Curious Jimbeau

France in the late 1500’s was interestingly similar to conditions we face in the world today. It is/was a fractious uncivilized world torn by wars of religion where the capable few are enabled, yet unable to help the many. The primary difference between the two eras is that we have now discovered all 92 basic elements and with this supreme knowledge should be using it to end strife.

King Henry IV restored internal peace to his beloved France with The Edict of Nantes in 1958. I propose that we enact an upgraded version and submit it to the Republican and Democratic parties and see if we can end USA’s Wars of the Politicians.

If you look at Buckminster Fullers’ Dymaxion Map below it certainly looks like the world is connected:

After all, we accomplished the following…

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In R. Buckminster Fuller’s book, Critical Path, he outlines how he feels mankind should live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending our cosmic-capital. He defines Earth’s cosmic-energy as “those gravity/star (mostly sun) distributed dividends of waterpower, wind power, tidal power, wave power, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, volcanism and so on as our indefatigable assets.”
He likens our burning of fossil fuels to spending our cosmic energy savings account.
He likens our creation of atomic energy to spending the atoms upon which our earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped.

When I visited South Africa in the late 90’s, just after Apartheid had ended, I witnessed a unique phenomenon of squatters taking over land and homes they had always longed for. The problem was they weren’t equipped with the facilities to work the land or maintain their homes. In many cases I saw homes that had been occupied and left for another after the doors, walls and anything else combustible had been used to stoke cooking fires.

Buckminster’s claims that our natural resource spending folly is not unlike burning your house and home to keep the family warm during a cold winter night.

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Each person will receive roughly 560 pieces of junk mail this year.
Most trees used to make paper are pine trees which average 60 feet in height and 1 foot in diameter. Ignoring taper, that’s about 81,430 cubic inches of wood:
pi * radius2 * length = volume
3.14 * 62 * (60 * 12) = 81,430
A 2×4-foot piece of Pine lumber weighs about 10 pounds and contains 504 cubic inches of wood. That means a pine tree weighs roughly 1,610 pounds (81430/504 * 10).
About half of the tree is knots, lignin and other stuff that is no good for paper. So that means a pine tree yields about 805 pounds of paper.
A ream of paper weighs about 5 pounds and contains 500 sheets (you often see paper described as “20-pound stock” or “24-pound stock” — that is the weight of 500 sheets of 17″ x 22″ paper).
So, using these measurements, a tree would produce (805/5 * 500) 80,500 sheets of paper.
And using these results the average household receives 2240 sheets of Junk Mail paper each year, or about 20lbs.
Therefore, my (most probably flawed) mathematical conclusion is:
Each American family uses a trees worth of Junk Mail every 8 years.

Environment

While sitting on a beach side bench with my daughter I was enlightened by a pigeon. Lily and I had been having breakfast when we noticed an elderly man feeding the birds. He had the rapt attention of large Western Seagulls with bright orange tips on yellow beaks that were either shrieking, or biting at rivals. There were a host of smaller California Gulls, smaller in stature, but more agile and constantly on the moving. Then there were a few pigeons…

Each time the man threw a wad of bread crumbs before him a flock of birds responded. The Westerns were all over the place, flapping their wings, punching out their chests and generally scaring all other birds away from the largest pieces of bread. The California Gulls were flitting in between the Westerns, avoiding their beak thrusts and darting in to grab any scraps they could.

The Western Gulls spent the entire time squawking challenges, rushing to and fro with wings spread to discourage any birds from getting in their way. The California Gulls were constantly on the move to avoid their aggressive cousins and focused on retrieving the mid-sized chunks that were uncontested or perfectly thrown.

Meanwhile, the pigeons worked. They kept their head down pecking at the earth, dancing around the squabbles and seeking out uncontested crumbs. The Western’s disregarded them as a threat to their big chunks and would only pause for seconds to intimidate them. The California Gulls all but ignored these puny pigeons that moved throughout the melee, continuously picking up perfect bites, unmolested by their posturing counterparts.

What I drew from this experience is that in business it pays to cover your bets. Make sure you are going after those large accounts with the big upsides but don’t forget to keep the smaller, consistent business coming in because they keep the bills paid.

Small Business

I admire the writings of an associate Drew Kampion who is a champion of Walt Whitmans writings. He sent this portion today:

A Woman Waits for Me

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,
These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Walt sez: “Have a passionate Valentine’s Day!”

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As I delve deeper into development of our new technology HotClickVideo I am constantly faced with the unknown. Trying to keep my creative mind open in the face of uncertainty is a daily challenge and requires an ever-increasing amount of both optimism and acceptance. When pushing intuitive concepts, verses those that have been developed through actions, the challenge to articulate them is even greater.

It is not easy to expound virtues of ideas that emanate from within, rather than those that others can recognize in their own observance and life experience. Barrages from naysayers, hurdles at every turn, retaining colleagues and monetizing ambiguous offerings are part of pushing new ideas.

Sfumato is an art of blurring the lines, of adding misty shades to the edges of our art, lives, and ideas. In this age of rapid development and radical change it helps to meet paradox with calm and an open eye. Look to the edges for the dawn of new colors and allow yourself to believe that what you see can become real.

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Fox – Smart, capable of preparing intricate strategies, patient, lightning quick.
Hedgehog – Simple, methodical, careful, slow.

The outcome of the age old rivalry between these two adversaries would seem fairly certain if their descriptions were to battle. But, as the Greek poet Archilochus wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
While the fox uses his cunning to contrive a myriad of stealthy attacks, the hedgehog thwarts them all by rolling into a ball and presenting an impenetrable sphere of spikes. Foiled again, the fox slinks away to devise another strategy.
When reading excerpts of Jim Collins book Good to Great, he reviews the fox and hedgehog Concept, and I was amazed to see the strikingly similarity between our company and the fox. I was determined to figure out how we could adopt a more defensible, hedgehog like, position.
One tool that Mr. Collins presents to find your hedgehog is a simple concept of 3 interlocking circles.
In one circle place your passion. In another circle place What you can be the best in the World at. And in a third circle place your economic engine. I presented this exercise to the company and at first we had multiple items in each circle. We kept honing it down until we had clearly identified the thing we could do best in the world that embodied our passion and was economically viable.

Now we have to devise a way to keep me from constantly eying the chicken coop.

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