Scott Porad

Following up on yesterday’s post about consumption archeology, Louis CK on how everything is amazing, and nobody’s happy:

My wife and I try to put most expenses on our credit card, so we can get the miles/points.  It works out fairly well for us.

I mention this because for a little project recently I’ve had to go back through an entire year worth of my credit card receipts.  While tedious, it’s kind of cool because it’s like taking a little tour of my life for the last year.  I don’t remember every single transaction, but I remember a lot of them, and each is a little reminder of some amount of living live in the last year.

A few years ago, we moved and I had a similar experience.  While packing up, I came across a random box where, apparently, I had just dumped a bunch of papers, mail, receipts, etc.  As I started to go through and clean it out, I realized that it was from right around the time that I got married which was about 8 years prior.  Amongst other things was the receipt from the hotel where we stayed on our honeymoon.  It was neat…sort of a walk down memory lane via means of financial transactions.

Of course, this time around it’s all be online which makes it easier…I suppose, if you were looking for a fun way to spend an hour or two, it would be easy enough for you too!

Has anyone heard of the Sept. 17 protests called Occupy Wall Street ?  (See https://occupywallst.org/ and http://occupywallstreet.com/)

Also, check out http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/.

This was all news to me today.

Could revolution happen in the US?

Just a few random thoughts on Amazon.com…they’ve been on my mind a lot lately…

• Amazon Prime has changed my life.  When buying holiday gifts last winter it was cheaper to to get Prime than to pay for all the shipping.  Since then, I’ve probably ordered 100x what I would have otherwise.
• Amazon Prime Local Delivery is redonkulous!  I’ve used it twice recently to order computer accessories.  I ordered each item around 11am.  Once I got the item at 1pm, the other around 4pm.  That’s about 1 million times easier than shlepping out to some store to get them.
• Did you hear what Eric Schmidt said about the “gang of four” in consumer technology—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon?  Struck me as strange that Amazon was in that group.  I mean, I suppose there’s AWS, which I’m sure is a big “platform” business, but I thought they were a merchant…??  Hold that thought for a second…
• See the Kindle plus Kindle Direct Publishing.
• See Amazon Instant Video plus Amazon Studios.
• A-ha!  Own the content and the distribution.  Or, rather, distribute products that you own for better margins.  Very clever.  They’re taking it slow in this area, but they have time to be the tortoise.
• What does the market think:
  • AMZN: 50x forward-looking earnings
  • AAPL: 11x
  • GOOG: 14x
  • Facebook: N/A

How about them apples?

If you care about your health, this article is worth a read: Is Sugar Toxic?

If you don’t care about your health, then read this one.

We’re having a snow day in Seattle.

One of the charming things about Seattle is how it shuts down when it snows.  Which really only makes sense if you’ve ever lived here.

The video below helps illustrate the situation, but doesn’t entirely because the slope being filmed is about only 30% of an average hill around here.

Of course, there’s a lesson to be learned from all of this: despite living in a modern, temperature-controlled environment, sometimes it’s best not to push your luck and just be happy with what Mother Nature gives you—she is still very powerful, after all.

Update: this video is from the last major snow storm we had in Seattle, in 2008:

I’ve been meaning to jot this down for a few weeks now, but keep on forgetting.

As, you, my loyal readers know, the night before the election, I wrote a sort of snarky running diary of how I voted.

Then, a few days later, I read Ben’s post, Waited 32 Years to Vote. And I Almost Didn’t Make It.  Honestly, I sort of feel bad, just a little bit, for how for granted I took my civic duty.

Go ahead, read the whole thing…it will make you smile!

As a society, we spend a lot of time and money trying to find cures for cancer.  Question: are we barking up the wrong tree?

Scientists from University of Manchester have completed a study that reveals “there is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease.”  By looking at mummified remains from thousands of years…

…it was not until the 17th century that they found descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers and the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumours have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin’s disease in 1832.

Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”

Click here to read the whole article…definitely some food for thought.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  —Albert Einstein

Kids are clever…they don’t have the same mental constraints as adults do.

Case in point: yesterday Lisa and I took the boys to the donut shop where each boy got this giant chocolate donut bar thing akin to a maple bar, but bigger and more chocolaty.  (I prefer a chocolate covered old fashioned, but what do expect from 5- and 8-year old boys?)

This monstrosity was bigger than their heads, so like a good parent, I told the boys to only eat half, so that they wouldn’t get a stomach ache.  My older son ignored me and plowed through his gut bomb in about 30 seconds.  The younger boy was more obedient, and did as I suggested.

What didn’t occur to me was that he would eat the TOP half.

You gotta hand it to him: he was clever.  He thought through the situation and maximized the donut.  Like I said, kids don’t have the same mental constraints as adults.