Do Daredevils Deserve Our Rescue Dollars?

Keith Hammonds at the Fast Company blog brought up a subject that I’ve thought about before but was too wimpy to say publicly. The basic question is: When people do daredevil stunts and then are in need of rescue, should tax dollars that you and me pay be used to rescue them.

Hammonds uses the examples of Ken Barnes, whose boat was destroyed while attempting to sail around the world, and the climbers who died climbing Mt. Hood last month. It was actually the Mt. Hood incident that got me thinking, after I saw a picture in the paper of a small group of would-be rescuers who were getting ready to start scaling the mountain in search of the climbers. Was it fair to spend the money and potentially put rescuers in dangers to save people who were engaged in a highly risky behavior for sport?

I remember long ago in grade school we had a question put to us as to whether the people who lived near Mt. St. Helen’s should be forced to evacuate when it was erupting. I can’t really remember the point of the question, but my answer was no—if they want to stay they can. The point being that it’s their choice to suffer the consequences of that risky decision. The teacher didn’t like my answer. But I guess I still feel that way. If people want to engage in risky behaviors, that’s up to them. But if they want help when things go wrong, they should set up a lifeline before they do their stuff instead of calling on public servants to bail them out when things go bad.

Of course it’s hard to draw the line between what is a risky behavior and what is not, and of course no one wants to be heartless when someone is in danger, regardless of the fact that the person may have purposely put himself/herself in that position. But since several states have charge-for-rescue laws on the books, it’s obvious that some governments are willing to try to draw the distinctions.

It’s a disturbing question.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

Barcelona!

Took advantage of the holidays to slip into the Barcelona! exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art before it ends this Sunday. The exhibit features the work of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Antoni Gaudi and Salvador Dali, as well as their contemporaries in the Barcelona scene.

Here are a few of the highlight pieces. My wife and I spent part of our honeymoon in Barcelona in 1995 and that’s where I first learned about Antoni Gaudi. He was crazy! The exhibit features some of his wacky furniture and also info on his never-ending project the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi’s been dead 80 years and they’re still building this thing. They were building it when I was there 10+ years ago and they’re going to be building it for 25 more years according to the exhibit info.

Other highlights of the exhibit for me included Dali’s Soft Construction With Boiled Beans, Picasso’s Blind Man’s Meal, and a Miro once owned by a poor Ernest Hemingway (he was obsessed with those Spaniards you know).

We were a bit rushed as there was high demand and we just squeezed in with the last group of the day but it was still a worthwhile visit.

If you’re in New York or will be, the Barcelona! exhibit hits the Metropolitan Museum of Art March 5 through June 3 of this year.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

I Do So Love Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs!

About 10 years ago I wrote a manual of some sort for GE Lighting. I learned two things from that project. First, I first found out that they refer to light bulbs as “lamps”. In addition to this revelation, I was first introduced to the compact fluorescent bulb (lamp, to them). I remember I was fascinated by its curlicue shape and the fact that you could put one in and it would last years and years. It was more expensive than regular light bulbs, but, as they always do in cases such as this, they’d created an elaborate chart showing how it actually saved money in the long run. (I believe I recreated this chart in the manual.)

Despte my fascination, I never ponied up for one, mostly because I was always moving and I knew the compact fluorescent bulb (lamp, dammit!) was not going to reward me for my patience. Whoever took the apartment after me would be the lucky duck.

As noted by Seth Godin in his ode to the compact fluorescent, these days the bulbs (lamps) are a lot cheaper but they still last a long long time. And I’ve slowly adopted them into my life. The light they give off feels brighter to me and I of course change fewer light bulbs.

Where the fewer bulbs thing comes in handy is for those places where I have to stand on a chair to change a bulb. My house has a few of these, and each one has a heavyish, bowl-shaped cover over the bulb. When changing them I have to unscrew the little brass holder while simultaneously holding that big bowl cover up so it doesn’t crash down on my head. All of this makes my arms tired. Plus I’m standing on a chair the whole time, so I’m always feeling a little shaky.

In short, it’s a pain in the ass. So somewhere along the way I wised up and got the compact fluorescent bulbs and now I don’t have to climb up there so often.

The side benefit to them is that they are more environmentally-friendly, in that they consume less energy. Actually that’s a big benefit to me, but if you don’t give a hoot about global warming (it’s another balmy 50+ degree January day in Cleveland today!), the cost benefit and the decreased hassle will make you a happy camper.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

The Youngest Grocer in America

I like this story of a 17-year-old in a small Minnesota town who bought his local grocery store after it had shut down. His voice and his wise-beyond-his-years attitude are what make it special.

I Call B.S.: Jetrosexuals

The Fast Company blog has a “report” on so-called jetrosexuals who travel worldwide in search of fashion bargains, for example hopping cheap flights to Asia to get cheap knockoffs made of high-end brand fashions, then quickly hopping back on a plane home.

The blog post calls this a trend yet offers not one example of an actual person that does this.  I don’t believe this is a trend at all.

Almost every other reference I can find to the term jetrosexual is associated with a Virgin Airways promotional campaign that defines jetrosexuals loosely by a set of “commandments” that define them as savvy world travelers.  Hopping off a plan to buy a cheap Marc Jacobs suit is not mentioned anywhere in association with this.

I call B.S. on Fast Company. Am I right?

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

The Horror of Once-In-A-Lifetime Purchases

Seth Godin hit on an interesting topic this week:

Many businesses cater to individuals and corporations that are making a once in a lifetime purchase. Whether it’s a DJ for your kids sweet 16 or a company that pours tar on the roof of your factory, it’s unlikely you’re an expert when you go to buy the product or service.

Godin’s post is about what these types of businesses can do to make customers feel more confident in them, as it is often difficult for the customers to gauge beforehand whether the company is good, unless of course they’ve gotten a referral from a trusted friend/relative.

An example that quickly comes to mind for me is moving companies.

The first time I made a major move from one metropolitan area to the next, I had no good way to judge beforehand what company to use, as most people I knew who’d used movers hated theirs and had no recommendation. I ended up having a horrible experience, as these movers carried half my family’s possessions around in a humongous truck for a week without any guarantee of when or if we’d see our things again, just repeated lying reassurances that our stuff was showing up “tomorrow”. When our things showed up, numerous pieces of furniture were handled roughly and had chips or pieces broken off. Our complaints to the moving company went unheeded and there was just enough damage to be infuriating but not enough to bother suing.

It’s a bad feeling to need something and be totally at the mercy of someone else, especially when you had no trust in that someone else to begin with.

There is a huge opportunity for some moving company to completely dominate that market if it could gain a reputation as a trustworthy, decently-priced operation. But no one does.

Godin:

Most of all, I think it’s essential to acknowledge internally that your job is to turn naive, fearful new prospects into confident spreaders of word of mouth.

Exactly. If I’m in uncharted waters and your company can hold my hand, reassure me that it will all be OK, and then deliver on that promise, you won’t be able to shut me up in my zeal to tell others how good you are. In a world full of letdowns, those who deliver on their promises are worth my time to evangelize.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

StumbleUpon Messing with My WordPress

I’ve been reading about StumbleUpon here and there, so I finally decided to give it a try. If you don’t know, you download a StumbleUpon toolbar and StumbleUpon shows you sites that are rated particularly highly by its member community for the topic areas that you’re interested in. You can also rate a thumbs up to the ones that you like by pressing a button on the toolbar.

It works really well in terms of showing you cool sites. There were only a few clunkers while I was using it, and I planned to use it again.

The problem is, I noticed the last couple days that when I was using WordPress, I was having a very hard time getting things to work correctly when I was doing cutting and pasting of URLs and such for my Bessed topic entries. For example, I would copy a URL so I could hyperlink it, but when I got back to WordPress and tried to paste, that option would be unavailable to me. Or I would go into the HTML option in WordPress to move some stuff around, and the option to “cut” would be a no-go. It was annoying as all hell, and I finally figured out that the problem had started when I downloaded the StumbleUpon toolbar. So I uninstalled it. Problem solved, everything worked fine again.

I don’t know if it was affecting the cut and paste in any other software like Word or anything, because I never checked. But it was messing with my WordPress for sure.

I’m using Firefox so I don’t know if this happens in any other browsers, but I thought I’d throw it out there to help anyone else that might come across this problem, and maybe to help StumbleUpon diagnose it, too. They have a neat service, but I won’t be using it now.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.

15 Best TV Shows of All Time

I had better things to do tonight but Seth Godin convinced me to do a Squidoo page. Here it is:

Fifteen Best TV Shows of All Time

Maybe I should have said Bessed.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

A Polish Dish

I am half Polish. Dish Network thinks I’m, like, totally Polish:

It would easy to make fun of Dish Network for having sent me this, as calling myself “Polish” is only a reference to distant ancestors who actually spent time in Poland. The only Polish word I know is “dupa”. As in “You bet your dupa I’m Polish!”

But I don’t want to make fun of the marketing goof. Instead, I think it’s awesome. I know a lot of companies are targeting the Hispanic market with Spanish-language marketing pieces, but I had absolutely no idea that companies were targeting the Poles. What other languages is Dish Network doing this in? Russian? Hungarian? Kazakhstanian? (Don’t know if that’s a language, just a nod to Borat.)

Anyway, a toast to Dish Network for targeting my people. God knows satellite TV should be on the top of their lists as they embark on their American adventure.

Nostrovia!

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Veddy Interesting

A few things that I liked today…

For as great as Southwest can be, do they need to be so obvious about ranking passengers based on their punctuality?

Via Seth Godin, what would it look like if you put marbles in a blender?

It appears the See Clearly Method is not going to be the answer to my prayers.

Following on my earlier post, Judy’s Book is getting hammered by some of its members. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be angry unless they really cared.

e-mail me: adam@bessed.com

Adam Jusko is founder and CEO of Bessed, a Web site promising “search without spam”, thanks to human-edited search results and ongoing visitor feedback. Do a search, offer your comments, submit your site–help create the “bessed” search site in the world.