Vitamins R Good 4 U

I like this advertisement for Vitamin Water. 

It is on the side of a dispensing machine. 

The colors, the flavors, the energy brands...all very appealing. 

Their "Zero" drink is especially good for the calorie conscious of us. 

My desk draw is full of these...chug a lug. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Vitamins R Good 4 U

Got Flashed

Crazy day...true story.

I was going out to lunch in Washington D.C. today minding my own business...

When two young women were coming down the block in the opposite direction.

As they got closer, they started to giggle...

And then all of a sudden, at point blank range, one of them lifts up her skirt.

Both of them crack up and run off. 

I am not often left speechless, but this was definitely a new one on me. 

Let's just say, my wife told me that I have some "splaining" to do this evening! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Got Flashed

9/11 Remembrance

"Never Forget Project" - 13 years after the tragic events of 9/11.

2,977 American flags at local university in Washington, D.C. 

Question: With all the weighty terror threats aroud the world, including the latest and largest from ISIS--is never forgetting the same as doing everything possible to make sure it doesn't happen again?  

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

9/11 Remembrance

Okay For A Drive By

So, having grown up in New York, I've definitely heard of a drive by shooting, but never a "drive by meeting". 

Until a colleague asked me, "Okay for a drive by?"

A little taken aback, but I was available (and figured not in any imminent danger by his type of "drive by"), so I agreed to meet for a few minutes. 

The meeting was quick, like a car whizzing by, but we discussed what was needed and accomplished the immediate goal. 

Personally, I prefer when someone is driving the meeting, rather than having a drive by meeting, but we all need to be agile to whatever the day brings. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Okay For A Drive By

G-d, Thinking Of You

I saw this on the side of a car and liked it--simple and to the point:

"Praise G-d"

My father used to tell me that "There are no atheists in a foxhole"--basically every one shits their pants when that tank rolls overhead.

There is a tendency to turn to G-d when we feel we need him--when times are bad--but then sort of forget about him when things are okay again, and we feel like we have it all under control.

Even when things are bleak, it can be easy to lose faith in anger and despair. 

So challenge #1 is to remember him in good times and bad--we are in his hands, always. 

In terms of how we praise G-d?

Some do it in prayer, others in deed.

That leads to challenge #2--to speak and act with consistency and sincerity. ;-) 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

G-d, Thinking Of You

Head Ripped

Took this photo today in Washington, D.C.

Someone drew this funny face on a USPS Priority Postal Sticker. 

But the top was ripped off...ouch!

And so it ends up looking like he's screaming that somebody ripped off/open the top of his peabrain head. 

I love a little creativity...where's my fix? ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Head Ripped

Ebola On The Move

Watching this video of an ebola patient escaping quarantine and the panic in Liberia, it is hard not to be concerned about it coming here. 

Additionally, with a third American infected with Ebola overseas coming back home for treatment, and the CDC retesting a Miami patient negative for Ebola after having shown some symptoms, the stakes seem to be going up with this deadly disease. 

Just last Friday, GovExec reported that Ebola has a 18% chance of reaching the U.S. in September.

Moreover, if the outbreak is not contained the risk of it coming here is said to "increase consistently."

My daughter asked me the other day why commercial flights to/from the infected countries (not including aid delvieries) have not been cut off for now to help prevent the spread of the disease and save lives.

Unfortunately, I did not have a good answer to this, except that certainly there are economic and social implications to those countries in the short-term, but what are the potential costs to countless other global citizens if we do not do everything we can to adequately contain this outbreak?  

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Ebola On The Move

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}