Tina Fey and Amy Poehler go at it once again. Tina and Amy now show Sarah’s Palin’s inability to complete sentences or make any sense OR show any sort of understanding toward what is going on in the world today. Never mind that she (in theory) should know how world events will interact with the United States.
When Sarah was first announced as VP candidate, my mom and I were talking on the phone. She was appalled by the fact that the first female running mate in the history of the US still had to be a hot newbie, instead of someone with a normal look and solid experience. At the time, I defended Palin stating that at least some progress was being made with sexism in general. Halo effect states that the first steps will more likely than not involve someone who physically appeals to the general public. This way, people can overlook that she’s a woman because she’s a good-looking woman. This was it would be an easier situation to accept as a reality. Some with beauty and brains. Unfortunately, as time goes on Palin proves to be no more than a pretty face. Her interviews show no real understanding of US politics. She’s just a parrot. She repeats but doesn’t understand what she’s saying or why she’s saying it. Maybe this is because she’s had less experience for a less significant state than Obama has. Maybe it’s because she had to attend five different universities in order to obtain her bachelors in five years. She comes from a well-to-do family. I don’t think this delay in graduation had to do with having to work while being in school. I sincerely think that it’s because she couldn’t manage interpreting material at a college work level.
Anyway, enough ranting for now. I’m sure I will have a lot more inspiration to do so after the vice-presidential debates this week.
Because I still don’t see how WordPress supports flash, here’s the link for Tina and Amy’s latest Palin play – the Palin and Couric interview.
On Wednesday I received an email from Free NYC stating that Cooper Union was hosting neurologist Oliver Sacks to speak about the relationship between music and the brain. He (obviously) laid out his presentation in layman’s terms for us non-doctoral listeners. This ended up becoming an array of interesting stories about how different people have dealt with music in their lives. One of the most compelling stories he told relayed back to his past book-turned-movie Awakenings. Sacks told us about how music would make advanced Parkinsons patients in the Bronx literally come to life. These are people that would not be able to move an inch voluntarily, but as soon as a song that the patients recognized and connected to, they would start to dance.
Below are two videos that were actually sections of the speech he presented on Wednesday:
Tina Fey is a writer/actress that I have come to respect and admire. I was SO happy when NBC had the same reaction as I did when they first saw Sarah Palin: “Oh my god, she looks like Tina Fey”. Fey came back to SNL just to do this sketch with Amy Poehler on Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton and true to their form, it was awesome.
From what I can tell, WordPress doesn’t support flash so click here to watch the video. It’s awesome.
I believe it was last week that I announced becoming a blogger for Outrider. This week, I read an article brought to you by Ad Age’s B.L. Ochman wrote about ten reasons why your company shouldn’t blog. I think she made some solid points and hope that Outrider has taken all of these into account before embarking in SearchFuel.
Here are Ochman’s words:
“The top 10 reasons I tell companies not to blog are:
1. The blogs most companies want to create are guaranteed to join the 900,999 out of every million blogs with no readers. Why? They’re boring.
2. A blog has to have a personal voice. If you sound like a corporate drone, nobody will read your blog.
3. You need original content. The blogosphere is too much of an echo chamber already. What can you add that/s original? Or significantly better than anything else in your niche?
4. Blogging takes time — lots of it. Let’s even say a CEO is a great writer, who enjoys researching and crafting posts. And let’s say he or she will write about what people want to hear about and not just write about what the company wants to say. And they he/she is willing to update a few times a week. All of that takes anywhere from two to four hours a post.
5. You need to read constantly to be a good blogger. That includes blogs, but also media outside the blogosphere — feeds, forums, mainstream media — so you can keep your readers informed about your topics.
6. A blog is not a substitute for a marketing campaign. It is simply a potential part of corporate communications.
7. A blog is not a substitute for advertising — if you need to fill a new hotel, or sell a product by a certain date, advertise.
8. A blog is not a quick fix — the results come in the long term, the same way they do with PR.
9. Blogs are not cheap. A good one requires skilled programming to set it up, a professional graphic designer to make it part of your corporate identity, a talented and dedicated writer or editor, full-time.
10. You need to drive traffic to a blog. There are many ways to do that. All of them require time, effort and money. Ways to drive traffic to a corporate blog include:
Advertising on blogs, where you can be incredibly niche specific and cost-effective; buying Google keywords; and including your URL in traditional and online advertising.
Promotion — you can drive traffic to a blog with skillful promotion though other blogs, by becoming a respected part of social networking communities frequented by your customers; with contests, viral marketing, and the use of a variety of Web 2.0 promotional methods discussed frequently here and in other blogs that cover social media marketing.”
I’m in DC right now and it’s proving already to be a trip full of discovery. I had never heard of “forever stamps” until this morning. Apparently the United States Postal Service re-issued their Liberty Bell forever stamp – a stamp you pay for now and use forever, regardless of the fluctuating prices of US stamps. Now I’m under the impression that these stamps are only available at DC post offices, but you can also get around this by purchasing them online here. I think I may be buying these in mega-bulk.
Lately I’ve really been passionate about what I put into my body. With my weight loss plan, I have been very aware of what I eat and drink. I’ve been semi-obsessed with peanut butter and I would buy organic thinking it would be healthier. One thing I noticed was that whenever I would buy organic, the label would tell me to refrigerate after opening. I always thought that was a little weird and today I was able to find the answer on a Weight Watchers article about peanut butter:
Organic
Nutritionally, organic is comparable to conventional peanut butter with the exception of sodium if there’s no salt added, but there are other factors to consider. Peanuts are prone to a fungus that produces a carcinogen called aflatoxin, which continues to multiply even in the jar. The fungicide-free peanuts in organic peanut butter may have higher levels of aflatoxin than conventional, especially if the jar’s been on the shelf for a while, but organic farmers claim that their farming methods naturally reduce the amount of fungus to begin with. In other words: The jury’s still out. If you do buy organic, make sure you’re buying from a store with a high turnover and refrigerate it immediately — cold retards aflatoxin’s growth. A recent study found the highest levels of aflatoxin in freshly ground peanut butter from health food stores, so buy jarred to be safe.
As you know, I work for a search advertising agency called Outrider. Outrider just started a company blog (hooray for joining us in the online world!) called SearchFuel and yours truly is going to be a blogger on the site. I’m really excited about this because not only will it expose me to more on my favorite InterWeb topic – social media – but it will give me more opportunities to write online. Now my first post isn’t going to be up until October, but don’t worry, I will definitely put it up on my site when it happens!
For now, I leave you with one of the greatest things to ever happen to search – Search Engine Rap Battle.
Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since 1994. A shared interest in the “dress codes” to express individuality led to these two documenting social groups’ uniforms.
They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude.
In the most methodical way possible, this duo structured a near anthropological study of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from one another by partaking in group identities. I thought this was interesting, since I have always noticed that looks tend to define who you can and cannot talk to. Only the extreme social butterfly would try to flutter from one group to the next without visiting the changing room first. And even then… perhaps social butterflies have a “look” to define themselves.
Anyway, enough musings. I thought the entryway to the Exactitudes site was interesting, overwhelming and revealing all at once. It’s a beautiful display of differences and uniformity.
I was pursuing the web with StumbleUpon and came across the Goldberg family in Argentina. Apparently, Diego Goldberg, a professional photographer, started a tradition of taking portraits of every family member on June 17th of every year. He and his wife Susy began in 1976 and are contuing the tradition three sons later. Every portrait has some consistencies. They are all face portraits. They are all blank stares, with only the occassional smile peeking out from the boys when they were younger. And they are all black and white. I would love to start this tradition with my family… we don’t do enough family portraits and what better way to see how you’ve changed throughout the years.
