A list of statements

Not everyone wearing a Tommy Hilfiger tshirt is selling out.

Men and women are not equal.

Ethnic group A and ethnic group b are not equal.

Big business is not always a bad thing.

There are good television shows.

Not everyone with long, nappy hair smokes pot.

Stereotypes work.

Stereotypes suck.

Two ways to go about your business

The way I see it, there’s two ways to go about your business. Well, there’s significant mixing between these two ways, but one or the other is usually dominant.

The first way is to offer a product/service (usually shitty) that people buy and they don’t ever come back for seconds. How do you make money this way? You nickel and dime the customer to death until they leave screaming. Makes you lots of money fast, but no customer loyalty.

The other way is to offer a product/service that everyone likes. Your customers are happy because you’re not continually jerking them around and they come back for more. And your reputation grows and you get more customers. They’re getting what they want and you’re having lots of fun giving it to them. And you’re proud of what you’re doing. Everyone is happy.

I’m currently in the midst of the first scenario, trying to get to the second. The problem with that is the first scenario is easy to achieve while the second is not.

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

I’m reading this book called “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Pretty good book so far. The basic premise is that the govt. of the land which is now the United States of America functions solely for the benefit of the rich. Which is pretty accurate I guess…I agree with a lot of what Zinn has to say.

Except for the word “solely.” I don’t like that word. Socio-political and socio-economic situations don’t deal in absolutes. Do they?

Not naming names

And someone mentioned that I never name names in this little document. That someone is Nichol McGrane. So much for not naming names.

XML buzz and reality

I’m trying to get my mind around this whole XML thing. There’s the buzz and then there’s the reality and I understand none of it. At first glance, it seemed that XML was going to be a bigger, better version of CSS. Now, it appears that XML deals more with programming than it does with interface.

I also learned that you can access parameters passed within URLs with JavaScript. This opens up some interesting possibilites for 0sil8 I think. Very interesting.