Blog Archives

Happy Monday!

Tomorrow is the day…

This presidential election has been unusually consumed and driven by negativity and dire forecasts for our future. While it’s true that every election (national, state and local) is competitive and has the potential to get heated, we must figure out ways to overcome the divisiveness by proposing an appealingly positive vision. The reassuring saving grace to remember is that the future isn’t predetermined and, if people are able to bottle their individual energy and ideas into a force for the better, then one of those moments that redefine sciety can happen.

The greatest part of America isn’t the president, but the American people. And if our leaders remember this eternal truth, then our future can be the best of what we the people envision.

For the time between now and election day tomorrow, here’s a reminder of the wonder and happiness that is our world when two completely different beings come together for a moment of sheer joy.

A baby penguin and a zoologist for the win.

Have an Inspired Week!

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Four Years Later & I’m Still Looking to the Horizon

Exactly 1/10th of a score and two years ago (4 years total), I started Jimmy’s Daily Planet.

Paying homage to the greatest (albeit fictional) newspaper of all-time, The Daily Planet, this blog was founded on my love of my favorite superhero and disguised human of all-time: Superman and Clark Kent. The scene from Richard Donner’s 1978 classic Superman that showed us Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent walk through the bullpen of The Daily Planet for the first time was the moment I knew I wanted to be a journalist. The chaos, palpable energy and big city, skyscraper setting flew from the screen and landed directly into my impressionable imagination.

These few minutes showing reporters preparing to get the scoop, watching exciting individual and group dynamics (papers scattered, people typing, talking and moving) and hearing creative storytelling pitches is arguably my favorite journalistic hook.

I wrote my first blog post (Eight Years Later & We Look to the Horizon) about what the next Facebook would be in the future. The “next big thing”/new dominant social platform hasn’t arrived yet to eclipse Mark Zuckerberg’s social network from his days at Harvard.

This revelation will be realized, it just hasn’t happened quite yet.

One of the questions in blog #1 was whether or not we are an app generation? That answer has not conclusively been determined since July 13, 2012, but people seem to be embracing a hybrid. This translates to using popular sites and social media platforms (ie-Facebook) while simultaneously choosing a diverse selection of acutely personalized social media apps.

The best answer for July 13, 2016 is that we are a splintered population (or customer base) concerning our use of social media and digital applications (sorry, apps). Individualism rules.

What’s next?

That’s still the question. Not the question that Shakespeare wrote for his brilliant play “Hamlet.” Although, in a way, it sort of is. “To be, or not to be – that is the question.” Who will we be in the near future? How will someone revamp our already complex and extensive communicative grid? How will we change as a result? This very idea is thrilling to cogitate because, as Americans, we know a newfangled innovation will collide with destiny. And destiny is a very good friend with this country.

“I know something big and new is coming because that is the American tradition of big sky-big idea dreamers. Until then, start drawing on your dorm room window and think big, plain and simple.”

That’s the final paragraph of my first blog post on Jimmy’s Daily Planet. I remember writing that four years ago and I still believe it’s true today, whatever the wildly crazy idea or dream may be.

Plain and simple.

A Funny Thing Happened with Pluto

how-far-is-pluto

(CBC News/NASA)

While researchers have no direct evidence of the object, they did see strange perturbations in the orbits of objects deep in the Kuiper Belt — the group of icy bodies in Pluto’s part of space — that seem to suggest the existence of a planet one to 10 times more massive than Earth that orbits the sun every 10,000 to 20,000 years.
–Miriam Kramer, “How to name the possible ninth planet in our solar system,” Mashable

This deep-space discovery/observation is an exciting revelation. The universe continues to surprise us in ways that reinvigorate our sense of exploration. Looking up at the stars at night, flickering at distances that seem deceptively close is an experience in itself. To read today that, potentially, a ninth planet in our solar system may be been spotted behind the curtain of space should make anyone’s mind expand to new horizons.

In a cool way, this discovery validates the incredible space journey depicted in the space operatic epic Interstellar from 2014. Without revealing any spoilers, one of the planets they visit (as seen in the trailer) is covered in ice with relentlessly freezing temperatures. And, as mentioned in the quote above, the potential new planet would likely have similar conditions. Not even opening the debate to whether or not astronauts could one day step foot on this planet-like discovery, one of the important first questions to ask is how long would it take to travel through space to Pluto and into its orbit?

The most advanced propulsion systems we have today [2015] require 10 to 15 years to deliver a 1.6-kilogram (3.5 lbs.) spacecraft into Pluto orbit.
–Tim DeBenedictis, “What Would It Take to Send People to Pluto?” Space.com

Whether or not we this mysterious planet-like mirror of Earth is deemed a planet, the fact that this is a scientific debate and that manned missions to Mars and Pluto are being considered with various scenarios and logistics spells an ambitious future for humans.

Or a doomed future for the people of Earth.

Hopefully, Interstellar isn’t entirely accurate in this regard.

Also, Goofy could work as a name for this prospective planet hanging around Pluto.

Why not have a sense of humor about this that’s literally out of this world?

The Only Seemingly Censored Four-Letter Word Today

David Remnick, the editor at The New Yorker, exhausted not only his literary endurance, but also the patience, interest and eye strength of any casual reader with his 16,648-word journey into the mind of President Obama five years into his presidency (plus select members of his team). There were details of fundraising in posh mansions, but nothing new. There was no new or even worthwhile revelation in the least.

As George Will stated recently, “It was interestingly uninteresting.”

And again, the article is nearly 17,000 words.

Regardless of the subject, that’s a lot of words for anything or anyone that is squeezed into the precious and costly space of a printed magazine in the digital era. However, what’s more startling in the earliest weeks of 2014 is that after days of conversations, inquiries and reflection, the word “jobs” is cited just three times in the article, “Going the Distance: On and off the road with Barack Obama.”

3 times.

Yes, it’s true.

The word that causes an incurable anxiety and is devastatingly on repeat in the minds of millions of struggling and dejected Americans 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for several years now, was almost omitted completely from an interview with the person who has the greatest influence in the country on this essential issue.

There is a single word for this revelation: unbelievable.

The one issue that unites even the most partisan of talkers, debaters and citizens in the United States as the most critically important problem to resolve immediately is nonexistent to the Pulitzer Prize-winning interviewer and President of the United States.

The context for the three mentions of the word “jobs” were this:

  • A brief recap of Jeff Tiller and his ascension to working for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign to working in the Obama White House
  • A description of John Podesta getting people jobs in the Clinton Administration during the transition period for “friends of Bill”
  • Revealing that the reason for visiting DreamWorks for a fundraiser was because the company was creating jobs in Southern California

While depressing, it’s also not surprising that the word, concept and idea of “jobs” completely confuses and frustrates this president. Five years have passed with no visionary or practical solutions. We all remember the “you didn’t build that” statement from a campaign speech in 2012.

The economy cannot be fixed (and hasn’t) by reading a speech that’s been entered into a teleprompter.

But maybe the disenchanted public will get lucky and see him pivot for a day or two in the form of a series of televised non-serious speeches with non-serious solutions.

For anybody who watches basketball, a player that pivots to no end usually shows the crowd not only his lack of knowing what to do, but also how not to play and win the game.

This post is not 16,648 words, but it wouldn’t take that long to realize that jobs (along with trust) are the top priority for the United States of America right now at this precise moment in history.

16,600+ words about President Obama? Okay…

16,600+ words that ultimately reveals a new (yet simple), insightful and opportunity-centric jobs plan for hard-working Americans and dreamers alike that would create quality 21st century jobs for the stressed-out and struggling, but unrelentingly determined and optimistic American people?

And the delusional wait progresses with absolutely no answer on the horizon…

However, the latter would have at least produced an interesting article to read that just might have actually been worth a damn.