Friday, July 24, 2009

Who You Know

It really is a lot about who you know. There are other things like what you bring to the table or your ticket to the party.

I just got an invite from an acting coach I didn't get to work with long enough before moving back to Alabama. He coached Josh Holloway of TV's "Lost" (maybe still coaches). The final season of "Lost" starts mid-season on ABC.

You never know where you might be invited or who might be there. Holloway will be at the event on Tuesday that I was invited to. He will be doing a Q&A session. I wish I could just jump on a plane and go to the event.

There's also an event at NYFA in CA on Sunday that I got an invite to. It's a screening of "Punchline" from 1988 that starred Tom Hanks and Sally Field. The director of the film, David Seltzer will be having a Q&A session. I could go to that Sunday and the other Tuesday.

I guess there's another reason they say "Location, Location, Location." If I were there I could just go.

I didn't make the most of going to the screenings and Q&A sessions when I was out there. I miss them.

Make the most of opportunities that come your way. Be on an even keel as well. You never know when that butterfly flaps its wings and the perfect storm of better opportunities line up.

They don't come all at once, just one step at a time, moment to moment.

Channing H.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

We Are All One

We don't realize it and try to ignore it but anything you do to someone else, you're doing to everyone including yourself.

We see news stories and have a detached sympathy. Some people have a dissociative, emotionless apathy to it. We get desensitized to all the bad that's OUT THERE that it doesn't affect us.

We tune it out like it's just a TV show or movie.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who is a Harvard professor was arrested for "breaking in" to his own home.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html

I thought it was bad. I don't know the whole circumstance. Maybe he should have called police before trying to get in his own home like people get help when locked out of their cars.

I imagine he didn't think it was a police issue, and that officers were better serving the public elsewhere.

I saw an interview on CBS Early Show with Elizabeth Gates, his daughter. When I realized that I knew her from when I lived in California and we took an acting class together (5 nights a week for 4 weeks), I got chills.

It was so much more personal when I actually knew the daughter of the arrested professor.

It should not have to be someone we know directly affected by things before we really care.

We should be able to put ourselves in other people's "shoes" without having to pretend it is a friend or relative in pain.

We are all connected and simply treating others as we would want to be treated, how far away is that to be in majority?

Channing H.

Monday, July 20, 2009

If it's cheaper, why isn't it being used?

There's a commercial telling how train transportation gets over 400 miles per gallon of fuel. The train can carry a large number of ConNex boxes, untold tons of goods.

The commercial doesn't say what type of fuel, the cost of that fuel, the difference in environment impact. But wouldn't it be cheaper to have tons of goods moving together for long distances and trucks only move to local warehouses, distributors, etc.?

Would actually working together get goods moved cheaper than all of these giant companies with billions in profit (and corporate jets) save money that MIGHT be passed along to the consumer and lessen dependence on foreign oil?

I say "might" because while COSTS are always passed along to consumers, savings aren't as quick to be shared.

(More on that line of thought in the next post)

Channing H.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Flex Fuel Vehicles, Where's the Ethanol

My dad has a Flex Fuel pickup truck. It's a 2001 Mazda. For all intents and purposes it's a Ford before Ford bought Mazda.

The truck will burn gasoline or ethanol. The problem is there wasn't anywhere to buy ethanol. Even now, the closest station is about 60 miles away.

Here's a link to find alternative fuel stations close to you:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/

The cheapest source of ethanol would presumably be processed from corn. Supply and demand would seem to make it cheaper if much more were produced. If many people used ethanol to fuel their cars gas demand would go down and could cause its price to drop. That would be good but could curtail efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

So mass production of corn into ethanol would likely make for cheaper ethanol which would be replacing the use of gasoline.

So 8 years later, why are we still not seeing ethanol on every corner along with gas as long as gas would still be in demand?

Is there not enough profit to be made from corn? Is it not insanely cheaper to grow and process corn than to drill, pump and refine oil?

Interestingly enough, corn is SO cheap that it is processed into a substitute for sugar. The US government subsidizes a large amount of corn farming (which means tax dollars pay for it). Over-processed High Fructose Corn Syrup seems to be perfectly fine for consumption, even processed with a genetically modified enzyme and a fungus that gets reused until it stops giving results to get maximum profit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup.

So it sounds like the only reason we are still dependent on foreign oil is that we want to be.

Channing H.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Twitter Fodder

The new age of narcissism continues to grow. As regular people get more and more followers through odd, spammy, or normal means, it seams to go to their head. Suddenly it validates that x thousand people must really want to follow me playing a game of 'who can tweet the most times in one hour' or other ridiculous drivel.

There's been a blog article naming types of tweeps (twitter peeps, or twitter people). It's odd how these get generated and propagated by those falling into the "negative" categories. The above vanity, RT every reply to everyone because everyone must want them, RT everything that pops up in your stream (following thousands of people).

The ranking analytics, are you kidding me? Now they have SO much more bloated egos. Not only that, some claim to be all about sharing and caring and instruct everyone on propper use of #FollowFriday so that it COUNTS. That's hardly all about caring or sharing. That's about getting themselves in the top of analytic lists to validate that they are ELITE.

Maybe it works a bit for building self-esteem and getting a lot of ELITE and celebs to RT and advertise for them. One of the negative tweep types is people who only seem to care while self-promotion is their true agenda.

So all SPAM is not created equally. We also have people posting, mostly automated, every single song they add to a "dj" playlist. Again assuming if someone follows them that they must want 12 posts in a row with song links.

One nice thing about twitter is that you can Unfollow people with inconsiderate tweeting habits. The Golden Rule (found in many disparate religions) of treating others as you would want to be treated totally escapes some.

OK I have a little OCD tendency and contests bring out the worst in me and I'll tweet constant nonsense. I tend to do that in the middle of the night when hardly anyone is online. Then they might not ever see those tweets. I considered opening a separate account for those type things but technically I think that violates the TOS, though so many people do it that aren't SPAMmers in the traditional sense that it is almost commonplace.

I may have lost people doing those. I will have to ignore and/or limit from now on thinking of my followers. Those doing contests encouraging SPAM are likely violating TOS.

We need tools to filter out repeated autotweets. It's just absurd. Some might have a reason if spaced out enough time. Some tweeps have multiple FollowFriday instruction tweets that go out several times every Friday, repeatedly. Right now our only option seems to be Unfollow.

All or nothing. No middle ground. It's like a bull-headed partisan divide.

I'll sign off with my name in case someone tries to auto-steal my post. Channing H.