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November 14, 2005: Have you noticed that once the car manufacturers cancelled the employee discount promotions, they reverted back to the inane ads featuring cars zooming around at high speed? Again, trucks are climbing Pike's Peak and other rocky tors.
The worst offender is Nissan. Every Nissan ad depicts drivers as comic book superheros! GMC has nice new trucks slogging through mud and gunk. Toyota heaps trash and scrap iron on a shiny new pickup! Nobody mentions any real world benefits of owning their particular vehicle...except Honda. Oh, by the way, vehicle sales are down dramatically, except for Honda!
It's incredible the way car manufacturers and their ad agencies play follow the leader, where almost every ad looks the same. Has anybody in that industry yet made a connection between Honda's benefit approach to selling cars and Honda's current success?
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October 2005: Recently, Pete Sorenson, one of my colleagues in the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) sent me the following report from his travels to Thailand. Pete's generosity and commitment deserves our recognition and appreciation. You can get an excellent guide to Emergency Preparedness (with links to many resources) in the Articles Section of this web site. The guide was supplied by Pete.
Pete Sorenson reports:
As you may know, I have recently returned from spending two weeks in the Khao Lak Area of Thailand. I was working on a tsunami recovery and reconstruction project called “Wave of Hope.” The NGO’s “Empowering Nations” and “HELP International” (http://www.help-international.org/) sponsor Wave.
To say the least, the trip was eye opening!
And then there was Hurricane Katrina!
I am continuing to work with HELP International on projects outside the US and with the Global Facilitators Service Corps (GFSC)(http://amauta.org/GFSC/) to do psychosocial reconstruction and community building in the wake of Katrina. So my mind is on disaster preparedness and recovery both personally as well as for professionally.
How well are you prepared for a catastrophe?
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September 8, 2005
Hurricane Katrina is impacting one of my clients. Rich Kaeufer, Data Applications Corp. provides desktop support services to the City of Fort Worth. Today, he told me that Fort Worth now provides support services to FEMA in North Texas. Rich and his staff have been receiving several requests every day for more laptops and desktop computer installations as FEMA's staff settles in. The demands carry very short lead times (sometimes as little as 3 hours) to get additional computers delivered and set up. DAC has been meeting and exceeding the demands by working long hours and commandeering used machines from stock. Rich said he feels that a lot of the overtime will not be billable, but he is determined to respond to the demands as a way for DAC to do its part and help the evacuees who are now here in our area. Great work, Rich!
http://www.data-app.com
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February 2007
Global Warming - An Urban Myth?
Here is some interesting information that may help you make up your own mind if our planet is truly in for a major catastrophe caused mainly by the human population or if the matter has been demagogued by certain groups and individuals to further their own agenda. You will find a complete copy of this individual's review, including some revealing charts, in my "Article Library." The review is well worth reading in its entirety.
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Global Warming, CO2, Ocean Levels, Storms, and the Sky is Falling
A non-scientific review by a layman
Carbon is the basic building block for organic compounds that make up life. About 23% of the weight of the human body is carbon. The carbon cycle is also one of the most complex and interesting of the global cycles and involves the sciences of biology, chemistry, oceanography, and geology.
General estimates of the amount of carbon are:
Normal Carbon Exchange
Atmosphere 750 Gigatons (Gt)
Ocean Surface 1,000 Gt
Vegetation, Soil 2,200 Gt
Deep Ocean 38,000 Gt
(1 Gigaton is equal to about 2.2 X 10to12th power pounds)
Each year there is a natural exchange of carbon that occurs as noted above. Human activity adds to the atmospheric carbon load by about 5.5Gt per year. This consists of human breathing, use of fossil fuels, and the production of cement. Therefore, human activity is adding about 0.7% to the atmospheric load each year. The increase in CO2 also leads to increased plant respiration which consumes carbon.
The Carbon Cycle
The carbon cycle is currently the topic of increased interest since the industrial age has added to the atmospheric carbon load, and since the earth has experienced a general warming following the end of the “Little Ice Age” in the mid 19th century.
The first recorded temperature measurements only date from the 18th century; however, scientists have successfully determined within reason the historical temperatures from various core samples taken from both the ocean floor sediment and from Antarctic ice packs. While the temperature of the earth has increased since recorded history, the earth has actually cooled in the past 150,000 years.
GO TO THE ARTICLE LIBRARY FOR FULL TEXT OF THIS REVIEW.
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