noteworthy

if anyone has any opinions on my future, I'd love to know

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:15:25 -0500

“Enter to grow in wisdom. Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”

- The Dexter Gate mural at Harvard University

I feel that a privileged education comes with a moral obligation to do what you can in your chosen career to better the lives of others. The knowledge that is gained in your education has a purpose and to use it to your own absolute individual advantage is unfair. To do so would seem to be a disregard of incredible resources that can help better the world, even if it makes only the slightest effect to a single other person.

I started my nonprofit to attempt to make an impact on other people’s lives and, in the process, make just as large an impact on my own. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about what my life is going to entail after I graduate. In the last week, I’ve had three companies requesting interviews in chicago, but since I’ve been summoned to stay at Iowa State for another semester, I’ve needed to rethink my plans and strategy. I’ve come to the conclusion that the greatest benefit to my future would be to start ramping up my work with my nonprofit and to get that rolling so that I can make some noticeable headway with the company. My strategy that I’ve come up with is to partner with Iowa State’s greek system for the rest of the year since I’ll be here taking my last class. The greek system is required to do philanthropic work a few times every year and I feel I have a case and the connections needed to position my foundation as a better philanthropic partner than most of the faceless charities that they donate to currently. In doing this, and if it works to its absolute full potential, we should be able to raise upwards of $50,000 for the fall.

Once my goals of my foundation have been reached for the time being, I feel that I’ll be ready to take on an additional lifelong journey of for-profit entrepreneurship, of which the nonprofit work will make a huge impact in many ways. Try to think of how you’d view Barack Obama if the ‘community organizer’ position was not included in his life resume. You’d likely be less apt to vote for him, think of him as highly as a person, or see him as fit to be morally and ethically competent a president. Apart from trying to save some children’s lives so that they have the opportunity to grow up to accomplish incredible things on their own, this seems to be a small part of why I’m doing this nonprofit work. I’m trying to build a very strong platform onto which I’ll build the rest of my life. Some may think nonprofit work is not as challenging or intellectually stimulating as creating a profit venture, and indeed, it may not be. But the experience and the credentials that I will gain from the work that will go on my life resume will come back in spades from every direction.

As selfish as it may seem, I want or need to feel validated as an upstanding young man and I see the best way to accomplish this is possibly one of the longer ways around the issue, which is to spend a couple years and possibly thousands of hours raising money and traveling to the other side of the world to build mental and physical infrastructure for incredibly destitute people in order for them to start living normal lives. This whole process seems to pay off in every regard. Once I create a for-profit company, it will absolutely have a positive effect on how customers, suppliers, partners and the PR world of newspapers, magazines, and influential people view me and my company’s purpose. It will create much higher trust and an overall positive attitude toward the company as a whole that companies without my experiences and background will have to work rather hard to validate and perpetuate while in business. Don’t get me wrong, I really do love and enjoy helping people but is it wrong for myself to be included in those people that I’m helping? I think not, unless you’re doing that work solely to benefit yourself, in which case I find it hard to see the purpose of the action being carried out to its possible potential, rendering the action useless and a waste of potential all around. Long story short, I do the nonprofit work to help others but at the same time realize that it will pay off in inconceivable ways in the future that will benefit my life, the lives of others, and the life of my companies. Any ffffeedback/opinions/advice?

via tim hackberth via vaynerchuk

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:33:00 -0500

“Don’t quit your job to become the queen of cheese. But if you’re doing something that blows and you hate it, go work at 7-Eleven to pay your bills and spend every other hour building your personal plan. If you work 9 AM to 6 PM and get home at 7, whatever you put in between 7 and 3 AM is what you’re gonna get in return. You want to watch Lost? Knock yourself out. I don’t watch shit. I don’t read shit. I’m all about my community and putting out content. I don’t consume. I put out.”

— Gary Vaynerchuk

via How to Make Money on the Internet: Do what you love, and other tips from the Web cowboys at the Seed Conference

My next phone, the blackberry 9000.Everyone has the iphone...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:24:39 -0500

My next phone, the blackberry 9000.

Everyone has the iphone —-> I don’t want the iphone.

plus, it has video and it’s only $1 more than the iphone.

Obama, soon to be CEO of America

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:10:00 -0500

Mr. Obama had said when he first started his campaign that he wanted to run it like a business. Well, apparently Barack must have gotten a quicky MBA at Wharton because he is making all the right decisions. Last week, he made the decision to give up public campaign financing, allowing him to pass the spending limitations that go along with it. John McCain agreed to public financing and has a spending limit of $84.1 million for this fall along with the RNC piggybank of around $150 million. Now, free from the constraints of public financing, campaign and party officials have said that Mr. Obama’s budget for the rest of the year could be well above $300 million. Even with a drop in donations in May, the campaign should still hit its mark. With this money, they’re bringing in a team of top advertising geniuses to take their advertising to the niche markets. Their surprisingly great strategies of customizing their advertising specifically to many smaller cable networks, magazines, and websites (meaning they’d make different ads for every single network), is the best move I’ve heard of yet and I can’t wait to see what happens. I can hardly believe someone smart is actually in American politics finally. It’s just…..great.

[nytimes]

benisadork:too late.

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:35:27 -0500

benisadork:

too late.

sarahachtemeier:Tim’s mom just emailed me this picture of Tim...

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:10:34 -0500

sarahachtemeier:

Tim’s mom just emailed me this picture of Tim running in Grandma’s Marathon (Duluth, MN) which is going on RIGHT NOW!
….It looks like he’s having fun so far…
Keep up the hard work!

omg tim, you farted colored stars…

thasgottahrt.

I need a purr of these real quick style. My birthday is comin...

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:43:08 -0500

I need a purr of these real quick style. My birthday is comin up if anyone wants to get any ideas….

timhackbarth:One more shot of the shoreline.I’m so...

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:33:00 -0500

timhackbarth:

One more shot of the shoreline.

I’m so jeals……although I will be in the national park region of our country in a week. I’ll be doing some live blogging and video reporting from said location. Shit will be amazn.

Slash good luck (not that you need it but you might) running your 26 miles, 385 yards.

TGIF summereditionwill smiff - summertime circa 1991

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:18:00 -0500

TGIF summeredition

will smiff - summertime circa 1991

Also, Sarah, we’re making stunna shades this weekend to...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:14:12 -0500

Also, Sarah, we’re making stunna shades this weekend to celebrate tim’s marathon running abilities. Tape it off and spraypaint, son. Tape it off and spraypaint.

Sarah, shit..put some clothes on for once.

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:06:37 -0500

Sarah, shit..put some clothes on for once.

azizisbored:The new Girl Talk album is out pay what you want...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:16:24 -0500

azizisbored:

The new Girl Talk album is out pay what you want style. It also probably has my favorite album cover of ‘08. Go get it!

This just in!!!!Hayley Williams from paramore is hot shit. I...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:22:00 -0500

This just in!!!!

Hayley Williams from paramore is hot shit. I wish she were normal so I could have a proper awkward crush on her..

Look Sarah, she likes anchors too. She just went to the store and bought a shirt, though.

"An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they..."

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:01:56 -0500

“An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine.”

- TaxingTennessee: Did we miss the entrepreneurial revolution? NO

Detroit Octane with their smash hit “Barack...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:38:59 -0500

Detroit Octane with their smash hit “Barack Obama-sistible” will be making their tv debut tomorrow night on conans.

a picture of the tornado that ran through the boyscout camp in...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:56:19 -0500

a picture of the tornado that ran through the boyscout camp in western iowa last week.

Photo

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:35:35 -0500

mccain is making my year better and better, each and every day.

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:14:00 -0500

As is widely known, Senator McCain has a little bit of a temper. Some see this as a positive, others a negative…I just see it as hilarious. Here’s my favorite gem that I’ve found lately…

In his new book, The Real McCain, Cliff Schecter, a journalist and frequent contributor at the Huffington Post related perhaps the most disturbing of McCain’s tirades. During his 2000 White House bid, the Senator was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, his aides, and three journalists who spoke to Schecter on condition of anonymity, but independently confirmed each other’s accounts of the incident. Cindy McCain playfully ran her fingers through the Senator’s hair and teased, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain reddened and fired back, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollup, you cunt.” After he’d cooled down, McCain apologized, saying he’d had a long day.

I’m voting republican and you should too.

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:31:01 -0500

I’m voting republican and you should too.

emails from abroad via daily dish

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:00:00 -0500

A reader writes:

I am an American who is a graduate student in the UK, and I have been congratulated by people from around the world over the past couple of days for the Obama nomination. Strangers hear my accent, and want to talk about Obama. One British person said, “America didn’t become the nation it did with guns and tanks; it became the nation it did with ideas. An Obama presidency represents everything that America has told the world about itself in the past century—and what the rest of the world wanted to expect out of America. The idea that you talk before acting, the idea that you make friends, not enemies, and the idea that anything is possible.”
Another Italian told me, “Obama will cause my country to fall in love with America again.”
Soft power?

Most Americans have not quite absorbed the enormous blow to America’s image abroad delivered by the Bush administration. Obama has helped erase it already.

I think one of us (or all of us) should start a website where the international crowd can hypothetically vote for mccain or obama. I completely assume they would go for obama since they don’t want their country bombed anytime soon. Every1votes.com is avails.