“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? “

While the FAQ does help, I think the folks at CommonCraft created the most concise explanation of Twitter with the short video “Twitter in Plain English“.  Watch it below:

I almost forgot… Twitter is free! Follow my Twitter updates here.

Update: It’s all fixed!

Here is the quoted part 1 to the column Too “Complex”?

(click ‘more’ to finish reading the column and links to all 3 parts):

Too “Complex”?
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

“Some people think that the reason the public misunderstands so many issues is that these issues are too “complex” for most voters. But is that really so?

With all the commotion in the media and in politics about the high price of gasoline, is there really some terribly complex explanation?

Is there anything complex about the fact that with two countries– India and China– having rapid economic growth, and with combined populations 8 times that of the United States, they are creating an increased demand for the world’s oil supply?

The problem is not that supply and demand is such a complex explanation. The problem is that supply and demand is not an emotionally satisfying explanation. For that, you need melodrama, heroes and villains.

It is clear that many people prefer to blame President Bush. Others prefer to blame the oil companies, who have long been the favorite villains of the left.

Politicians understand that. Numerous times they have summoned the heads of oil companies before Congressional committees to be denounced on nationwide television for “greed,” with the politicians calling for a federal investigation to “get to the bottom of this!”

Now that is emotionally satisfying, which is the whole point. By the time yet another federal investigation is completed– and turns up nothing to substantiate the villainy that is supposed to be the reason for high gasoline prices– most people’s attention will have turned to something else.

Newspapers that carried the original inflammatory charges with banner headlines on page 1 will carry the story of the completed investigation that turned up nothing as a small item deep inside the paper.

This has happened at least a dozen times over the past few decades and it will probably happen again.

What about those “obscene” oil company profits we hear so much about?

An economist might ask, “Obscene compared to what?” Compared to the investments made? Compared to the new investments required to find, extract and process additional oil supplies?

Asking questions like these are among the many reasons why economists have never been very popular. They frustrate people’s desires for emotionally satisfying explanations.

If corporate “greed” is the explanation for high gasoline prices, why are the government’s taxes not an even bigger sign of “greed” on the part of politicians– since taxes add more to the price of gasoline than oil company profits do?

Whatever the merits or demerits of Senator John McCain’s proposal to temporarily suspend the federal taxes on gasoline, it would certainly lower the price more than confiscating all the oil companies’ profits.

But it would not be as emotionally satisfying.

Senator Barack Obama clearly understands people’s emotional needs and how to meet them. He wants to raise taxes on oil companies.

How that will get us more oil or lower the price of gasoline is a problem that can be left for economists to puzzle over. A politician’s problem is how to get more votes– and one of the most effective ways of doing that is to be a hero who will save us from the villains.

You have heard of the cavalry to the rescue. But have you ever heard of economists to the rescue?

While economists are talking supply and demand, politicians are talking compassion, “change” and being on the side of the angels– and against drilling for our own oil.

Has any economist ever attracted the kinds of cheering crowds that Barack Obama has– or even the crowds attracted by Hillary Clinton or John McCain?

If you want cheering crowds, don’t bother to study economics. It will only hold you back. Tell people what they want to hear– and they don’t want to hear about supply and demand.

No, supply and demand is not too “complex.” It is just not very emotionally satisfying.”

Here are the links to all three columns:

Too “Complex”?

Too “Complex”? Part II

Too “Complex”? Part III

You may ask “Jim, Why such dangerous things and how do the two mix?” Well it’s simple really, no one has ever done moto-cross tricks while wrangling rattlesnakes.  When’s the last time you saw a person do backflips with a moto-cross bike and wrangle rattlesnakes?  Never!

I like to challenge myself and look forward to this new part of my athletic endeavors. I was inspired to do this by Sloof Lirpa, a world renowned athlete that base jumps while rattlesnake wrangling.  Sloof Lirpa is from the tiny town of Ekojasisiht in Norway.

For those in PETA: No rattlesnakes will be in danger or harmed since I will be learning from the best, the man, Sloof Lirpa at his Ekojasisiht training facility.

Just can’t make this stuff up…

What makes this story even more wild for me is I work just around the corner from that golf course. In fact, I drive past the fairway every weekday!

Living in Chicagoland, I can’t count the times I wished I had a helicopter or plane to get me across the area.  Not that it would be feasible, but its fun to dream of escaping the gridlock that can occur here on a daily basis. Crazy as it was, this guy actually did it!

I meant to blog this earlier this week since it occured this past Saturday, but alas, it slipped my mind.

My prayers go out to the victims, families and students of NIU. I think my post back on the day of the Virginia Tech tragedy sums up my thoughts on the news today. Rather than repeating the post, just check it out here in my archives.

A local man who was a victim of the Virginia Tech spree had some wise words for the students of NIU. Garrett Evans said:

“The challenge is to forgive the gunman. It seems hard to do that, but you have to forgive so that you can heal.”

Well said Garrett.

Photos of the NIU scene here.

Also available on YouTube.

I’m tired of hearing the media/pundits scream and pout that a recession is on the horizon or already here in the U.S. While I don’t claim to be any sort of financial expert (far from it), I think I have enough common sense and basic business/economics acumen to see most signs do not point down the recession road as much as they would like us to think.

Even the curmudgeon Andy Rooney, who is the definition of a pessemist, said last night on “60 Minutes” that he doesn’t think there is a recession, while at the same time making fun of the Wall Street Journal.

“I don’t know anything about economics but I don’t think what we’re in is a Depression - or even a recession - whatever the difference is.”

Ironically today’s commentary essentially agrees with Mr. Rooney’s statement that we are not in a recession.

Check out “The Economy Is Fine (Really)” in today’s Wall Street Journal by Brian Wesbury. Brian is chief economist for First Trust Portfolios, L.P. here in Chicagoland. A common sense approach is needed when evaluating today’s US economy. This commentary summed it up concisely in my opinion.

“MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Two Australian robbers were sentenced Tuesday for their April Fools Day heist at the Cuckoo Restaurant, where they thought they were hauling away a big sack of cash that turned out to be bread rolls. Benjamin Jorgensen, 38, and his accomplice Donna Hayes, 36, were sentenced in Victorian County Court after pleading guilty to robbing the restaurant in the southern Australian city of Melbourne on April 1 last year.

During the holdup, Jorgensen grabbed what he believed was a bag with the Cuckoo’s cash earnings of about $26,000, but later found it was full of bread rolls, the court heard.

He also fired his gun accidentally in the caper, shooting Hayes in the buttocks.

Judge Roland Williams told the robbers they were a “pair of fools,” before sentencing Hayes to eight years in prison and Jorgensen to seven.

Earlier this week, defense lawyer Greg Thomas said Jorgensen had been under the influence of drugs at the time, had made a full admission to police and was remorseful, News Ltd. newspapers reported.”

A regular Bonnie and Clyde? Not so much…

There are a number of levels of humor in this one.

1. The heist took place on April Fools Day last year. Not getting off to a good start in the whole planning thing…

2. Grabbing a bag of bread rolls which they was thought was really full of cash. Nice job looking in the bag…. Hopefully the rolls were fresh and tasty…

3. Accidentally shooting the accomplice in the bum. Well it could be worse… I’m sure that Ms. Hayes does not write any love letters to good ol’ Benjamin…

4. Ms Hayes got a longer prison sentence. The mastermind? Really? I’d expect this kind of numbskullery from the guy. Especially since he was the one on drugs…

5. They held up a restaurant named “Cuckoo”. ‘Nuff said…

Here in Chicago it’s a well known, long-standing tradition to wait in line 2+ hours for it even on very cold, snowy winter days. It is really that good and no… people are not crazy for doing it.

Once eating this popcorn, even the most cynical person has to say its one of the best things they have ever tasted. While that may be a bit of hyperbole, it’s not really an exagerration to say that I have yet to meet a person who thought it was nothing but awesome.

Some may have heard about it from of all people Oprah, but she had little to do with its popularity. It was already well established here in Chicago since 1949, long before she was yapping about it on TV. Many other Hollywood and music-types rave about Garrett’s which is ok I suppose. Frankly I’d rather it only be known here in Chicago without those “stars” going on about it. Selfish of me? Darn right it is! To this day its a family owned and operated business and hopefully it will remain that way.

I highly recommend the CaramelCrisp^® & CheeseCornâ„¢ MIX however you can’t go wrong with any of the flavors listed here.

(Note: The letters ‘f’ where there should be the letter ’s’ is not a typo, it’s just the way they wrote the letter ’s’ in those days.)

“General Thanksgiving
By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houfes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our fincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the fignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the courfe and conclufion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have fince enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eftablish Conftitutions of government for our fafety and happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleffed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffufing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleafed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moft humbly offering our prayers and fupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and befeech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgreffions;– to enable us all, whether in publick or private ftations, to perform our feveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleffing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wife, juft, and conftitutional laws, difcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all fovereigns and nations (especially fuch as have shewn kindnefs unto us); and to blefs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increafe of fcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind fuch a degree of temporal profperity as he alone knows to be beft.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand feven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington”

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

A copy of the original printing is available here.

So lets see whats been going on… Bought a new suv… Yes… For those of you that know me my 1994 Jeep “The Mystery Machine” Cherokee is being retired. It didn’t quit on me but it had over 200,000 miles on it and it was time to move on. I bit the bullet and bought a new 2007 Toyota 4 Runner as seen above. I like it and hopefully it will serve me well like the Jeep did for almost 12 yrs… Good memories with the Jeep…

Spent the summer doing a lot of shooting (the photography kind) and am very behind on post-processing it all. More to come on that end.

The Cubbies had a nice run in the baseball regular season winning the NL Central Division. I ended up going to a few more games in their last regular season homestand which was a good time. I even somehow got tickets to all 3 possible NLCS playoff games at Wrigley (which is kinda like winning a small lottery), only to see them get swept out of the NLDS by Arizona. Thus those games were never played. Figures I guess… It’s too bad really because this was a good year to make a run to the World Series. But considering last season they were the worst team in the NL, I’ll take this one as a good first step.

So with that I hope to be blogging a little more often.

Photo Credit: Vincent Ma

“She’s facing potentially three years of incarceration for three rolls of toilet paper,” Chief Lon Walker said, stifling a laugh as he talked to KCCI-TV about Suzanne Marie Butts. “See, I can’t say it with a straight face.”

Of all the places to steal from too, a courthouse? Not only is it a dumb place to steal anything, I’m sure their toilet paper is probably one step from being sandpaper!

Now that Zooomr has launched its new version - Mark III, the next week or so will mean fixing “post launch jitters”. This mainly means fixing bugs, releasing new functions, scaling servers, etc. Things should be settled in soon though. Here is a post launch FAQ

Above is the new sticker promoting Zooomr that you may see plastered around a city near you in the coming days. Special thanks to Randy aka RandyMan on Zooomr for making the stickers at his company Edwards Label. Check them out if you need some labels!

I recommend trying out Zooomr and its new features especially once the jitters are clear!

Consider that the founder, creator, developer, coder is a 19 year old genius young man named Kristopher Tate. The CEO is a spectacular photographer with a day job as financial advisor named Thomas Hawk. That name is actually a pen name because if he used his real name he would not be free to share his opinions due to his day job restrictions (though he knows people can figure out his real name).

Zooomr went offline recently to port in the new version (Mark III). During the offline state, Kristopher and Thomas continue to stay in touch with the Zooomr community by streaming video live on UStream.tv almost 24/7 from Zooomr HQ, the data center where the servers are located, etc. This is a unique view of the struggles of running a site like that. Watch Kristopher as he wrangles some code or moves data. Thomas responds on the video stream to the chat room talking Zooomr, photography, tech, and does a little DJ’ing on the stream with his MacBook Pro.

After delays with the Zooomr update, it went live with Mark III earlier this week… For about 10 minutes. Then it went down. But this time it wasn’t intentional. Server hardware issues appeared and unfortuantely it has not been a quick fix. This wiki has updates from the Zooomr community as to the status of things so I won’t go into details. But I would like to highlight that the folks from Zoho.com, specifically Raju, have been of great assistance to Zooomr in the past 48 hrs, offering servers, data center space and technical know-how.

You may wonder, why in the world does this matter to you Jim? Well for one, I’m an amateur photographer and looking forward to using the new functionality of Zooomr. Many functions that flickr does not have. Also this 19 yr old’s talent and maturity for his age is amazing to see. Not to mention Kris and Thomas seem to be all around nice guys that have great intentions with Zooomr.

Thomas Hawk on a blog response today: “We are a two man team trying to pull off a dream. We want to build the first truly global photo sharing site and for the first time open up the $2.5 billion stock photography market to the entire world. These are big goals and ambitions. But we are just two guys. We are doing the best that we can and I think that people understand that.

It’s easy for people to take potshots at Zooomr when we are down. But we will be back up. We will get back online. And these growing pains will be a part of our history. But we will always remember the people who stood by us in our troubles and I think the support that they are giving us is something that you can’t understand because what they know that you may not is that we are doing this for them.

We are personally sacrificing much to make a better global photosharing site and to make it possible for everyone — even kids in India and China — to be able to sell photos to the rest of the world.”

I like to see stories like this end well. I think it will, but right now I’m sure its frustrating for them. I never had an inkling of understanding about what it’s like behind the scenes to create and run a site like this not to mention with just two people. Most sites would hide this kind of stuff from users, but I think being transparent like Zooomr has been in this case is actually building respect and people rooting for them.

Update: Robert Scoble is with Kris tonight to help out. Also an “unnamed company” donated two brand new servers.

Update 2 (8:20pm CDT): Thomas Hawk and Kris are live on uStream.tv and should be re-launching Zooomr Mark III tonight, possibly within the hour.

Update 3 (1:45 am CDT June 3): Zooomr Mark III is LIVE! Note that there will be bugs initially.

[Full disclosure - I know Jeremy from back in my college days and his post-Purdue days when he would play gigs back at Purdue. Some of you already know that but for those that don't... ya know.]

He has blogged about the process of creating the record, including the incredible people that contributed to it from the musicians to the legendary mixer/engineer that mastered the final version.

By the way, Jeremy is a true singer/songwriter, composing all of the music and writing all of the lyrics which is becoming a little more rare these days. His wife Kiersten wrote a nice short description of part of the creative process he goes through on her blog.

Of course I’m biased, but I rarely recommend a record on my blog unless it’s really good and this is no exception. “Recovery” is such a finely crafted work its hard for me do it justice describing it in my limited music vocabulary. Do yourself a favor and check this album out. He has an awesome video showing on the home page of his site on the making of the record that’s well worth your time. He also has links to his MySpace, Facebook, and Virb pages that have a few the tracks posted in a music player. Make your ears happy and have a listen! Go to Jeremy’s site here or just click on the badge below to go to his site:

UPDATE (11/29/2007): Not only did Jeremy’s album get a rare FIVE STARS from Christianity Today, it also was ranked #4 on their Best Christian Albums of 2007! Congrats Jeremy! Well done and most certainly deserved!

I can never know their pain and loss, especially given the horrific magnitude and circumstances of this situation. I do know what it is to lose a friend in shocking, vaguely similar circumstances. When reading about the first shooting online at the office this morning, I immediately thought of what happen to my friend Jay Severson about 10 years ago.

During my senior year as student at Purdue University, Jay was an RA for a dorm floor and was murdered at the entrance to his room by a student that he had caught with drugs. The student took his own life after a standoff with police however that situation never escalated to anything like today.

I remember every detail of that day and the many days followed like they were yesterday. I remember the shock, pain, disbelief, sadness and the questions. Questions that were eventually answered as to what happened, but others that will never be answered in this life. I’m not a counselor, but I can say from experience to the students, especially those that may have lost someone today to make sure to talk to each other, your parents, to counselors, to ministers and most importantly to God.

I have never once felt anger at the student who took Jay’s life, even though his actions caused such great heartache and loss in Jay’s family and large net of friends, in addition to his own family and friends. All I could do was forgive him and pray for his family. I’ve been asked how in the world I did no feel angry at that student? I can only explain it as God’s grace. As time has gone by I have chosen, through God’s help, to focus on the good times with my friend Jay rather than the circumstances of his death (which I will never forget).

My prayer for the families and friends of the Virginia Tech victims is they will be able to focus on the good times with those they have lost and that God comfort them in this time of grief.

Update: Photos tell the story.

Today Major League Baseball honored Jackie Robinson on the 60th Anniversary of him breaking the color barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Many players or in some cases, entire teams wore his retired number ‘42′instead of their normal uniforms to honor him.

It cannot be stated enough what an important day that was 60 years ago when Jackie set foot on Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. Not just for baseball or sports, but for America and the world. I believe Jackie Robinson was one of the most important people of the 20th Century as his bravery, actions and integrity led to the progress this country has made in racial equality. Thank you Jackie for all that you endured and were willing to do for not just baseball but the for world.

Notable Links about Jackie Robinson:

JackieRobinson.com

Jackie Robinson Foundation

Sports Illustrated Article

Wikipedia entry on Jackie Robinson