Google me this Batman!

Wow! You know you've hit it big when your company name makes it into the dictionary and then gets turned into a verb. This happened twice in 2006 and there need not be any end to the ways Google will impact our lives.

And Google is all about impact! With stock prices again nearing the $500 mark Google has exploded in a mere 12 years. Its history has included several alliances and many conflicts, but it remains the strongest of the search engines garnering, at a peak in 2004, results for 85% of all searching on the Internet.

Try to imagine, if you will, several dozen if not hundreds of large data centres scattered around the world all linked and juggling the searching and advertizing needs of millions upon millions of people. The immense complexity and obvious performance kudos related to this is staggering. Goggle is something we have come to rely on. It never fails us. It always gives us what we are looking for, and often a bit more.

For webmasters, it also has many closely guarded secrets. Many techniques that must be mastered in order to have your web site show up on page 1 of a search result. In many cases, small companies hire graphics designers to create flashy, animated web sites. They end up looking great, but graphic designers are specialists at making stuff look great. Don't ask them to get your web site on page 1 of a Google search. It won't happen.

Luckily, I, and a happy collection of web site owners, have used a tried and true method to build our web sites. This service takes all of the guess work out of doing Search Engine Optimization, and in the process, hosts our sites and even registers the domains for us. The real trick is traffic, and lots of it. How would you like to get 50,000 page views a month, each and every month? My one year old site does! Would that kind of traffic bring you more business?

You can read a little about my experience on my About page. However, if you would like to learn more for yourself about the powerful service we use, have a look at Site Build It. With this facility I just follow the bouncing ball and concentrate on the site content itself. The rest is taken care of. The search engines are tickled, I get reminders as needed, I see my stats and progress for my keywords... the works. This and much, much more is all included, and it's all for a fraction of the value delivered. No joke! And there is a 100% money-back guarantee!

The point is that with the help of Site Build It and its associated services, I can build something that is entrenched in the Google search world. I know how to keep Google happy now, and I can dream of more sites to come.

Google is the search king on our planet, and you can be one of those people that know how to make it find you.

A Dangerous Lack of Tolerance

It never fails to amaze me, and disturb me, how so many people take their existence for granted. They believe they have some divine right to be here and that explains a lot of behaviour. On one hand those who believe themselves to be special, treat others badly, and on the other hand, other special individuals treat people well as either some form of payback, or perhaps because our journey is brief and it is good to help others along the way.

For my purposes, the ignorant ones who treat people well are at least contributing to society. My beef is with the ignorant ones who don’t.

Why are they both ignorant? Many people, in my estimation, are, because much of it has to do with science... knowing stuff. By the way, ignorant is not a bad word. The tolerance of which I speak is not to do with race, religion or sexual preference, instead, it is of forces around us that have manipulated not who, but what we are.

I would like to begin by briefly drawing your attention to the “Peak Oil” crisis. In summary, oil discovery, the identification of the world’s oil deposits, has already peaked with estimates that some 95% have been located. And oil production will soon peak if it hasn’t already. There will be a declining surplus of oil to be refined from here on.

To look at the ramifications of a sudden drop in availability, one can use the analogy of water in the human body. It has been said that our bodies are about 85% water, give or take... the exact number is not the point. The point is that if people lose only about 5% of the water in their bodies, they become severely dehydrated, can go into shock and die. We do not need to lose all of our water before we ‘run out of gas’. This is a very fine line so to speak. A very small tolerance.

When the supply of oil needed to run our industries, power our cars, manufacture our plastics and much more, drops by some, as yet, unknown small percentage, the heavily industrialized nations of the world will go into shock! The flow doesn’t have to be cut off... only diminished slightly. The effects on our well-being, daily lives and social values will be staggering. The attention paid to this tolerance point of oil discovery versus oil production as it approached was terribly lacking.

It follows for me, therefore, that when I see people go about their lives thinking that they are here because they are special, I ponder the many other tolerances we have squeezed through just to exist. We aren’t special, we’re just leftovers. We are the only beings left around that happen to be able to function amid a myriad of narrowing physical tolerances.

First we have temperature. Our tolerable range appears to be about 80 degrees Celsius. Outside of this range we could not survive for very long if at all. The spinning earth’s tilt of about 23.5 degrees as we revolve around the sun, facilitates our seasons and the resulting temperatures. Any shift in this angle would destabilize that temperature range. Is it safe to say then that as long as this outside force has remained constant, man could not survive in any other form. We survive within this range because human life outside it could not be sustained.

Cosmic rays, actually, particles, bombard the earth and ourselves on a continuous basis. They come from the sun and other bodies in the universe. A preponderance of sun spots can have dramatic effects on communications and disrupt satellite transmissions. These particles are said to deteriorate DNA, contributing to some forms of cancer. Somehow our bodies are able to live in a tolerance zone involving a certain amount of cosmic radiation. Perhaps if our atmospheric filter were to change, coincident with enormous sun flares, things might not be so pleasant someday.

The atmosphere, yes, and the ozone layer specifically. Australia already experiences much higher levels of radiation from the sun, both cosmic and UV, due to a thinning of the ozone layer in that part of the world. If another 50 years of polluting the environment and worsening the ozone layer globally were to occur, what might your grandchildren look like, if they made it that far?

And further to the atmosphere, what of the air we breathe? Our lungs take in this invisible life giver comprised of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and a few other trace gases. Our bodies are biased to the oxygen component and do quite well around sea level. Sea level? 21%? Do you still doubt that we are what we are because we couldn’t be anything else?

Wind and storms... we’ve recorded the devastation that can be caused by category 5 hurricanes which are, or were rare, but what if such storms had been around for thousands of years. What would have been different?

Gravitational force and the earth’s rotation, two of my favourites. I don’t say ‘gravity’ because that connotes something falling. In fact, what we know of as ‘weight’ is only related to our position on the earth and the speed of the earth’s rotation. Gravitational force is invisible and exists between any two bodies in space. You and the earth are two such bodies. If the earth wasn’t spinning on its axis at about 25,000 miles per hour, you would be a pancake, weighing several thousand pounds. And if it was spinning faster, you might be 20 feet tall, weighing mere ounces. Of course, either case is no place for a human being to live. It is the spin that pushes our small bodies away from the earth’s centre and gravitational force that pulls it near. The tolerance, the balance between them, facilitates the human form we have now.

As you can tell, I am not about to entertain a debate with a religious fanatic or a creationist. I see a world and a human race through a very different set of glasses. I recognize the mysteries of life and that there is still so much we do not know, and yet I see the human body as not so remarkable. How an ant can carry 20 times its own weight, or the many lenses of a fly’s eye, or the salamander’s ability to re-grow a tail, are fascinating to me. That certain creatures can only survive in the extreme pressures of the deepest oceans, that the moon’s 28 day rotation and its 28 day revolution around the earth match perfectly, permitting us to only ever see one side, now that’s amazing. And best of all, that if the lights go out, the grass is no longer green.

Mankind, as a thinking entity, has a duty to protect itself and the earth. Unfortunately, by ignoring mysteries like these and many more, man fancies himself something of a ruler. Someone special that has the right to do whatever can be conceived of. As much as scientists may have contributed to what ails us, it is the awareness, the knowledge of the world we see and don’t see that could have kept us safe. Unfortunately, much of the damage has already been done, to us... we can’t really hurt the earth. The earth will survive. It will renew itself as is has done repeatedly. It will simply shed us like we rid ourselves of so many pesky mosquitoes.

Gaia refers to the earth as a complex, living organism. This philosophy has been shared by many cultures around the world and over the course of time. The promoters of this belief, or knowledge, have been continually saddened by what man has done to the earth, the giver of life. It is my hope that by being more aware of our existence, of the forces in, around and passing through us, and of the notion of what we are and why, we might do a better job of keeping the world safe for a few more generations.

How to mess up a kid

How can some young parents avoid the bad behaviour their children display in public places? I say ‘avoid’ as opposed to ‘stop’ because such exhibits should never have been enabled in the first place.

Difficult though it may be, picture yourself as a six year old boy accompanying his mother through the aisles of the local grocery store. You reach the cereal aisle and there you see two families. One, has a mom and dad and a little boy of eight, and the other is similar but the boy is nine.

Each boy has seen an attractive cereal box on the shelf. One spies the Choco Crunchies, and the other, the Sugar Nut Stars. By now you should suspect that neither the type of cereal nor the gender of each child is significant. Now, you witness a common, everyday occurrence. The eight and nine year old each play out a scenario in turn, pleading to have his mother buy the cereal.

In one case, mom says ”No, we have lots of other cereal at home that you don’t eat.” More pleading... “Absolutely not; now behave yourself”. “But mom???” “That’s enough, just stop it, your being silly.” “But I’ll eat it, I promise.” “I’ve had enough, go ask your father. If he says it’s OK then fine.”

In the second case, a similar dialogue takes place, but this time dad steps in to deliver some fire and brimstone to quiet the child. Alternatively, he may have grabbed the child by the arm, pulling him over to the side, and threatening with the usual array of punishments. By the way, none of the punishments will come to pass, but you won’t be around to verify that wise omission. Mom bought the cereal anyway.

Now, considering what you, as the six year old, just saw, and given that you had never seen such pleading before, what might you have learned? In the first case, that you can likely get what you want if you beg long enough, also that you can get things from mom and dad independently. In the second case, dad gets angry for all kinds of things, though you never know why, but it still works

Sometime later, if you see your favourite box of tasty Berry Bongos, what might you do? Chances are pretty good that you will try the pleading, whining approach because you saw how effective it was. You had no alternative... nothing to compare to.

Some may say that these scenes don’t happen with their child, and that’s great. Share your experience. And if they don’t occur, do you know why? And please don’t answer “Because we’re good, loving parents.” That just doesn’t cut it.

The rest of you have probably observed theatrics like this elsewhere. The words may be different but the outcomes are usually the same. The notion I would hope to impart upon you is the need to work toward my ‘50-50 Behaviour Rule’.

Stipulating that a young child is virtually a ‘clean slate’, the assumption is that there is a 50-50 chance that your child will behave well, or poorly, given a new stimulus that he or she has not yet encountered. Now as far as I’m concerned, a 50% chance of an otherwise innocent child behaving poorly in any new situation, is far too high.

If what the same child sees is predominantly bad behaviour in any given situation, then the odds only become worse. The bad behaviour will likely get passed on, from one child to another.

Likewise, if bad traits are observed by the child within the family unit, the chances are very high that bad behaviour will be displayed outside of the home as well. The whole idea is to shift the odds in your favour, assuming that good behaviour is what we all strive for. Unfortunately, things don’t always move forward as we had planned. We must continually make conscious efforts to achieve our goals

Law-abiding citizens need special documents in order to buy a house, a car and a gun. We need proof of citizenship to enter a country, good marks to get into university, and a young couple needs to get a license to get married, but neither a license, certificate nor tutorial is needed before having a child. So... because procreation is a natural occurrence, we should let it give rise to an army of innocents, only to have them tainted by blissfully ignorant young couples, their parents, friends and in-laws? Something is seriously wrong with our priorities.

Unless each and every one of us has examined their conscience, studied Spock, discussed their preferences for days on end, and sought outside counseling, we need to find a way to tip the scales, and hopefully guarantee that our children will behave favourably when faced with new situations.

First, a few common sense, critical concepts should be put in place. So let’s now imagine a young couple, Reese and Jamie. They are recently married, have good jobs and are eager to start a family. They will have to carefully evaluate their finances and emotional stability. If either of these are in doubt, delivering a proper environment for an infant may be in jeopardy. Emotional instability will introduce untold stresses for the child, and financial instability can easily lead to emotional instability before long.

Before the marriage took place we can only hope that Reese and Jamie discussed their anticipated personal lifestyle desires. Perhaps Reese was hoping for a lot of world travel for the couple, or maybe Jamie had an unspoken dream of quitting work after they got married. Who knows, maybe the soon-to-be four year old will need to be pulled out of daycare because of contracting frequent colds, and one or the other parent will be forced to quit work to tend to the child. Real life has a way of taking hold.

Ours is not a perfect world, and even lots of money, and planning, does not necessarily make for a happy home life. The least young parents can do is to not treat childbirth as an excuse to shop for a crib or to bond more with grandma and grandpa. Hopefully their child-rearing expertise will go beyond painting the nursery yellow to avoid gender stereotyping. And the RESP, although a nice touch, needs to be backed up by the right amount of gentle nudging toward higher learning.

Going back to the 50-50 Behaviour Rule; think now of Reese and Jamie’s pre-schooler, Tyler, as a dry sponge. Tyler will absorb all of the stimuli and reactions, liquid, in the vicinity, good or bad. As parents, there are two simple jobs they need to perform in this regard. First is to keep the bad liquid away, whatever is within their control, but without obsessing. Second is to pour lots of good liquid into the area so Tyler can absorb more good than bad. Pass beyond that 50% barrier and keep pouring. Fill up that sponge with the good, remembering not to obsess.

What happens once a sponge is saturated? It can absorb no more. Instead, for every new drop added, another is lost. Once Tyler has absorbed a huge array of possible responses for countless untold stimuli, this very important job will be complete. Parental input will show diminishing returns from that moment onward.

The good stuff is more than cuddles, the proper food, medical care and a safe place to sleep. It is talking, guiding, questioning, answering, testing and validating, with Tyler, and all with an eye toward the future. And, as much as it’s fun and easy to speak to Tyler at Tyler’s age level, the point is to push ahead a year, two or even three. Tyler will be absorbing faster than Reese and Jamie can control, faster than they can imagine. Even if Tyler can’t understand it today... the message, the intent and the attention will be absorbed. The trick is for Reese and Jamie to provide the correct content and be the ever-present positive influences in Tyler’s face.

Eliminating the bad influences can be just as difficult. Parents need to be constantly vigilant, and ready to react to each situation in a way that will promote some future benefit. Saying ‘No’ to merely exact control is counter-productive, television is not a babysitter and grandma may not be the perfect substitute. The best intentions in the world can spoil a child for life. And merely reacting to a child, without a purpose in mind, is fruitless.

When we were kids, it was the small events that molded our memories. Think back to when you were young and what you remember about interactions with your parents. Were they major events, wrapped in ribbon and smiles, or so grievous as to be traumatic? It is more likely that there were many small encounters, much like a stroll down a grocery aisle. Our mission is to provide many small, mentoring events and not think the family vacation will be the panacea.

This busy world is moving at an ever-increasing pace. When you grow up with the latest invention, it becomes common place; yet we will all experience the same difficulty dealing with coming innovations that our parents had with MP3s and the Internet. Every generation is over-confident that they know what they are doing with their children. That has always been the case, but will the current batch of new parents be able to deal with a faster rate of technological and societal change, as well as children who will surely reach saturation even quicker?

A Good Ice Breaker

Some among us are bold, brash and might even behave like the proverbial bull in a china shop when it comes to meeting new people. Others, left to their own, would sooner stay at home and never leave. For them, strangers can hurt you. Thankfully, there are plenty of citizens that fit between these two extremes.

For the moment, I’d like to discuss the shy ones, those who do get around, but find it a little unnerving to approach someone for the first time in an effort to make a new connection. The purpose may be to ask a favour of a neighbour, to complain about service in some establishment or perhaps... reliving that painful high school memory... to approach the one you admired from afar to ask for a dance. If this sounds a bit like you, you may appreciate a good ice breaker.

I fall well short of being one of the bold and the beautiful, but certainly a little above the shy introvert. I will do what it takes to make that call, approach that store manager, stand up for my rights or chat it up at a garage sale. It is of no surprise, of course, that when out of doors and among strangers, a common interest or simple distraction can immediately break the foreboding chill. It allows eyes to meet and a small grin to sneak out through the frown.

This week I had the fortunate need to meet with Donna and Paul of Forster’s Book Garden on Queen St. South in Bolton. I had some non-consumer questions to ask them and was concerned as to my approach. When I entered the establishment, I first saw Donna and her sister, and later, Paul, going about their business, and quite happily at that. Suddenly, I was being approached by a large caretaker of the canine variety, and an instant later, noticed an even larger dog. Both were extremely friendly and no threat at all. As our discussion ensued, the dogs simply blended into the background.

Now, I, being a dog lover and owner, had no problem with this and no one should. The point of the encounter though, is that by addressing the dog situation... the distraction... the approach issue that concerned me earlier, simply evaporated. The common thread, the interjection of some unexpected event, the diversion of focus, contributed to an easier exchange among strangers.

I made use of a similar distraction idea while hosting a seminar years ago. I was to be the first one to address a group of sales executives... at 9:00am. I wanted to relax the mood and shake things up... wake things up. Rather than present some hastily contrived joke that could flop, I asked a pertinent question that required a show of hands. And, while those hands were up, posed a second question, requiring the alternate hand to be raised. Yes, you would be puzzled too... I extended that into a 30 second morning stretch. A few sideways glances and chuckles later and I had their full attention.

A distraction, just like Donna’s dogs, made my task easier.

I once had an employer that routinely brought his Dachshund into the office. It seemed strange at first, but it quickly became normal for most of the staff. One day a contract worker was in the office, arguing with the boss. As it happens, the dog took offense to the visitor and the boss terminated the relationship on the spot, citing that the dog didn’t approve of the contractor. Now that is no reason for bringing your dog to work, but there can be advantages. For the staff at least, the dog was a barometer of tension and a release valve for stress.

In looking at various employment job boards, I have noticed several employers specifying that one of the perks about the job is to be ‘working in a dog friendly environment’. Who knows, perhaps every employee is also responsible for poop-and-scoop duty. In any case, there appears to be a possible trend emerging that does confirm what I have heard from medical practitioners... that petting a dog and talking to it as we often do to an infant, can lower blood pressure and alleviate stress. To what degree I cannot say, but I certainly can attest to the calming effects for myself.

Now I don’t know much about cats, and frankly they’re not for me, so I apologize if some of my comments may sound a little ruff, but suffice to say that since moving here in 2006, I have noticed Caledon or, in my case, Bolton, to certainly be Pet Proud but Downright Dog Devoted. This small town has plenty of pet stores and groomers to go around. Not a bad thing, happy to see it. We love our dogs.

And dogs can be useful. They can, supposedly, help reduce blood pressure, reduce stress, and enable strangers to break the ice. A recent study I read indicated that toddlers that have grown up in a home which included a dog, suffer from fewer ailments and allergies than those that don’t. Makes some sense since, as infants, the new world travelers are only building up their immune systems. It’s the sterilization of our kids’ environments that retard their ability to fend off disease in later years.

As for other worthwhile attributes. Have you ever heard of a drug cat or guard cat? How about an explosives sniffing cat or mercury sniffing cat. As far as I know, there are none, but there are... such dogs. And what would your sight challenged uncle do with a seeing-eye cat? Could a cat pull a sled? Do you think one could traverse a mountain slope to locate a snow-covered, downed skier. I think not. And lastly, would you want anything but a strong, devoted dog to protect your family if the need arose?

For some of us, just having to get out to walk the dog is a good thing. Aside from all of these actions that, as far as I know, cats, budgies and fish don’t do, dogs also warn us when someone is coming to the door, give us the best greeting when we arrive home and provide us with unconditional love.

Yes, I think dogs are great, and everyone should care about their respective pets, moreover, I am pleased to see ‘working dogs’ allowed on buses and in grocery stores, to see an increasing number of leash-free parks and to see dogs brought into seniors’ homes for companionship.

To be able to rely on the fortunate distraction that some dogs can provide in a place of business or on the street, is an appealing, trendy idea. That they can enable perfect strangers to convert an awkward, foreign instance into an affable, bonding experience is truly remarkable. I sincerely hope that dogs, specifically, are given even more respect as the devoted companions they are, and that their presence is not something to be feared, as often happens in parts of the GTA.

Admittedly, many other mammals deserve respect for some common attributes, but if you think that our canine friends aren’t just a little bit better, than I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.