Posted by Ted Hopton on August 3, 2008
I remember being terrified of jellyfish when I was a small child, but I don’t think I ever actually was stung by one. This NYT article about the dramatic increase in jellyfish along shorelines around the world is worrisome not just from a tourism standpoint. When nature sends us a message as loud as this one, we’d better listen. There’s no simple answer, of course — there never is to big problems.
Let’s just add it to the long list of daunting challenges we are facing these days…
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Posted in Animals, Environment, Outdoors, Science, Travel, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 19, 2008
Perfect clip for me to post and share, since I am now a Wiki Community Manager, which is another name for online community organizer. Not only is this Fast Wonder Blog post useful, but Seth Godin is always worth reading. If you want to learn more about this emerging role/career, both posts are good places to start.
Over time, I hope this blog will become another good resource for learning about the online community organizer role, as I will be posting about my experience, and my learning curve, going forward.
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Posted in Blogs, Career, Social Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on July 13, 2008
OK, I’m going to expose my English-major roots here, not to mention my first career as an English teacher. I am tired of hearing and seeing “a perfect storm” used to describe a rare confluence of factors that produces a negative result. It was a pretty cool phrase when the usage began, inspired by the powerful book and movie, The Perfect Storm. It was a concise and visual way to make a point about, essentially, really bad luck causing a really bad result.
But is *everything* negative that results from multiple factors really worthy of the label, “a perfect storm”? I think not. Instead, it’s a lazy way to explain complicated causal relationships. We don’t have to actually provide any explanation of cause and effect, let alone Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Human Interest, Language, Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on June 25, 2008
I live in the country, in a cottage on a horse farm, and I love it. But I’m not surprised by the findings explained in this article:
Skyrocketing energy prices are inflating the costs of living on the distant edges of metropolitan areas.
One of the key changes that may also be accelerated is the shift to more telecommuting. That’s how I can manage my country lifestyle. If you remove your commute completely, or even several days per week, it has a tremendous impact on both time and costs. I’m surprised this angle was not mentioned in the article.
read more | digg story
Posted in Economics, Human Interest, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on June 6, 2008
Paul Krugman’s column makes some points we have certainly heard before, but he also ties in a new perspective that is worth thinking about.
Everything that can be digitized will be digitized, making intellectual property easier to copy and harder to sell for more than a nominal price.
Posted in Economics, Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 30, 2008
It’s sad but true. Anti-intellectualism is rampant. As Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, explains in her NYT column, “Best Is the New Worst,” the word “elite” has been completely distorted for partisan purposes.
The word “elite,” once an accolade, has turned poisonous in American public life, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.”
It’s a perverse thing to ridicule the attainment of education and expertise. I really have had a hard time grasping how this shift has happened. I guess I need to read Jacoby’s book. But for a nation that has an inherent (if arrogant) belief that it is the greatest in the world, why do so many of our people resent and distrust those among them who have acquired the knowledge required to make us succeed?
read more | digg story
Posted in Education, Human Interest, Language, Media, Politics, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 27, 2008
Mindfulness meditation has become perhaps the most popular new psychotherapy technique of the past decade.
Posted in Health, Spirituality, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 26, 2008
Roger Cohen’s NYT column, “The Obama Connection,” starts off with a play on Bill Clinton’s famous line from his first presidential campaign (”It’s the economy, stupid”): “It’s the networks, stupid.” Ironically, it’s Bill’s wife and heir-apparent, Hillary, who is implicitly the “stupid” one this time.
More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead over Hillary Clinton. Her campaign has been so 20th-century. His has been of the century we’re in.
I’d already been following Obama’s use of the Internet for fund-raising and organizing and energizing volunteers (see, Adios, Sound Bites & Fat Cats - Obama is Changing Politics and Barack Obama Is Rocking the Youth Vote and Obama Supporters Are Hip and Artistic and Home Agents Calling for Barack Obama). Cohen’s column nicely connects the dots and lets the picture emerge more clearly.
As Joshua Green chronicles in an important piece in The Atlantic, Obama has used social networking and his user-friendly Web site to develop the money machine, and the youthful engagement, that has swept him forward.
So, I found Green’s article, “The Amazing Money Machine,” and read that, too. It’s Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Innovation, Networking, Politics, Technology, Trends, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 16, 2008
More interesting stats about blogs’ growth from eMarketer. Nothing terribly new, but the news reinforces the perception that blogs are rapidly growing and should not be ignored in your marketing plans.
Posted in Blogs, Marketing, Media, Trends | No Comments »
Posted by Ted Hopton on May 11, 2008
Almost every wrong prediction about this election has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars.
Posted in Politics, Trends | No Comments »
