sound except for the speed induced wind in our ears. After a few seconds, these little plastic sheets go VERY FAST!

Fortunately, there was a ton of snow and we somehow survived the numerous impacts we had with trees and rocks.

The fact that we used our walking poles as rudder helped, because braking with the snowshoes was hazardous as it lifted a cloud of snow that instantly froze on our goggles, bliding us completely.

At one point, the others were far in front of me and I leaned back, lifted my poles/rudder a bit and gained speed. I must have been going at 20 miles an hour or so (wich is scaringly fast on a plastic sheet going down a mountain with 8 feet of effective visibility) when I felt the ground disappear underneath me. Rob and I had hiked this trail (Van Hoevenberg) 3 years before and marked it as good for sledding back down. I didn't remember any significant drops or cliffs on the trail. Now that was conforting...

For a fraction of a second that seemed like forever, I was in mid air and pondering how high I was and what kind of landing strip waited for me. Fortunately for me, the drop was only 6 feet and I landed of soft snow. But what a rush!

Check out the pictures

Today's the day

2007-09-28T17:18:00.000-04:00

This is the story of a man who went all the way toward his dream.

Every morning, he and his companions would dive in search of the elusive sunken treasure of the Spanish Galleon Atocha, only to come back empty handed. Every morning, he would cheer his companions: "Todays' the day!" And it went on for 16 years.

He had to fight over 100 court battles, bankrupcy and divorce as well as discouragement. And he kept going on for 16 years...

On July 20th 1985, he woke up and told his team once again: "Today's the day!" But this time, he was right.

On the seabed, they found the biggest treasure ever recovered from the ocean. Over 40 tons of gold and silver were located, including 100 000 Spanish silver coins known as "Pieces of Eight", gold coins, columbian emeralds, silver and gold artifacts and over 1000 silver bars. For a total worth of over $450 million.

The man's name is Mel Fisher and, had he stopped one day earlier, he would be a nobody instead of the World's Greatest Treasure hunter.

For more info:

Mel Fisher's Treasures

Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society

The Explorer's Club of New York

2007-09-27T18:29:00.000-04:00

This club is more than 100 years old and a popular hangout for media types. The Explorer's Club was formed in 1904 by Henry Collins Walsh, when he invited a group of buds to create a club "to encourage explorers in their work by evincing interest and sympathy and especially by bringing them in the bonds of good fellowship."

The nonprofit club began in 1905, and the founding members consisted of an Indian fighter, museum curator, Arctic explorer, mountaineer, archaeologist, war correspondent and hunter.

What makes the Explorer's Club a must is the fascinating decor created by 90 years of collecting trophies and junk from around the world. The six-story 1910 town house with its magnificent library is an "in" site for parties in New York.

For those who do not live in New York, there are 27 regional chapters, seven of them in other countries (Australia, Britain, India, Norway, Poland and Western Europe).

The club likes to lend out numbered flags, so that you can take them to some godforsaken place on some harebrained quest, and then throw a party when you return the dilapidated piece of cloth. They sponsor some expeditions, award medals (the Explorer's Medal) and provide local support to scientific and educational programs, all based on merit.

The club publishes a quarterly journal and a newsletter and offers a 25,000-item library, a 500-item map room and historical archives. Membership includes 3000 men and women, with 500 of them outside the New York area.

As with most of these clubs, to join the Explorers Club of New York, you have to have some type of experience in being "adventurous." Driving a cab in Harlem probably won't impress them, nor will big-game hunting trips, extensive travel without a scientific purpose or photography in remote parts of the world. But if you provide sponsoring letters, fill out the application form and fork over the hefty membership fee, your chances are good.

You can be a "fellow" if your exploits are published, or try for regular membership if you are modest about your exploits. In any case, it will depend on what the membership committee and the Board of Directors say. Also available are student memberships (16-24 years of age, over 24 if you are pursuing a graduate degree), and corporate memberships. - Robert Young Pelton

Be Well Remembered

2007-09-26T19:19:00.000-04:00

Picture by Matt West

As I strolled past a funeral home the other day, I was struck by their slogan: "Be Well Remembered".

Is it how we see it? The last impression is the most important? The obituary, the burial or the cremation and all this masquerade? Will a more expensive casket in oak and silk and gold will really make a difference once I'm dead?

Hell no! Give me a cardboard box, no tombstone and bury me naked under a beautiful tree. (With global warming, cremation is soooo out!)

If you want to be well remembered, skip the funeral process part and concentrate on the important stuff: how you lived (and maybe how you died in some extreme cases), but certainly not how you were buried.

My 3000km week end

2007-09-24T17:55:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a roadtrip to beautiful New Brunswick where, in Acadia, I probably met the nicest people in Canada; if not the World.

I shared the wheel with my dad and the old pilot managed to get me scared driving 120 km/h on narrow costal roads.

Beautifull scenery (check out the pictures), awesome seafood and a couple of World records including the longest bridge over ice covered waters (12.9km long Confederation Bridge) and, in the Bay of Fundy, the highest tides ever recorded: 52 feet!

Can't wait to go back!

You are unique, just like everybody else

2007-09-13T18:30:00.000-04:00

Picture by Bertoz

My biggest fear in life is to be like everybody else. Become average. It led me to do some crazy things, but il also pushed me forward toward expressing my individuality.

The more people I meet, the more I discover that the vast majority is very, terribly, well... ordinary. And it doesn't get better with age.

First, while not always unhappy, they do not exactly enjoy life to the fullest. They are, to quote Theodore Roosevelt, in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Second, they are so predictable it becomes boring. They have the same dreams as everybody else: be rich and famous, date a supermodel, look good, have a big house, a sports car, children, a successful carreer, bla bla bli bla bla blah. The stuff they sell you.

When I ask them what unique dream they have, the one that defines their individuality and will make them express the Picasso or Einstein they have within, I get a blank stare.

Another one that will go to his grave with his music still inside him.

Remember, people don't like sheeps. They eat sheeps.

Gone Flying

2007-09-12T07:41:00.003-04:00

A couple of years ago, I had the chance to meet a person who, for me, embodies the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

His name is Carl Hiebert, he lives in Waterloo County near Toronto, Canada.

In his '20s, he was a sport jock: barefoot water skiing, motorcycling, hang gliding and other adrenaline junkies remedies. After a winter spent in the Northwest Territories, he traveled around the World on a 1,35$ daily budget and managed to hunt boars in India and make an attempt on the Matterhorn's summit.

On a fateful September 12th, in 1981, a hang gliding accident confined him into a wheelchair. While he was recovering from his accident, he left a message on his hospital door: gone flying.

He had found a new passion: flying ultralights.

He became the first paraplegic instructor in Canada, opened a flying school and became financially independent. But that was not enough. In 1986, he decided to cross Canada with his Ultralight (really, a chair suspended in the air) - 8000 km from the Maritime Provinces to Vancouver to Rally Expo '86 whose theme was Travel and Communications.

While so doing, he amassed money for numerous charitable organizations and took 14 000 pictures. The best 140 turned into a wonderful book: Gift of Wings - an aerial portrait of Canada.

Carl is now an international speaker and motivator. When he his not empowering people through is speeches, he travels the World (Haiti, Uganda) and comes back with pictures that he turns into books whose profits help build schools and hospitals in these impoverished countries.

Carl has a zest for life I have rarely seen and he's an example of courage for us all.

Next time you're busy finding excuses for all the things you "can't" do, think about Carl, and it will give you a kick in the butt. I know it does for me.

It's All Your Fault

2007-09-10T17:54:00.000-04:00

Adbusters

The World is falling apart, and what are you doing about it? Let me guess... not much.

The average American spends 4.5 hours daily in front of his television. What a boring thing and what a waste of time.

We never had access to so much information with so few bothering to open a book. And when they do, 9 chances out of 10 it will be Harry Potter. Ah, yes, of course, it requires an effort to read. Sorry about that.

So we sit there, brain dead, in front of the TV with little knowledge of what is going beyond our little nombrilistic universe... until it affects us. And then we complain that the world is unfair.

I'm with Thomas Friedman from the New York Times when he said: "In today's globalized World, it you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you."

I just read in the paper this morning that the slump in the housing market doesn't seem to go away and that it had more impact than anticipated on the economy. Duh?

Wake up and smell the coffee Ms. Bueler.

Let me tell you, it's not going anywhere but down. People are up to their ears in debt and the interest rates can't go much lower than this. Exotic mortgages of 40 years and more with no down payment and only interrest payment the first years. It didn't take a genius to see it coming.

Its another classic housing market bubble. And you think that people would have learned? Next thing you know, people will have forgotten everything about the dot com crash of 2000-2001, and we'll have another stock market bubble.

The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

Let me finish by quoting Michael Moore, from his book Stupid White Men:

“There are forty-four million Americans who cannot read and write above fourth-grade level – in other words, who are functional illiterates. How did I learn this statistic? Well, I read it. And now you’ve read it. So we’ve already eaten into the mere 99 hours a year an average American adult spends reading a book – compared with 1460 hours watching television. I’ve also read that only 11 percent of the American public bothers to read a daily newspaper, beyond the funny pages or the used car ads. So if you live in a country where forty-four million can’t read – and perhaps close to another two hundred million can read but usually don’t – well, friends, you and I are living in one very scary place. A nation that not only churns out illiterate students BUT GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO REMAIN IGNORANT AND STUPID is a nation that should not be running the world – at least not until a majority of its citizens can locate Kosovo (or any other country it has bombed) on the map.”

“And to the C students, I say you, too, can be President of the United States!” – George W. Bush, in his commencement address to the Yale Class of 2001

So, I guess, we have the governments we deserve...

The World's Finest Hat

2007-09-06T18:15:00.000-04:00

Toronto based Tilley is manufacturing what may be the finest hats in the world.

Alex Tilley, the company founder, is an avid yachtman and started designing the perfect hat he longed for but couldn't find.

Let me tell you, he did a mighty fine job.

I personnaly abuse my Tilley T3 hat on a regular basis and came to the conclusion that it will probably outlive me.

The duck cotton fabric doesn't shrink, the wind cords keep it on my head in hurricane force winds, it floats (yes, I tried), repels rain and sun, and it even has a secret pocket. It is garanteed for life (something you learn to appreciate the hard way) and assured against loss.

Now I understand why Indiana Jones risked his life to get his hat back.

The 53rd Democracy

2007-09-05T20:20:00.000-04:00

Driving to work this morning at 6:00 am, I was listening to Al Gore's great book Assault on Reason on my i-pod.

I was a bit surprised to learn that the United States of America, are now ranked 53rd in the World on the Free Press Index. A huge drop from the 17th place it held in 2002, and not exactly great for a country that claims loud and far that it is the first democracy in the World.

And for my fellow Canadians, we are not that great either in terms of free press. In 16th position, we are behind countries like the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Portugal and Slovenia...

For those interrested in the subject, I highly recommend Kristina Borjesson's fascinating book Into the Buzzsaw about 15 high profile american journalists who lost their jobs, were discredited and sometimes prosecuted when they investigated too far.

Let us not forget that Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

Should We Be Proud?

2007-08-31T16:16:00.000-04:00

Canadian snipers in Afghanistan after September 11th made the longest recorded kills in history with this weapon. On a March afternoon in 2002, Cpl. Furlong of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) squinted through the scope of his McMillan TAC-50 and successfully killed an enemy combatant from 2,430 m.

The 11th Hour

2007-08-31T11:36:00.000-04:00

Leonardo DiCaprio's powerful new documentary and environmental wake up call is coming soon to a screen near you. Watch the trailer.

You'll Get Cancer And Die

2007-08-29T18:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, ok, I admit, the title is not from me, it's from the excellent movie Crazy People with Dudley Moore and Daryl Hannah where a couple of geniuses and nutcases produce truly hilarious ad campaigns.

But back to business. Today, I received a very touching e-mail about the contribution that Yoplait made to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. The website was made by my good friend and competitor Julien Brunet at Cri Communication. Check it out, it is quite nice.

I think cancer reaserch or any research to cure us from such terrible illnesses is a good thing, and I'm glad that citizens and corporations alike join in the fight, but...

It made me think about the way we think. Despite the fact that each of us has more or less 50% chances of dying from cancer, what do we do about it? Nothing.

We (sometimes) give to research. That's it, nothing more; despite the fact that it has been proven that cancer is greatly influenced by how we live and mostly how we eat. Who changes their habits or their diet to get away from cancer? No one.

We hope that we'll be lucky or that by the time we get cancer (God forbid), a cure will have been found. Doesn't seem very proactive and it is our lives that are at stake...

Take fast food for example.

Dr. William Castelli, the former director of the Framingham Heart Study, used to say, “When you see the Golden Arches, you’re on the road to the Pearly Gates.”

Americans however, never ate so much fast food. Here are 2 interresting facts from Eric Schlosser's fascinating book Fast Food Nation:

A BIG MAC anyone?

Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook

2007-08-28T18:10:00.001-04:00

This is a very usefull little book.

In a few pages, you'll learn how to:

- Hot-wire a car

- Survive a poisonous snake attack

- Escape from a bear

- Win a sword fight

- Jump from a moving car

- Perform a tracheotomy

- Deliver a baby in a taxicab

- Land a plane

- Survive an Earthquake

and much more.

And it's fun too!

Thanks to my good friend CGuy for the gift.

The official Website

There's a whole serie of similar books

To see an excerpt on Amazon