Back to School

Continuing with my "love for Autumn" theme, I have to say I am so excited to get back to school.

After high school I decided not to go the traditional route (college) and instead did my own thing (work). For years I kicked myself in the butt for not going straight to college. Seeing my peers advance quickly in their corporate jobs sometimes made me question whether or not I had made the right choice.

I am happy to report that yes, indeed, I made the right choice. My life and my work has been a great ride... and the killer part is that I get to do more of it and still on my terms. Oh that streak of independence will get me every-time.

So now I am there... ready to go back to school (I have done a fair amount of college work over the years) but I still have a ways to go. And that's fine.

I have to ask myself though... Do I want to go back to school to continue my education or because, like many people I know, I could spend days and days buying office and school supplies?

Right? C'mon... we all remember our SAT "analogy questions."

Children are to Toys-R-Us as Adults are to ________?

More to come...

M

Hazy Shade of Autumn...

I woke up in the best mood today. I had no idea why. I just sprung into action. It was amazing. I made my breakfast shake (with a hefty side of coffee) and then went out back to enjoy another hot summer day... AND IT WAS FREEZING! I loved it. Did my body somehow know it was going to be like Fall out this morning?

So now I can't seem to get "Hazy Shade of Winter" out of my head. C'mon... sing it with me...

But look around, leaves are brown now And the sky is a hazy shade of winter Look around, leaves are brown There's a patch of snow on the ground.

Ok... so now that's over with... I am looking around and I can't wait for the leaves to turn brown. I love the winter. For a person that lived in sunny southern California for so many years, I guess I just forgot how much I love the fall and winter.

There's something about wearing sweaters and picking apples that just makes me so happy. Then we all get to spend months inside sitting by fires (hopefully in a fireplace, I am not advocating you start a bonfire in your dining room).

This morning was an amazing reminder to me of the joys of Fall.

Go away Summer... well not for good... just for a few months.

More to come...

M

YouTube to share ad money with more video makers

This is very cool! All you youtubers get out there and make some dough.

Though...one of these days a résumé is going to come across my desk with "youtube video poster" as a job title... hmmm.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - YouTube, the world's most popular video sharing site, said on Tuesday it will start sharing advertising cash with users who upload the most popular clips of everything from skateboarding dogs to dancing babies.

The video site, which is owned by Web search giant Google Inc, said it will extend its YouTube partnership program to allow individuals to make money when their videos are deemed eligible based on the number of views and how widely they are shared with other users.

YouTube has been criticized by some Google investors, who complain that the site has failed to capitalize financially on its immense popularity.

Until now, users who regularly produced videos could earn revenue from YouTube if they formally applied to be members of the partnership program, which YouTube said has earned some video producers "thousands of dollars."

Under the new system, if a video becomes popular YouTube will email the maker an "enable revenue sharing" message. Executives declined to quantify how popular a video would need to be for its owner receive the email. YouTube said it will sell ads against the clip only if the user agrees to do so.

One recent example of a clip that became a global phenomenon was the JK wedding dance video, which showed a Minnesota couple's wedding party performing an entrance dance routine. It was seen more than 10 million times in less than a week and picked up by various TV news outlets. But according to YouTube executives, the makers never made any money from the clip.

The extension of the program, to be available only in the United States initially, is the latest step by YouTube to improve its ability to make money from the thousands of videos that are uploaded to the site every day.

"We think there's tens of thousands more partners that we can generate through this content," said Tom Pickett, director online sales at YouTube.

Goldman Sachs estimates that YouTube will post revenue this year of about $300 million, and that the figure will increase by at least 40 percent in 2010. Analysts at Credit Suisse, however, have estimated that YouTube could lose nearly $500 million this year.

As part of its drive to increase revenue, YouTube has sought to increase the number of videos from traditional television and movie companies, encouraging more big-brand marketers to buy more advertising time. Earlier this month it signed a deal with Time Warner Inc for clips of shows from CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network and Warner Bros.

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So much more to come...

Mark

Etymologically speaking... etymologically.

I am fascinated by the origins of words. Yes, I am a geek and yes I am ok with that. What I am not ok with is the fact that other people don't seem to care about it as much as I do. I understand that meanings of words change from generation to generation, but where the word comes from stays the same.

The other day I read a commentary in Ode magazine. Below is an excerpt of In the beginning was the joke by John Lloyd:

There’s a mysterious passage in the Bible, that goes like this: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." This passage has the unmistakable ring of truth, which is curious, because it also appears to be meaningless gibberish. At first sight, that is. The word "Word" in this context is translated from the Greek logos, which means "word," of course, but in the particular sense of "that which expresses the inner thought." So we can retranslate the sentence as, "In the beginning was the Thought and the Thought was with God and the Thought was God." Now this is getting interesting, because in all the great Eastern religions, consciousness is considered the ground of being, preceding the clumsy and annoying business of matter.

Logos can be understood, more generally, to mean "speech" or "conversation." So another translation is, "In the beginning was Speech…" This is consistent with Genesis, wherein the first thing that happens is God says "Let there be light." In this reading, speech is more ancient than the laws of physics, which, again, may not be very scientific (at least not yet) but is quite interesting.

Now when logos passes into Latin, it takes on yet another meaning, one that, for all I know, preserves a long-lost original Greek usage that didn’t make it into Liddell & Scott’s dictionary. And that meaning is "joke": "In the beginning was the Joke and the Joke was with God and the Joke was God." And you know, ever since I found that translation I’ve been a lot more cheerful.

I too have been a lot more cheerful since I found that translation. So that got-me-a-thinkin' ... How can I share this passion for word origin with the world? So what I think I am going to do is just randomly pick words from my posts and tack on an asterisk* to any word that I think has a cool origin and then at the end of the post I will just list the them. I wonder* what we'll learn from this?

More to come...

M
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asterisk: 1382, from L.L. asteriscus, from Gk. asterikos "little star," dim. of aster "star." The meaning "figure used in printing and writing to indicate footnote, omission, etc." first recorded 1612.

wonder: O.E. wundor "marvelous thing, marvel, the object of astonishment," from P.Gmc. *wundran (cf. O.S. wundar, M.Du., Du. wonder, O.H.G. wuntar, Ger. wunder, O.N. undr), of unknown origin. In M.E. it also came to mean the emotion associated with such a sight (c.1290). The verb is from O.E. wundrian. Used colloquially in Pennsylvania Ger. areas in some transitive senses (It wonders me that ... for "I wonder why ..."); this was common in M.E. and as late as Tindale (1533), also survives in Yorkshire/Lincolnshire. Wonderful is recorded from c.1100. Wonderland "imaginary realm" is from 1790; wonder-worker (1599) translates Gk. thaumatourgos.

Elmo and Stitch...

I have a lot to owe to the world. All things being equal (which they never are), life is pretty good.

I woke up early again today (this time because I left my AC on overnight set to 62..brrrr) so I flipped on the TV and saw that Eunice Kennedy Shriver died last night. It really bummed me out. Not because I knew her or anything... I just think she was a perfect example of the kind of people that seem to be leaving us at an alarming clip. Here was a woman with everything... money... fame... the last name Kennedy... She could have sat back all day and ate bon-bons and lived her happy wealthy life. Instead, she went out and founded the Special Olympics. Score one for Eunice.

So this has me asking, what am I doing for other people? How am I going to make today a little better for someone? I wasn't given many gifts, but one that I've been told is that I make people laugh sometimes... How Freudian is that?

So in honor of Eunice and Sigmund (now there's a pair), I think there needs to be a show called "Elmo and Stitch"... you know... Like a classic buddy film? Stitch would always be causing mischief while Elmo would be trying to keep things all straight laced... but I think Stitch would get bored with that... and seeing that he's prone to bad behavior... well...

Is it just me, or does Stitch look like he's about to eat Elmo?

Thanks Eunice...

More to come...

M

Let Them Eat Cake...

Yesterday was my Mother's birthday. Happy Happy Mom. So of course... there was cake... so I had this HONKIN' slab of this chocolate monster. I know that had to be greatest amount of refined sugar I had since I was ... oh ... 12?

Anyway... I of course had this wild sugar rush and of course could not fall asleep... and when I finally DID fall asleep I had these dreams about triangles. Naturally, the second I woke up I had to do all this research on what triangles mean in dreams (note to self: don't research dreams on the internet, the sites are all really scary). There were many different ideas about what triangles mean, could be good... could be bad... it has something to do with the context of the dream. Either way it's supposed to have something to do with three things coming together (mind, body, and spirit) in a positive or negative way. So I guess it's my choice?

Well... since all my dreams were about right triangles I choose to believe that things are going in a positive direction. Maybe I feel like my mind, body, and spirit are all starting to come together? I like that idea even if it makes me a bit of a Pollyanna.

On second thought...

Maybe it was just that the piece of cake that I had was big sugar triangle... one will never know.

More to come...

M

Open Sesame...

I'm not quite sure how this is relevant to anything, but I just accidently opened 90% of all the applications on my mac... it took me 20 minutes to quit out of everything and the thing didn't crash... go figure.


More to come...

M

Thinking about the future...

So as many of you know (or may not know, but soon will), I am a HUGE fan of The West Wing.

Usually I wake up and head straight for the coffee press, but today (as I was laying in bed) I just flipped the TV on and there was an episode of NOVA (my other favorite show) on. It was something about this secret space station called the MOL that the US was going to build back in the 60's ... it just cracked me up and made me think of this scene from TWW:

FADE IN: INT. - HALLWAY - OUTSIDE LEO'S OFFICE - DAY - 3:36 PM

Josh is standing against the wall and he is reading a newspaper. Leo walks
out of his office and they walk together as they talk.

JOSH: You all right? You look tired.
LEO: I've been tired five years.
JOSH: Tired... er.
LEO: One of those days.
JOSH: So, I had this meeting with NASA this morning.
LEO: What a waste, since the moon. My generation never got the future it was
promised.
JOSH: What do you mean?
LEO: 35 years later, cars, air travel's the same. We don't even have the Concorde
anymore. Technology stopped.
JOSH: The personal computer.
LEO: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography. Where's my jet
pack, my colonies on the Moon? Just a waste.

Leo walks off.

Leo Walks off... and that's it. The things we thought we could do back then. Anything was possible. I'm not quite sure why I'm kind of feeling the same way. Maybe it's because I am getting older and the whole "nostalgia" thing is starting to kick in? But I don't think that's it. It's something else... something deeper... a general malaisé we are all feeling perhaps?

I need to do some more thinking on this... but here's what I do know... I want my jet pack too.

More to come!

Mark

The Morning After...

It's Saturday and I'm sitting inside on the most glorious day this entire summer. Exactly what is wrong with me? Well I've been hard at work updating marktwohig.com and now I am moving on to flyingribbit.com. Here's an excerpt from my site:

"In 2009, along with former D.C. Heath colleague Jean Lawler, Mark formed the media consortium, Flying Ribbit. The idea of Flying Ribbit harkens back to the formation of the original United Artists of 1919 when Hollywood superstars Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and director D.W. Griffith launched the studio, agreeing to share full financial and artistic control. As leading film artists of their era, the partners established the company in order to ensure complete creative freedom in their work. United Artists was the first studio to be controlled by artists, not businessmen. Flying Ribbit's aim is one in the same: to find and work with great creative, managerial, financial, and technical talents for the purpose of producing extraordinary original content."

Lofty? Perhaps...but still kinda cool. If want to know more or feel like you can contribute, get in touch with me here.

More to come!

Mark