Random

> Beginning next month, whenever a customer purchases the Airwalk Hope shoe, Payless Shoes will give a free pair of kids' shoes to a child in Central America through World Vision. ~ CP

> "Where two or more languages are spoken regularly, there is likely to be a delay in the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms by more than four years. This was found by researchers from several universities in Canada and published in the November 9, 2010 edition of Neurology." ~ länk

> Alienating the 2% --

If you have fans or followers or customers, no matter what you do, you'll annoy or disappoint two percent of them. And you'll probably hear a lot more from the unhappy 2% than from the delighted 98. 

It seems as though there are only two ways to deal with this: Stop innovating, just stagnate. Or go ahead and delight the vast majority. 

Sure, you can try to minimize the cost of change, and you might even get the number to 1%. But if you try to delight everyone, all the time, you'll just make yourself crazy. Or become boring. ~ Seth Godin

> We had a fascinating lecture on algae production and how it's changing global agriculture last night at the Arizona Rare Fruit Growers meeting. I thought that Mark Edwards was some kind of science prof at Arizona State but when I got home I looked him up and discovered that he is a professor of "Strategic Marketing and Sustainability" in the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU. Check out some of the stuff in the pipeline (so to speak) at the Algae Alliance site or the Algae Competition site. It all seems to make incredible sense. A few tidbits to share:

• Algae grows four times its mass per day.
• It grows faster than predators can eat it.
• Crude oil is fossilized algae. Because living algae is not fossilized it doesn't produce waste particles when it is burned. Thus it is a desirable biofuel.
• There are 10 million species of highly localized algae.
• Algae itself has a sweet smell. The fowl odor we associate with it is a byproduct of bacteria that attack algae.

> The Mormons have thrown their weight behind an immigration reform measure called the Utah Compact on Immigration. Kudos to them for applying their theology of family to this issue. I certainly don't agree with the particulars of their theological approach but I think that you can get to their position from several theological paths. At least THEY are trying to think theologically about the issue. ~ link

> You mean that Obamacare was developed around a 1994 Republican proposed structure? I heard that it originated with the Communists -- or maybe even the devil himself. ~ link