Everyone’s glassy eyed over the capacity for echo – from Facebook to Twitter to Google.  As those technologies get more sophisticated and integrated and issues like privacy and rights to access get clarified in practice (when did an employer ever have the right to audit your family safe deposit box or photo albums, but now they want your private login to Facebook?), the Ritalin of necessity will calm this ADD culture and the focus will return to the content creators – that’s where the value will be.  Having the best Content Curators; the best cultural interpreters and explorers will rule.

Strong market hypothesis dictates that when the tools themselves become – as they are getting to be – ubiquitous, then what’s in them will be the scarce resource that becomes valuable.  The skill of Writing will reclaim its dominion over that of blogging or tweeting unorganized thoughts indiscriminately.  People will look for the voices that help them, transmitted in a way they can pick out of the passing gusts of hot air.

In that light, the newspapers – chugging away reporting on their local focus and echoing national stories – will take the role of The Little Red Hen. The hardworking Hen, undervalued by the public, all atwitter and google eyed, while making the bread that – in the end – everyone wants.

“John Elway and company must not move forward with Tebow as their starting quarterback for reasons both sound in logic and unyielding in clarity.” - Avi Wolfman-Arent, Bleacherreport.com Jan 4, 2012

“Tebow made throws on Sunday night that he’s not supposed to make. “ – NFL Today, January 8, 2012

“To all those who are up in arms about Tebow making the Pro Bowl even as an alternate, I can feel your pain. The game has strayed from its intended purpose when it was first created.” Bearsbeat.com, December 29th, 2011

“I never saw such fighting,” Cornwallis later declared, “since God made me.” – British General  Charles Cornwallis, 1781

“Morgan’s dizzying hit-and-run strategy so badly befuddled Burgoyne, the British retreated to regroup.” - Battle of Saratoga, 1777,”The American Revolutionary War” reported by Robwrite

I’m as wary as anyone of the potential for Tim Tebow to be like a Pharisee, praying in public as the Christ he says he follows instructed him not to:

“Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them….But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. ” Matthew 6, v.5-6

Human pride and frailty what it is, even with the best of intentions, he might be wandering into dangerous territory for himself by his practice of praying in public.

Do I mind that someone in a field of riddled with felons (yes, the modern NFL) displays his Christianity in a way we might not otherwise see?  Not so much.  I am glad he believes in God, follows Christ and prays.

But there’s a narrative unrelated to his public religiosity I hear on Sports Center and in the newspapers and is likely going on in talk radio (to which I listen rarely), springs a comparison to mind that made me chuckle when I first had the the thought.

I’ve heard it said many times lately: “Tebow’s not a real NFL quarterback, he can’t pass, he can’t read defenses.”  Translated back to the revolutionary war, the same Greek chorus of conventional wisdom was protesting:  ”Those colonial savages fight hiding behind rocks and bushes and trees. They can’t possibly win this war.”

The methods of guerilla warfare the coloinsts learned from the native American indians, changed the war.  Tim Tebow may change the position of quarterback.

This Sunday, January 8, the first and final play of overtime between the Tebow-driven Denver Broncos and the Pittsburgh Steelers with their version of “The NFL Quarterback” could not be a better example.  The British troops were all lined up…I mean…the Steelers were all lined up expecting the run that EVERYBODY knows you do on first down in overtime. And with Tebow a third running back, it takes a little more concentration to contain that running game.

Instead, Tebow connected to Demariyus Thomas with a perfectly thrown pass that hit Thomas in stride who then ran the ball, stiff-arm and blazing speed aided, in for the winning touchdown.

Recently even more rules protecting NFL Quarterbacks were issued by the NFL to protect their precious princes.  The Favres and the Roethlisbergers can play a whole game without running more than a few yards or even getting hit – so much so, the statisticians track “Sacks” of the quarterback and it’s noteworthy for a defensive player to get even one in most games.  That’s in the template describing a real “NFL quarterback.”  Criticisms of those quarterbacks swirl around their strengths and weakenesses at being a real “NFL Quarterback,” that analysis just doesn’t include ground yards run as an important factor – yet.

So what happens when every NFL quarterback is also a running back who can throw and read defenses.  We’ve already got hints of that in reverses where the crossing back throws downfield or even “flea flickers” where the QB himself may need to catch a pass.  You know the original version of the real “NFL Quarterback” was not supposted to leave the pocket.  Kids in football programs emulated Bart Star and Len Dawson…until Fran Tarkenton came along and then everybody was scrambling as an intentional play.

Folklore of the American Revolution credits the hit-and-run tactics of guerilla warfare the Colonies employed for the American win.  However, those tactics didn’t win the war, or even any significant battles.  It wasn’t until Washington got his regulars to stand toe-to-toe with the British line and defeat them, did the American’s start to win any battles.

Tebow will need to complete more passes, throw fewer interceptions and learn to read defenses to do Brees and Brady quality audibles.  But Tebow may change the position of quarterback if he does so.  Teams will need to come up with whole new defensive strategies and find their own running back who can throw and read defenses.

Having set the new template for what makes a real “NFL quarterback” back in the old days (now),  Tim Tebow, during his Hall of Fame acceptance speech (sometime in the future), can take issue with that new guy playing for that other team that does that thing that shows he’s clearly not a a real “NFL Quarterback.”

Tagging (n) ...12. to hit someone

UPDATE: So…I used the the wireless network in my office to transfer the image from my graphics PC to the terabyte USB 3.0 external harddrive on my business computer where I created an attachment in the cloud email that I sent to my iPhone (which tried to announce my location) where I copied the image and tweeted it to @mrmarkburgess which automatically distributed it to my Facebook page burgess1 (which tried to announce my location) that linked to this WordPress blog with the image where an automated back-linking robot charging someone for promoting their web property called Travel Results posted this comment: “Were required to post you that almost no remark to thanks a ton once again because of these spectacular techniques you’ve provided on this page.  It’s so” to which my automated spam checking system tagged it for the spam heap, but then someone commented on the Facebook posting which connected the link to a comment summary site (which tried to announce my location)  which then grouped the image using the keyword “revolution” with an NRA page that had a popup for a cigar rights group posting an ad opposing H.R. 1639 / S.1461 to which I filled in my name and address which generated an automated letter to all of my senators and Congressman (and tried to announce my location) and then I got an automated message from Rep. Bilbray acknowledging the message and assuring me that whatever my concerns are about whatever issue I’m writing about my views will be taken seriously (no word from Boxer or Feinstein yet so Bilbray must be a cigar man) and last I noticed, my automated congressional response app on the personal computer was preparing a mass emailing through Mailchimp to launch the Preoccupy Occupy Wall Street movement…a day in the life…

Then, one morning, starting from where he was bringing the Wang mini-computer online, standing over his workstation as he did every morning chewing on a plastic stir stick, I noticed him head my direction as I made another of the 100 phone calls a day my boss the company owner had set as my target.

Obviously intending to say as little as possible, he dropped a copy of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged” on my desk with this most brief of reviews: “It’s got everything, romance, mystery, but you have to read 150 pages before it grabs you.” And then he left.

Since then, we’ve become good friends and I am indebted to him for bringing the book to my attention in a way that I had to read to 150 pages and beyond.

One of the reasons we are friends is a shared sense of the value of doing something that produces something. Creating.  He works in a company with whose founder I’ve also become friends with who shares this – to our way of thinking – obvious view of what makes life work.  You would not find any of the three of us laying around at one of the “Occupy <fill in the blank>” camp outs.

I feel empathy toward the Occupiers, but not sympathy.  We share much of the same trouble – a bad economy where the low hanging fruit seems to be gone.  I’ve been out of work for almost two years.  The difference between us is what we’re choosing to do about it.  Mr. Obama chooses to portray them as some sort of honored voice of the frustrated, but like those grumbling that the morning is cold but aren’t hustling around camp to find wood to build a fire, their “voice” doesn’t do much for me or anyone else.

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (and, yes, I use a Kindle regularly but some books I will keep in this format forever.)

On page 410 of my edition of “Atlas”, the one my friend gave me,  there’s a speech delivered by one of the main characters that the Occupiers would do well to meditate over whilst not parading for CNN.  While it doesn’t address the issues of people who cheat the system and break the law, those are usually best addressed by law enforcement not chanters requiring police escort to keep peace among themselves. “New York City is spending millions on police overtime”, WSJ 10/20/2011 (or http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html)

We are almost incredibly – “almost” because it’s credibly provable – lucky in the US that we don’t have to resort to “the muzzle of a gun” (see below) to do regime change as in Libya recently  – we don’t need or even want an “Arab Spring.”  As mini-proof, look at Microsoft and Google. It wasn’t long ago that Bill Gates was spending lots of time in Congressional hearings trying to keep the business of business from strangling regulation.  Microsoft was too big, too influential.  Laws were needed!  Ha. Then two guys in a campus dorm at Stanford create Google and in less than 5 years, now THEY are the ones to be feared.  Another example: the music industry, baffled by the creativity of fifteen year olds start suing them for stealing music.  Now there’s a long term solution. Then Steve Jobs and Apple work a lot of late nights, yell at each other, spend money that goes nowhere sometimes and come up with what saves the entire industry.

The scene is a party and “Reardon” is the creator of a steel factory. “Bertram Scudder” is a a magazine editorial writer who routinely bashes business.  And, by the way, not mentioned by a key character in the book is the aptly named Wesley Mouch, the iconic government official who does not seem to understand that if people don’t risk with the idea of making more than it takes to survive, there is no one to tax.  “Senor d’Anconia” is the owner of mining operations.  Rather than apologize for succeeding as I sure wish Mr. Romney would stop doing, d’Anconia peels back the conventional packaging non-producers put on the roots of wealth.  (What he means below by “deserve” and what the entitlement crowed believe of the same word are worlds apart.)  My favorite part is where he compares the European view of wealth Obama seems to prefer to the unique American one which I prefer.

Here’s the setup for the speech:

Standing unnoticed on the edge of the group, Rearden heard a woman, who had large diamond earrings and a flabby, nervous face, ask tensely, “Senor d’Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”

“Just exactly what it deserves.”

“Oh, how cruel!”

“Don’t you believe in the operation of the moral law, madame?” Francisco asked gravely. “I do.”

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, “Don’t let him disturb.  You know, money is the root of all evil – and hes the typical product of money.”

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

Mine Owner Francisco D’Anconia’s ‘Money’ Speech from “Atlas Shrugged” | 1957 | Ayn Rand

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Aconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money’. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters‘ continents. Now the looters‘ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”

How Jobs approached his life and work sets up a big question for me about how to conduct my life.

Permit me a short background digression.

I never met Steve Jobs in person, I’ve been working from myth about him, second hand sources and my own first hand encounters with Apple and it’s products.  In 1984 while working at General Dynamics Electronics Division, I had to go to Orange County to borrow an Apple Laserwriter from the regional sales manager of Apple (the local office didn’t have one.)  I had been using sister Division Convair’s Macintosh’s to make presentation materials for the B-1B bomber’s avionics testing program office.

Macintosh and Laserwriter Ad circa 1986

I had come to the Program Office from the Publications Department.  It was there in 1982, my foresighted boss Irv Wasserberg, had me help with capital requests to purchase the Wang OIS-80 typographic system.  We also had charge of the reprographics group and so I had a chance to see the Xerox Star System which used icons to navigate well before Apple deployed them. Working with the Wang word processor for a guy who treasured his Selectric typewriter for writing, I got my third and more lasting taste of technology. (The first was a computer programmable by mag stripe card in 8th grade (1970) and then a class in MIS on college where I wrote three programs on punch cards for a Cyber-175.)

In 1984, my division at GD routinely created 300 slide presentations.  When I wrote my one and only cost savings suggestion to use a Macintosh and a Laserwriter, I counted up the effort those two machines and an operator would replace: 13 people and 8 machines in three buildings.  Turnaround for a change in a slide was usually no less than 24 hours except in an emergency.  I sat in the back of the conference room during presentation review and made changes on the spot.  (I had left GD when my cost savings suggestion was evaluated…judgement: intangible savings. Award: a plexiglas chip and dip bowl.  I told them to keep the bowl and keep my name off of any list of awardees.)

All that to say, I was a fan of the Mac.  However, after I left GD, I didn’t have the cash to pay Jobs for his machines and software.  The PC had come along and there was a forest of free and shareware applications for a machine I could fix myself with parts from many suppliers.

San Diego Computer Journal August 1990

In the August 1990 now defunct “San Diego Computer Journal” I was writing about the competition Apple was losing with Microsoft Windows “the Mac is not dead….but it will need to be vastly more capable and present not just improvements but wholesale innovation to retain its present special position.“  (The editor of the Journal felt compelled to rebut my position with a defense of the Mac as “special” to justify its expense, in part I suspect because he was publishing the paper on a Mac.)  1990 – as it turned out – was in the middle of the Jobs abscence from Apple.

End of digression.

I’m happy with the Macbook I use for video production and traveling, but I use it for different things than I do my Windows PC.  I gave up my Blackberry for an iPhone and would enjoy an iPad, although I wonder about whether I would miss the easy read on my Kindle.  I wonder if I’d have all of that from a reported nice guy like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, just a little later than the hard driving Jobs produced them.  I’m envious of what Jobs accomplished while at the same time glad to be one of the herd using his devices and not one of the employees he squashed – or even being him and dead at 56.  (There are nice people who get cancer and die early, too, I was reminded today.)

The story of Jobs career makes me wonder about how we judge success and what we teach our kids about ethics and overall how we want our world to work.  It also makes me wonder what cost Jobs himself paid for his success.

I’ve heard Jobs ripped off his first partner, Steve Wozniak, early on in Apple’s history.  I’d always wondered when “Woz” found out Jobs told him they made far less than what they’d been paid for their first big order and then split the lesser amount 50/50 with him.  Now, the work was done in Jobs’ garage and Jobs had sold his Volkswagon bus to finance it.  I don’t know what sacrifice Wozniak made except to say that I’m told Wozniak cried years later when he found out Jobs had cheated him from the beginning.

From that beginning, it’s widely known that Jobs “pushed” his people hard.  “Pushed” including calling them stupid and a lot of yelling.  Arrogant and abrupt treatment of people seemed to be a common theme.  Does being smart excuse a person from civility?

And yet, Peter Elkind writing for CNNmoney reported this in March 2008: “Jobs’ personal abuses are also legend: He parks his Mercedes in handicapped spaces, periodically reduces subordinates to tears, and fires employees in angry tantrums. Yet many of his top deputies at Apple have worked with him for years, and even some of those who have departed say that although it’s often brutal and Jobs hogs the credit, they’ve never done better work.”

I’m already unhappy with my appointed high school and college guidance counselors for not telling me what jobs were possible: deputy city manager of San Diego for 5 years can retire on $150,000 income for life; professional basketball coaches fired for poor performance can have contracts paying millions not to coach.  Should I be upset that the culture I was raised in taught respect and courtesy and that some costs were too high?

Is the lesson that Jobs leaves behind that if you’re smart enough and do enough things that people like that we’ll all forgive you for whatever abuse you dish out?  I’m also reminded by the same friend that most people don’t know the nasty Jobs, only that they can play Angry Birds and be happy.

And, there’s a flipside to this conversation.

Socrates rated a Democracy as the worst of 10 possible forms of government because expecting the mob (in latin mobilus vulgus or “moving vulgar”) to vote intelligently was not possible.  In Greek tragedy, the lines given the Chorus were to repeat the “conventional wisdom.” – statements like “if man were meant to fly, he’d have wings” or “if you tax the rich enough the economy will turn around.”  The heroes almost always went against that accepted wisdom to a better end.

Anyone who felt they understood something and could make it work and had others chanting negatives in the background knows about the Chorus. In many cases – and I live this as a web site developer – you’ll make people unhappy, in a Faustian way, if you give them what they ask for.  How can they know what to ask for unless they can do it for themselves anyway and then they aren’t asking you for it.  Knowing how to give them what they really want is an art.  Jobs had a sense of that.

It takes something more than average to accomplish some things. It takes people willing to put themselves in precarious positions, risking failure and derision and economic ruin, to do what conventional wisdom says is impossible.  That’s one part of Jobs I appreciate.   I wonder, though, if he was glad, in the end, for the life he led and… what he thinks now.

Taking a cue from the film “A Day without a Mexican”, imagine a year without advertising. I started mulling that prospect after watching the Stephen King novel-made-into-a-movie called “The Langoliers”, but we’ll return to that in a minute.

I’ve made a living from online advertising, but have always thought it to be a necessary evil, even in my own life. Evil because I thought it was preventing me from seeing the rest of the “To be continued…” on Batman or Star Trek because they filled up the hour with commercials for things I couldn’t buy. The Movie of the Night in Tucson started with half hour breaks for pitches from Oliver’s Cleaners: They’re “ah-liver” town, but then,  as the drama reached it’s dramatic conclusion,  would descend into breaking every five minutes until the mere mention of Oliver generated groans.

Initially, people were appalled that the pristine airways would be fouled with pitches for real estate and telephone service. But eventually everyone got used to it. TV started right away with sponsorships of whole programs as early as 1941 when Bulova ran a 20 second spot on WNBT  and moved quickly to the sponsorship of whole programs like Texaco Star Theater which started on radio in 1938 and moved to tv in 1948.

Today, many feel that we are saturated with ads. Pop ups on our web pages, our gas pumps and even our telephones. Pitch, pitch, pitch.

But what if there was no advertising.

Grocery store shelves lined with cans and boxes in plain brown wrappers with their contents and price in the same size standard font, because packaging and presentation is “in-store” advertising.    Movie theaters with no marquee…you have to pay for a ticket to find out what’s on because there aren’t any moving listings in the paper.   In fact, the newspaper doesn’t exist because most of them make most of their money from classified advertising (ok, not so much anymore.)   Special pricing could only spread by word of mouth so only insiders would get the good deals all the time.   No clubs or rewards programs or frequent anything prizes.

You get the point.

So, on the face of it, advertising serves a useful and necessary purpose. What got me thinking, though, was an experience I hadn’t expected.

One night about 11pm, I started watching a curious film called “The Langoliers.” The subject of the movie is not relevant to my topic.  (It’s about a collection of passengers on a flight who find themselves in a time warp.)

The relevant point is that the movie was to run from 11pm to 1am and I was not interested in staying up that late that particular night. So, having integrated my Netflix account with my new xBox 360, I logged in to see if Netflix had the movie and it did.

A confession is called for: I did not check the run time of the Netflix version, simply expecting that – without all the interruptions of commercials – I would finish the movie in 90 minutes or less…especially since I could fast forward to the same point in the movie where I had broken off to check Netflix.

I must have dozed off at some point, having seen sections of the movie before, because around 1:45am I realized I had not outsmarted the system at all. The movie was still on and when I checked the broadcast station, in fact, it was just behind my Netflix version with a second airing!

So what’s that got to do with advertising?

Stephen King and the directors opinions notwithstanding, commercials on TV had paid for someone to carefully edit the story to accommodate the run time (that message they always post before showing theatrically produced films on tv) and still tell the story in less time than it took to run the movie!

Simply viewed: I would have been in bed an hour earlier and with knowledge of the advertisers and their products that I had missed while watching the film without commercial interruption.

Knowledge is power. Think about that the next time you’re in need of something and the advertiser’s jingle jumps to mind to remind you someone is willing to answer that need and spent the money to let you know.

While I’m no fanatic – others may disagree – my sister one time made an apple pie that was black with cinnamon. Upon the first taste, I was compelled – by tradition – to say: “almost enough…”

These days, I’m trying different butter substitutes to help with my battle against plus 300 cholesterol and sugar substitutes with an eye to stave off what might be a genetic disposition toward diabetes. And I no longer eat much Wonder Bread, as a child of the seventies who was beaten into submission that only brown bread that tastes like wet hay from the family ranch in Montana is good for you.

Right now, with this first posting, however, let’s focus on the photo that is the header for the site. Each element has a story.

First, the one constant is the cinnamon. I usually purchase the restaurant size powdered version of the bark from Costco. Running out of cinnamon is a real bad thing. The dispenser, as always, is a spice dispenser of another kind of spice, drafted into service with the two requirements that it have a clear body to monitor the available cinnamon and sugar and the opening be a grid of holes wide enough to shake any lumps of sugar back into powder. You load this with 2/3 sugar and 1/3 cinnamon to fill approximately 90% of the jar, leaving room for shaking to combine the two pals.

Oldest of my cinnamon entourage is my toaster. The one in the photo – still working – I purchased from the Salvation Army in Tucson for $5 as a Sophomore in college at the

Self Healing Toaster

University of Arizona in 1978. Makes it 33 years old when I got it. Made by the Proctor Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania model 1785A Series 9808. It’s stamped with “Family Model” on the underside. I don’t think they make appliances to last like this much anymore. I could swear this one is self healing. For a while, it stopped toasting on both sides of the “First Slice Goes Here” slot and then miraculously one day it just restarted.

Of a more modern origin is the bread. This is the first successful loaf I’ve been able to put through our new bread maker given to us by our friend Monica. I’ve been through two bags of flour and finally hit on a winning formula. And this one even uses the orange pulp from our Jack Lalanne Juicer from my brother Craig and his wife Kimmer. Here’s the recipe:
2 cups self rising flour (with baking powder)
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons room temperature water
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of regular sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 and one half teaspoon Bread Machine Yeast at room temperature
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup orange pulp

Mix all the dry ingredients together well with a whisk.
Knead in the orange pulp so it’s broken up
Pour into bread machine
Add the water and tab of butter.
Set for medium crust on a 2lb loaf.

That’s it.

As for the sugar and butter on the toast, there just isn’t a substitute for regular cane sugar and dairy butter. Now, I’m no sweet tooth. I get the cinnamon rolls frozen at the Fair every summer specifically without the frosting. When I visit Cinnabon – those pushers – I always wait for a batch without the frosting. Interferes too much with the cinnamon.

So, that’s your introduction to Cinnamontoast.com. It’s likely my next article will be on the difficulty of building web sites as users wish to use them instead of how graphic artists and advertisers want them built…or maybe I’ll talk about why one of the world’s foremost pianists thinks that classical music makes you smarter. Not sure. Stay tuned.