Rantabulous

I was pleasantly surprised this morning.  I have been an avid reader of the New York Times online site for a number of years.  It has great coverage and is generally very good at conveying the news that I think is important to me.

I was sad to hear that they were putting up a pay wall.  I certainly understand their need to make money, they are a business, so I can’t blame them for wanting to do that, but I personally  can’t justify the expense; so I just realized that my interaction with the Times, at least for now, was going to be limited.  This morning, however, I received an email from the Times about Lincoln.  The email stated that they would extend my free access to the Times until the end of the year courtesy of Lincoln.  I of course expected a long survey, and a registration to lots of Lincoln stuff.  And, of course, a huge sales pitch.

However, when I clicked the link, there was none of that.  It just said thanks!  Now that was a pleasant surprise, and I would argue, is the way to run a marketing campaign.  Will I buy a Lincoln because of this?  Probably not, but, I do have to say, it has me looking at them in a much better light.  Marketing through consistent, and non-intrusive, ways is, in my opinion, the way to market your business.

Kudos to Lincoln, and their marketing staff for a pleasantly surprising, and hopefully successful campaign!

I bought an insignia infocast 3.5″ internet clock, a.k.a. chumby over the holidays.  I love it, I can set alarms for it, have news and facebook updates pop up, etc.  It’s great.  It does a good job of protecting itself from lock ups as well.  I have seen it lock up once or twice, and it must have some sort of watchdog timer, because it always just restarts itself.  It automatically sets the time so no need to worry about that.  really I have no complaints…Well except one.

My 2 year old, a.k.a. chubby!  Chubby loves the Chumby.  Whenever he gets into my room he goes silent.  Anyone with kids knows that isn’t a good thing.  He pokes his little chubby finger on the screen and, without fail, every time, he manages to either set alarms that I don’t want set, or delete alarms.  He is unstoppable.  This is a problem.  He has set alarms for midnight!  He has also turned the volume down on the alarm so that I can’t hear it in the morning.  He has completely deleted my alarms.  I did a search on how to prevent changes on the chumby, and I can’t find anything to help me.  I need to figure out a way to stop this, because it takes me a long time to recover every time my chubby gets his hands on my chumby.

What a life!  Sheesh.

My oldest son enjoys coloring and drawing.  I think he’s really good at it for a little guy, and for a year or more he has done some things that have really impressed me.  He has an amazing eye for detail, and I have wanted as much as possible to encourage his drawing.

When I was his age I drew a lot, and I always wished that I had taken drawing lessons.  Now that he’s 5 I feel like he is ready to get a little instruction.  I found an instructional book at our local library and my son was very excited to think we would be taking lessons together.  My idea is to spend an hour or so each weekend and work our way through the book.

This weekend was our first with the book so I thought it would be a great idea to take a piece of paper, draw something on one side, and then, once we were done with the lessons, draw the same thing again on the right side of the paper, and note the improvements.

My son drew Buddy, our elf on a shelf.  Afterward, we made it through the first chapter.  It was tough going because he’s 5, and the first chapter was mostly talking about left and right brains and trying to be all inspirational.  My son just wanted to draw.  We did a few exercises but it was all a bit much for his attention span.

Once I put everything away he asked for his paper with Buddy so that he could do the other half.  I mentioned that we had to wait until we were done with the whole book, but of course he wasn’t interested.

I didn’t want to ruin our plan, so I thought I would scan the page into my computer, and print out a copy.  Now, when I was 5, if my dad had gone to a computer and made a copy print out I would have thought he was magic.  I mean, an exact copy?  At home?  In a minute?  Wow!!

The printer started up and out came an exact copy of the drawing.  I handed it to him expecting the sounds of utter amazement to emanate from his shining face as I hand him this modern marvel of engineering.

He took the paper, look at it, looked at me and said “How come the lines are darker than my drawing?”  Kids these days, they don’t know how good they have it!

The problem with extreme views, political or otherwise, is that they aren’t sustainable. The world is too complex for a cookie cutter “this is the way it is period” approach. Therefore, every single extreme philosophy will eventual collapse of its own weight. Case-in-point, Rand Paul.

It is clear that Rand Paul has a strong opinion of the roll of government in American lives, as little as possible. His theory, shared with the rest of the Tea Party movement, is that less bloated government, leads to less expense, which leads to lower taxes and the freedom of business to succeed in a capitalist marketplace. Sounds like a strong position, but it breaks down quickly under scrutiny.

Mr. Paul’s morals and character have come into question lately based on a simple question. If you believe that the government has no role in the private sector do you think the civil rights legislation of the 60’s was wrong. Mr. Paul tried and failed to walk the tightrope he needed to in order to merge his personal morals with regard to equality with his political ideology of small non-intrusive government.

Paul’s only option was to state that he personally abhors racism, which I believe, but that companies should be free to do as they wish. He points to Boston establishments banning segregation 120 years before the south. He says it’s a shame that it took the south so long. Reading between the lines, he seems to imply that eventually the south got it right, however the south didn’t end segregation without the civil rights act, and even then federal intervention was required in more than a few places.

It is my opinion that Rand Paul supports the civil rights laws that were enacted, but that doesn’t jibe with his political ideology. By holding on to an extreme ideology Paul is forced to contort and parse his words. He blames the liberal media but unfortunately it is his unwavering dedication to his ideology that forces him to tap dance in public over segregation and any number of other pieces of legislation. He isn’t alone in this dance, all extreme ideologues have to dance this little jig.

Who could forget the “get your government hands out of my medicare” signs that seemed to defy logic. Nor are the liberals any better at this game. Extreme government oversight leaves us with a knot of laws intended to alleviate social concerns but so complex and expensive as to be completely ineffective.

With that said, moderation, the dirty word in politics, is the only way to go. Some government intervention, such as to prevent a restaurant from disgracing a human being by not serving him simply because of the color of his skin, must be allowed. But the regulation of everything everywhere cannot be tolerated.

Related Articles:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/pauls-honeymoon-seems-over/?hp

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