The Need for Tolerance

I found this video clip by the Chairman of the Nestle Corp., a multi-national Swiss based corporation, quite interesting. He starts out offering a bit of generic career advice, but then tackles the issue of tolerance in this age of increasing globalization.

I found his advice on this subject to be quite insightful. We are "rubbing shoulders" with unfamiliar cultures far more often in our major cities. Yet, our understanding of those cultures is often tainted by ignorance and negative attitudes that pervade our popular culture. Author Charles Caleb Colton (1780?-1832) pointed out: “We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.”

We desperately need greater tolerance and respect as our world grows smaller and more diverse. Intolerance is a learned behavior and can therefore be unlearned. Our increasing globalization affords us an opportunity to work with persons from all sorts of backgrounds. As never before, there is a need for greater tolerance, respect, and, to use an expression seldom heard in modern conversation, brotherhood.

" . . . For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial” --Acts 10:34

Web Design, Fresh From The Oven!

There's nothing like the smell of fresh baked web design hot from the oven! I have just completed a new web design for a California based client. This design balances attractive web design with legible and easily editable content. To do so, I used a very promising content management system (CMS) that I have been testing for the past couple of years: CMS Made Simple. This tools helps me to create great looking websites while giving non-technical clients the ability to easily manage web content. The best of two worlds! Visit my new web design and read my review of this elegant new CMS!

Amazing Design in the Deep Sea

Dr Seuss could never dream up creatures like this! A recent study released by the Census of Marine Life, recorded 17,560 species living below 656 feet, the point where sunlight ceases in the ocean. Until recently, the deep sea was considered a desert, incapable of supporting but a few species. Yet, the new species being discovered may well be only "the tip of the iceberg."



Here is one such creature, the deep sea dweller Enypniastes, a transparent sea cucumber. Evidently, this creature plays a role in cleansing the ocean of the snowlike decaying matter that cascades down to the deep sea depths. It is a garbage-man of the sea, working tirelessly in total darkness. As a web designer, I marvel at the beauty and functional design of these creatures. They are simply living works of art! Can Evolution account for such exquisite beauty and design in a creature that lives in total darkness? The notion that a life form of such deliberate design could merely happen by chance does not satisfy me. This dapper creature plays a role in a balanced eco-system that would cleanse and renew the oceans perpetually were it not for man's polluting hand. Amazing design . . . amazing intelligence!

A video of this marvelous creature is shown below. What a designer creates often provides an insight into his (or her) personality. What does this delightful creature tell us about its Intelligent Designer? There is a delicacy and exuberance about this creature and a sense of love for color. There is a love for movement and grace. Can Evolution explain such qualities in a creature that lives in total darkness?

A Grand New York City Idea

Banks have been getting a good measure of bad press since the current recession began, and perhaps rightly so. However, here is one grand New York City idea sponsored by Citibank in New York City, that I like! For the past couple of years, they have sponsored The Pond in Bryant Park, which offers free ice skating during the fall and winter season in New York City. It is a delightful family offering and a great way to sample a bit of the best of "The Big Apple" inexpensively.

Bryant Park, located on the corner of 6th Ave. & 42nd Street is a classicly beautiful urban space that is converted into a skating rink, with shops and eateries during the fall and winter season. Ice skating is free and offered seven days a week. There is a $12 charge for skate rentals. I stopped by on a recent Friday evening, and found it abuzz with cheerful skaters and visitors, both local and international. Visit The Pond at Bryant Park website for more info!

Advertising And The Battle For Children's Minds

Advertising is war, and the land to be conquered and pillaged is the human mind. I saw an incident today that shows how early that war begins, as advertisers seek to cultivate and capture the loyalties of ever younger consumers.

I had worked all day today without eating. So, in a desire to get the fastest meal possible, I stopped into my local McDonalds. While I dined, I noticed a bright red toy display, featuring toy plastic characters from a children's movie installed by the front counter. Interestingly, the entire display stood no higher than four feet. In fact, an adult would need to come down on bended knee to see what was in this display. But the determined warriors of advertising had a different prey in mind . . .

I watched as a young mother and her child, perhaps about four years of age, walked to the counter. The child walked right to the toy display which stood at perfect eye level for her. "Mommy, buy me one of these," she begged, pointing to the small toys displayed before her. Well, needless to say, that child had one of those toys sitting on her tray when they sat down to eat.

There is a macabre intelligence behind purposely placing a display of movie-branded toys so that a target audience of five-year-olds can be lured into making a purchasing decision. Indeed, the child made that purchase, the adult merely paid for it! Oddly enough, as I observed that mother and child, I could see more evidence of how much influence advertising had on them. Every item of clothing the child wore, coat, pants, blouse, and sneakers, had either an external designer label or a picture of a character connected with a children's television show or movie. The mother was also "under the influence," wearing a coat emblazoned on the back with a foot-wide graphic of the designers trademark.

As a web designer, I know all to well the need to appeal to consumers. It's what marketing is all about. However, is the creation of five-year-old consumers controlled by marketing and celebrity a healthy thing?

Clinical psychologist Allen D. Kanner, PhD, observes that this advertising is creating an epidemic of childhood materialism. Thanks to advertising, he says, children have become convinced that they're inferior if they don't have an endless array of new products. As psychologists learn more about the workings of the pre-teen mind, many are helping marketers to target children more effectively. "Psychologists who help advertisers are essentially helping them manipulate children to believe in the capitalistic message, when all the evidence shows that believing in that message is bad for people," says Tim Kasser, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill "That's unethical."

How do you feel about the battle for your child's mind?