another one bites the dust.

Is it me or is everyone in the world getting married? it’s like marriage is the new pandemic and divorce is the new vaccine. i know i’m being ridiculous but i decided to amuse myself and share a few statistics on marriage below. and before you feel hurt/upset/offended/angry, i really am happy for you.

1. DC had the lowest rate of divorce in the country in 2004. it must be the water.

2. Married women are less depressed than single women while married men have more sex than single men. fair comparison?

3. Unmarried women have a 50% higher mortality rate than married women while single men 250% higher than married men. Hmmm.

4. 20% of first-marriage divorces now occur within five years of getting married. yup, realize your mistakes early on.

5. Men supposedly benefit more than women in marriage. They tend to make more money and have sex more often. Women – not so much. They often suffer a wage loss, particularly after children, and tend to be burdened with more housework. Plus, their sexual satisfaction is not really altered by their marital status. I’m quoting the NYT here..

6. Some research argues that those who live together before marriage have higher divorce rates, are more likely to be incompatible and sexually disloyal and are generally less happy than married couples.

Okay, I’m done. Interesting stuff…

please make this.

and then share with me. chocolate salted caramel cupcakes.

see, the thing is, i am a cupcake fanatic. most seriously so. and everytime someone has done me wrong, a cupcake can and will heal the world. in this instance, i suggest you mix one part chocolate, one part sincerity and two parts alcohol and you’ve got yourself an edible band aid.

oh don’t forget.

so i’ve been sitting on this little secret website for some time and thought i should share it with you’ll. voted in 2007 as one of Time Magazine’s top 50 websites, ohdontforget.com is this incredibly efficient way to send yourself (or others) free text messages in the future that remind/tell/demand you to do something. if you need to remember to pick something up before you head home from work on friday, send yourself a message on monday that is scheduled to arrive on friday at 4:30pm. it’s easy, free, ad-less, and useful. why wouldn’t you use it?

four day work weeks. why not?

yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it before but this time, you should really listen. Scientific American recently came out with an article that talks about the environmental and economical impacts of the four day work week on our lives. And yeah, when you first think about it – Fridays are the days I don’t want to give up. The days where the pace slows down, the coffee seems unnecessary, and the insanity has begun to rest. So take that feeling, apply it to Thursday, and you have a whole new day of life to live and contribute outside of the work we do. But don’t take my word for it, hear what SA has to say:

The economic downturn started the trend, as companies looked to avoid laying off employees… Firms soon realized that when they closed on Fridays they could save money without having to reduce weekly hours. Indeed… the idea of a four-day, 40-hour workweek “has been out there for quite some time as a response to environmental issues, commuting pressures, as well as work-family balance.”

Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday’s midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million.

human-centered design

I know everyone often knows and loves IDEO but have you seen this? for you budding (and already budded) social entrepreneurs out there, check out this tool kit meant to help you think through design here.

The Human Centered Design (HCD) Toolkit was developed with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help organizations working in the global south better understand the needs of their customers and design innovative solutions for and with their constituents. The HCD Toolkit is a codification of the IDEO process and is specially-designed for NGOs and social enterprises working with communities of need in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

fighting anonimity.

argggghhhh it just deleted my entire post. ok here’s is the second try:

I wanted to share with you the speech Michael Wesch gave at the Personal Democracy Forum this year about how the machine is changing the way we interact and exist socially. One of his most interesting points is that we are all fighting the culture of anonymity that exists today – this feeling that we are each one in the masses of millions and that our urge to fight that feeling and become a person with a voice is significant. His theory is that the people with a voice are people on TV – those who can command the audiences of the world and who’s ideas are listened to. He also argues that our generation has turned into a group of highly confident and self focused people. Some would argue that this is a form of narcissism – a generation that has been made to believe that companies and media will fight over the right to serve us and grant us our many wishes. Other theories suggest that this narcissism, and the focus on our self, is a mechanism to find identity and recognition in a society that does not easily provide this for us.  In this individualistic quest, we are experiencing two phenomenons: 1. A sense of disengagement from civil participation since the focus has become about us and 2. A fragmentation of our interests and power into smaller special interest groups that continue to argue and fight with each other while making little substantive progress. All of these shifts lead us to the world we live in today – where our voices are lost in the masses, our focus is too focused and our identities are struggling to find a place of their own. To learn more about Michael’s perspective, check out the video here.

vacay ends!

i am back. excuse the lack of postings on vacation, but I should resume my normal schedule should work calm down soon…

fraizh. ode to mama.

one of my good friends lost his mom recently and wrote this song for her. i think he’s grown tremendously in his career as a musician and i wanted to share the song he wrote and recorded for her. check out 3 degree of separation.

facebook has gone public.

make sure that you’re prepared. Facebook is slowly turning all their content (ie. the conversations we have within the FB walls) public. This means, that status update I saw the other day telling me how much you hate your job is now searchable by your boss. it horrifies me when companies so this without really consulting you – and facebook has a history for being sneaky. so definitely make sure you have the correct privacy functions up on your profile.

to read more about the change, see the NYT article.

open ended question.

do you guys have ideas on how to promote my DMV animal adoption website (Crazy Goose Blog). I have a few animals up that I would love to help get adopted but I’m having trouble with my ratings. I’m considering creating some marketing collateral for it but I’m wondering if any of you’ll have better ideas… SHARE!