I Drive This Way (NOT)

I took this photo in downtown Washington, D.C. 

Unlike the Google Car, which is purported to drive itself...this one let's the rider sit on top (that's a joke people)!

Doesn't matter if you bend the roof with your butt. 

The view is much better from on high, and it's oh so comfortable on the white aluminum with your pants bottom shining it up. 

Maybe this is a give-a-way for the next carathon or something equally prizeworthy. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

I Drive This Way (NOT)

That 70's Chandelier

So what can I say...I like this crazy pink 70's chandelier. 

It is not traditional, certainly.

But it is colorful, cool, and happy.

It needs the right furniture and wall accessories so as not to look cheap.

Feminine trendy and hippie nostalgia come together to light up the place.

Definitely not for everyone, but it's distinctive and makes you look--and that's the point. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

That 70's Chandelier

Handbag All Alone

I took this photo of this neglected bag in Starbucks today.

Someone just left their handbag on a chair and went off to line up for coffee with their significant others.

I'm not sure they needed to save the table given that the place was fairly empty this morning.

However, it did strike me that this bag was all alone, far from pretty much anyone, and no one was watching it!

Also, not only was this handbag left unattended, it was also completely open at the top, sort of inviting double trouble. 

As you can see, no one else seems to be paying much attention...so if someone wanted, I think this large, full handbag could've been a crime statistic in a moment. 

Trust is nice, but this handbag is crying out for company. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Handbag All Alone

Chocolate Putin and Lemon ISIS

Ok, so Chocolate Putin and Lemon ISIS are a true recipe for global disaster. 

GLOBAL THREATS: With Chocolate Putin, we have the old Cold War back again (or maybe it was never really gone) with nation states facing off and state-of-the-art weapons galore such as thermonuclear ICBMs onshore, offshore, and aloft. And with Lemon ISIS, we have extremists posing a new level of terrorist threats such that we have never seen before with beheadings, crucifixions, and mass killings, and the potential for (very) dirty bombs. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL INTIMIDATION: While Chocolate Putin still denies his troops are even in Ukraine or that they all along wanted to harbor Snowden, Lemon ISIS tells the whole world they seek to establish a caliphate across the Middle East. Either way the psychological impact is to confuse and scare.

OPPRESSION OF THE PEOPLE: Both Chocolate Putin and Lemon ISIS declare that the people (along with their territory) in their sights are really wanting it--Ukrainians, Georgians, the Baltic States and Poland want to be Russian and maybe really are, while ISIS declares that good Muslims really want to live under strict Sharia law. The victims are not victims, they are willing participants in their own takeover. 

RULING BY AUTOCRACY: Chocolate Putin and Lemon ISIS rule by dictatorship with a supreme leader or all powerful president, the people must follow or be put in the gulag or hung by a tree limb. Either way, you will obey, freedoms begone, and the collective will be better off for it. 

The list of ingredients and description for world chaos and terror can go on and on here...but the point is that we are facing enemies that are digging in to inflict serious metabolic harm on us. 

While some may like chocolate Putin or Lemon ISIS, the results of closing our eyes to the calorie count will be catastrophic to a peaceful world order. 

(Source Photo for Lemon ISIS is Andy Blumenthal and for Chocolate Putin is here with attribution to jlib)

Chocolate Putin and Lemon ISIS

Respect NOT Rape

BBC reports that already by age 20, 1 in 10 girls have been raped or secually assaulted. 

That equates to 120 MILLION girls globally. 

Many are then brutally murdered and shamed as we have been reading about, now with all too much frequency, in India for example, with young women being raped, killed, and then hung from trees etc. 

What is wrong with this world???

Women are our mothers, wives, and daughters--they are often amongst the most compassionate and caring of us.

This is how we treat them?

Unfortunately, rape and abuse is also a crime against many young boys. 

It is time to take a serious ethical pause and stop the violence against our children and against other adults. 

The screams and scars of those abused hang in the air as an indictment against those committing the crime as well as those that do nothing to speak out. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Respect NOT Rape

Bicycle Star Of David

So not sure this is the most respectful place to put a Star of David.

But with the traditional colors--white and blue--of the flag of Israel, I think I see the effect they were trying to get here. 

Also, notice the blue and white rims of the wheels and handlebars.

Interesting portrayal on a bicycle--chalk one up for creativity. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Bicycle Star Of David

Who Would Advertise This?

Check out this license plate...for real. 

"LOW IQ" 

Who would pay to advertise this on their car? 

And perhaps more importantly, do they mean that they have a low IQ or perhaps the whole state of Virginia (no offense to all my friends and colleagues there).  

From a technology and creativity standpoint...Silicon Valley or Metro Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley or Metro Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley or Metro Washington D.C.--I get it! ;-)

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Who Would Advertise This?

On The Ropes

This seemed like a funny photo today.

I guess the carpet was too big for the elevator. 

So heave-ho it's off to the ropes we go. 

Not sure where the safety devices are for this thing...are there any?

Maybe another way to think of Ali Baba and the Flying Carpet. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy and Dannielle Blumenthal)

On The Ropes

You're Probably Not A 10

There is a review online for nearly everything...from sources such as Amazon to Yelp, Angie's List, IMDb, and more. 

But what you may not realize is that the knife cuts both ways...you are not only the reviewer, but the subject of reviews.

And if you're not all that...then everyone can know it!

The New York Times has an opinion piece by Delia Ephron about how reports cards are no longer just for kids, and that they are "for the rest of my life...[and] this is going on your permanent record."

From cabbies that won't pick you up because you've been rated a bad fare to your therapist that says you can't stop obsessing, restaurants that complain you refused to pay for the chopped liver, and the department store says you wasted their salesperson's time and then bought online, and even your Rabbi says you haven't been giving enough to the synagogue lately. 

People hear things, post things, and can access their records online...your life is not private, and who you are at least in other peoples opinion is just an easy search away. 

In Tweets, Blogs, on Facebook, and even in companies customer records, you have a personal review and rating waiting for discovery.

Your review might be good, but then again...you are not always at your finest moments and these get captured in databases and on social media.

Data mining or exfiltration of your personal information is your public enemy #1.

Of course, you'd like to think (or wish) that you're brand is a 10, but not everyone loves you that way your mother does.  

Too bad you can't tell them, "If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it"--either way, your gonna hear what people think of you loud and clear. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

You're Probably Not A 10

Flower In Water

I love this photo from today. 

There was a flower floating in the pool.

I couldn't help noticing how unbelievably beautiful it was. 

The white petals, the pink center, and the shaded blue water around it. 

You can even see the ripples in the water immediately around the flower petals. 

This is somehow magical and amazing. 

Thank you G-d for showing this to us on this wonderful day. 

(Source Photo: Andy and Dannielle Blumenthal)

Flower In Water

Erase Me Not

So in the war between good and evil, the battlefield has become a war of words as much as that of guns and bombs. 

If you can't exterminate a people physically, then why not try to do it historically? 

With despots like former Iranian president Ahmadinejad as a exemplar for Holocaust denial, history revisionists now make fair game of rewriting the past, so that it plays their way.

How convenient--if you don't like how something turns out, simply change it in the history books so it never even happened. 

I was surprised recently to see how far this method of verbal warfare has gone, when I happened to look up some information online about the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt and trek to the Promised Land of Israel, only to find that in Wikipedia, this has now been deemed a "Charter Myth."

I wondered how both the thousands year old Jewish Torah and the Christian Old Testament that records my people's hundreds of years of slavery and redemption in the Biblical book of Exodus was now just recorded in the most prominent online encyclopedia on the web as a false belief!

Ah, maybe those pyramids in Giza just showed up one day--and my people didn't build them with straw, mortar, and dead Jewish slave bodies.

Forget about how convenient calling this a myth is to the terrorists who don't want to acknowledge that the Land of Israel was given by G-d to the Jewish people and instead want to believe in Jihad against all "infidels."

My daughter asked me on a recent walk why they hate us? 

And I answered and said, if another people--i.e. the existence of the Jews and their homeland, Israel--is a refutation of their hate-filled "religious" beliefs, then maybe we can understand why they want to get rid of us, the inconvenient evidence.

This same story is playing out in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, where despite incredible destruction to Hamas in Gaza, they are claiming victory on social media. 

The Jewish people are small in numbers, and if millions of religious militants wants to write us off in the history books and on the web, they can certainly try. 

But what Jewish people do that is smarter than trying to erase something bad from history is that we force ourselves to remember it--to learn lessons from it and become better despite what happened. 

That is why we celebrate Passover to remember the Exodus from many thousands of years ago. The same with Yom Hashoah to memorialize the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, and Tisha B'Av to remember the destruction of the two Jewish temples. 

Even we the commandment to blot of the remembrance of the evil that Amalek did in attacking the our infirm and elderly among us in the dessert in Exodus, we remember this annually!

The Jews are a people of the book--we remember, we study, we learn, we grow. 

In the Bible, there are plenty of people that did bad things, but we would never think to rewrite it or any portion of it. It is sacred and most valuable to learn from--the good and the bad. 

While damning the memory of someone bad is not uncommon among all cultures, it is really more a remembrance of what they did bad, rather than forgetting they ever did it. 

It is far more courageous to remember history and learn from it, then try fledglingly to rewrite the parts that you don't like or are inconvenient to you. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Erase Me Not

From Holocaust To Nation State

This is a really beautiful representation of the historical developments of the Jewish nation.

Where the Jewish people went from the fiery depths of the Holocaust to the rise of a modern democratic nation state of Israel. 

We are the same sons and daughters of Israel, but no longer exiled from the Holy Land and paraded like sheep to the slaughter from the hate mongers de jour. 

On the right are represented generations, who with the rise of every crazy demagogue that needed to blame their religious, political, social, and economic problems on a scapegoat, the Jewish people suffered at their bloody hands, discriminatory expropriation and expulsion, tax and torture, rape, pogrom, and slaughter.

On the left are shown the Jews from a free democratic State of Israel who are proud to seek a life of peace and security from persecution and who can chart their own course for their people and be a light unto nations for doing what is right and moral and contributing to the world in every significant development and advance of humankind. 

As the Jews went from slavery to freedom many thousands of years ago with the Exodus from Egypt and settlement of the land of Israel, so too today, we can count on the miraculous transition from exile to promised homeland and from persecution to self-determination. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Eliyokim Cohen)

From Holocaust To Nation State

Talent = f {Intelligence, Energy, Integrity Squared}

I really like this quote from Warren Buffet. 

Three traits to look for in recruiting the best people:

1. Intelligence
2. Energy
3. Integrity

But what good are the first two without the third one?

So Integrity first (or squared for emphasis)...then intelligence plus the energy to use it plentifully and you have yourself an organizational winner!

Related to this, I saw someone on the train today with a tee shirt (from Sweet Green...not sure why this is their slogan) that said:

Passion 

   X

Purpose

This seemed like a good motto to me define the energy (#2) in Buffet's top 3 items for recruiting. 

With a clear intent plus the compelling feeling to achieve it, you got energy to apply.

The resulting function: 

Talent = f {Intelligence, Energy (or Passion x Purpose), Integrity Squared}

Now that's a recruiting formula we can all follow--thank you Mr. Buffet. ;-)

(Source Photo: LinkedIn)

Talent = f {Intelligence, Energy, Integrity Squared}

The Cello And The Horse

So this was a funny picture I took today at Foggy Bottom. 

This guy in a shirt and tie is playing this awesome looking cello...

And sitting next to him is this other guy wearing a horse mask, rolling his head, and staring intently at the people passing by. 

Behind them is a farmers market and in front to the left is someone selling beautiful flowers. 

Overall, just another weird scene in the Nation's capital.

Next up, the guy in the horse head plays the cello and everyone sings along and neighs. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Cello And The Horse

Confronting The New

As the kids are starting a new school year, I thought these welcome messages in chalk on the sidewalk were interesting and hopeful. 

Everyone needs support when they are starting at a new place or doing something they haven't done before. 

Doing something new means opportunity for a fresh beginning and the chance to learn and grow, but it also presents changes and challenges. 

The messages the kids drew help to confront these head on asking the other students:

- What is exciting to them and playing up the positives of the new experience.

- Encouraging people to make new friends to help make the adjustment. 

- Offer emotional support with "Free Hugs" and camaraderie.

At times, we all end up in new situations and places.

We may be looking for discovery, adventure, or a chance to do something different or perhaps change our fortunes.

At other times, we may just get thrown into something and may not even be certain exactly how we got there. 

But either way, it definitely helps when we reach out to others and realize that while we are individuals, we are not alone as we go through it. 

People need each other...some more, some less...but no man is an island. ;-)

(Source Photos: Andy Blumenthal)

Confronting The New

Who Can Resist?

So this food truck in downtown Washington D.C. is plastered with this Mac Attack signage. 

The noodles are sticking up and out of everything (including the "A" in Attack).

And the gooey cheese is dropping off the noodles and letters. 

While I didn't see anyone around the truck buying early in the day, I have a feeling the line forms at lunchtime. 

Really now, who can resist the temptation of a good mac and cheese? ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Who Can Resist?

To The Holy Land

My youngest daughter, Rebecca, left for The Holy Land today.

I am so proud of her courage, love, and determination to visit there and learn more about her Judaism and Israel. 

Rebecca, you are going on an amazing journey, and we are all so happy for you and thinking of you. 

We all wish you nothing but the best time, lots of learning and meaning, new friends, and of course G-d's endless blessings and protection.

May you go in peace and return in peace--all our love. ;-)

(Source Photo: Rebecca Blumenthal)

To The Holy Land

Can You Love A Robot?

Pew Research reports that by 2025, "Robotic sex partners will be commonplace."

While I certainly understand loving (new helpful) technology, actually making love to a machine is taking things a little too far.

Even with great advances in artificial intelligence (AI), a robot can be nothing more than an artificial partner...a humanoid is not a human!

Despite portrayals in the movie Her (2013) of a nerdy writer who falls in love with his life-like operating system, the reality of human and machine love is more a desperate call for companionship and understanding than a real connection of equals--physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. 

While a computer may be programmed to say the things you want to hear, to laugh at your jokes, and even to succumb to your advances, love cannot be programmed or even artificially learned. 

The complex dynamics between two real people locked-in the emotional roller coaster of life with its ups and downs, pulling together and pushing apart, of shared experiences, challenges, and conflicts, can only be met head on with a best friend, soulmate, diametric opposite, and at the same time congruent equal. 

Only another human being can love you and be your love.

A machine, however beautiful designed, charming, and learning of you, can be just a poor surrogate for the sad person screaming out for connection in a large lonely world. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Can You Love A Robot?

Smart Electronic Skin

I liked this concept reported on in BBC Technology about using swarms of sensors to create a type of electronic or "smart skin."

Like nerves in our human skin, multitudes of sensors placed on anything that we want to monitor, could create a sensing/feeling and reporting mechanism for evaluating the health or condition of that thing. 

Rather than wait for something to fail or break, we could actively collect information on changes in "temperature, strain, and movement" and other environmental impacts to analyze and predict any issues and proactively address them with countermeasures, maintenance, or fixes. 

As human beings, we are architected with regular monitoring and self-healing biological systems to protect ourselves from daily dangers around us, we can develop homes, factories, transport, robots, and everything important around us with similar properties to be more durable, last longer and be more productive.  

When we emulate in our own development efforts what G-d has created for the good in the world, we are on the right track. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Smart Electronic Skin

We Need More Rabbit

This was a funny scene down at Foggy Bottom today.

The Nesquik rabbit was giving out chocolate milk bottle samples.

On a warm August day today, this was nice. 

But also, it was refreshing to see a little light-heartedness downtown. 

We all--adults and kids--need more of this--to enjoy life.

It was interesting how we are so going in the opposite direction these days.

Not only with all the bad news around the world...

But even with how hard we have to work just to keep up (24/7) and with a world where our kids are having to work and miss out on what is supposed to be some more or less carefree exploratory years to find themselves. 

Now it's SAT prep, AP classes, internships, volunteer opportunities, and extracurricular activities--all the time. 

In this regard, in the Wall Street Journal today, there was a review of a book called Excellent Sheep.

The book's author explains how "For many students, rising to the absolute top means being consumed by the system...[where they] sacrifice health, relationships, exploration, [and] activities...[those things] essential for developing souls and hearts."

The kids are often working so hard that they are anxious, depressed, and often miserable. 

When getting ahead and becoming wealthy (a priority for 80%!) becomes the prime reason for our young adults' existence, maybe we have missed the boat in terms of finding true meaning and joy in life. 

Hard work and striving for success is a good thing, but worshipping the proverbial "golden calf" is not productive. 

Like the rabbit, I would give a thumbs up to those for whom a more well-balanced life rules the day--where success, meaning, and joy all play an important part, and we can drink some chocolate milk and not take everything so darn serious. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

We Need More Rabbit