Over the last 2 years, my wife has enjoyed reading the following two blogs:

• Section 89 – A blog about food maintained by Sandra Jergensen, a wonderful writer and friend from college
• The Chatelaine’s Keys – A Jewish home-schooling intellectual who champions living independently off your own land

These blogs promote local food production and healthy eating.

If you gaze upon something long enough, you invariably end up steering in that direction. And so we find ourselves now chicken farming in the burbs!

It’s really quite simple.

• We live on a 1/3 acre in the burbs. Luckily, we are free to keep chickens because we don’t have to deal with annoying neighborhood associations.
• The chickens lay 1 egg per day per chicken, which our children collect. We have 3 chickens and collect 3 eggs per day.
• We have a “chicken tractor” which we can slide along the back edge of our back yard, to keep any one section of grass from getting destroyed. We bought the tractor for $50 on Craigslist.
• We put a bowl of chicken feed in the coop and a bucket of water.
• We let the chickens run around the back yard in the evenings so they can rummage for insects and other grassy yummies. Sometimes we toss them the scraps from dinner.
• All the kids on our street, including our own kids, love the chickens and are learning something useful in the process.

The scariest thing is that since this is so easy, we are now tempted to go for the milk-producing Nigerian Dwarf Goats – somebody stop us before this spins out of control!

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” ~1 Corinthians 13:13

As I mentioned last week, Anna and I traveled to DC to participate in the Restoring Honor Rally.  In this post, I share some thoughts from the event.

What does Restoring Honor Mean?

The main theme of the event centered on triplet principles of “Faith, Hope, & Charity” with the premise that increasing the expression of those principles in our individual lives will restore a measure of honor to each of us individual and, by direct consequence, bring honor to all of us collectively.

For those who don’t engage in regular scripture study, here is a brief summary of these three principles:

Faith

The Apostle Paul taught that “faith is the substance [assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever we work toward a worthy goal, we exercise faith. In order for faith to lead to salvation, it must be centered in the Lord Jesus Christ (see Acts 4:10–12; Mosiah 3:17; Moroni 7:24–26; Articles of Faith 1:4). Faith is much more than passive belief. We express our faith through action—by the way we live. Faith is a gift from God, but we must nurture our faith to keep it strong. Faith is like a muscle. If exercised, it grows strong. If left immobile, it becomes weak.

Hope

Hope is the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness. The scriptures often speak of hope as anticipation of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. The word hope is sometimes misunderstood. In our everyday language, the word often has a hint of uncertainty. For example, we may say that we hope for a change in the weather or a visit from a friend. In the language of the gospel, however, the word hope is sure, unwavering, and active. When we have hope, we trust God’s promises. “Happy is he,” said the Psalmist, “that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God” (Psalm 146:5).

Charity

Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is the love that Christ has for the children of men and that the children of men should have for one another. It is the highest, noblest, and strongest kind of love and the most joyous to the soul (1 Nephi 11:23). Jesus declared to His disciples: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34–35).

What were the highlights?

For me, there were several highlights of the event. A full video of the event is available on the C-SPAN archives site:

1. Minister C.L. Jackson’s acceptance speech for the Medal of Faith. Discussion of the women in Jesus’ life. (skip to 01:05:56 in the video)
2. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. Discussion of how her uncle would have welcomed a return to faith and honor. (skip to 01:56:54 in the video)
3. Glenn Beck. Discussion of the DC monuments. Discussion of Moses and “picking up your stick”. Discussion of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Discussion of the Law of Tithing. Brings together 240 ministers symbolizing a return to God. (skip to 02:08:23 in the video)

What were the media reactions?

Both the left and the right had positive things to say about the event:

1. From the liberal mainstay, New York Times:  Mr. Beck Goes to Washington. “In a sense, Beck’s ‘Restoring Honor’ was like an Obama rally through the looking glass… But whereas Obama wouldn’t have been Obama if he weren’t running for president, Beck’s packed, three-hour jamboree was floated entirely on patriotism and piety, with no ‘get thee to a voting booth’ message. It blessed a particular way of life without burdening that blessing with the compromises of a campaign, or the disillusioning work of governance.”
2. From the conservative mainstay, Wall Street Journal:  Glenn Beck’s Happy Warriors. “One would not be able to find a more polite crowd at a political convention, certainly not at a professional sporting event, probably not even at an opera… Not only was the rally akin to a huge church picnic, but one had to wonder if the over-achievers in this crowd actually left the area in better shape than they found it… While [Glenn Beck] admits that he’s part entertainer and prone to over-the-top comments, his followers appear to be sincerely responding to his message that Americans need to cling to their best traditions.”

It was a wonderful trip and comforting to see so many people dedicated to being good and becoming better through an increase in faith, hope, and charity.

“Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we are able to live as a free people … Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation.” ~Quote from the Restoring Honor Rally Website

Later this week, my wife and I will be traveling to Washington DC to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the 8-28 Restoring Honor rally.

There are many issues facing our nation and culture. None are as fundamentally impactful as the constant degradation of America’s virtue upon which strong, healthy families are built. Broken families lead to a broken nation; and ultimately kaput, we’re done for. The rally is designed to help reverse these trends by striking at the root of our problems.

From the Event’s FAQ:

• Is this a 9/12 or Tea Party rally?
  • No. The Restoring Honor Rally is neither a 9/12 nor a Tea Party rally. There will be absolutely no politics involved. This rally will honor the troops, unite the American people under the principles of integrity and truth, and make a pledge to restore honor within ourselves and our country.
• What CAN’T I bring?
  • Please refrain from bringing signs (political or otherwise) as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington.

The Restoring Honor rally is organized by Glenn Beck, the popular radio and TV host. Over the past year, Glenn has used his shows as a platforrm to discuss the honorable men that founded this nation, driving messages about faith, virtue, and integrity. Glenn may often be over-the-top in his antics and emotional monologues, but I don’t know another political personality who understands that our problems will not be solved with a mere change in political power.

Only when we the people begin to live more virtuous lives, and demand that our leaders live uprightly as well, will we make true progress towards solutions.  This will not come to pass via legislation or courtroom verdict, but through a refresh of virtue among Americans, including a call for greater compassion, repentance, forgiveness, obedience, integrity, chastity, bravery, diligence, and faith. America has been a great moral leader in the world for a long time; I’d like to see her rise higher, not sink lower.

What do you think? Is the decline in our collective virtue the most troublesome problem to you? If so, how do we fix it? If not, why not?

Side Commentary

• I know that many dislike Glenn Beck, but I have yet to find anyone who can vocalize why – other than the fact that Jon Stewart makes fun of him on the Daily Show. To that group of people I say, “Are you kidding me?” You would discount the Beck’s Restoring Honor message because some liberal comedian knows how to pull clips out of context? Too many people my age get their news from Comedy Central and its liberal goons. I will note that with Beck, you do have to listen for more than just one show to be able to pull his deeper message out from the over-the-top antics and you have to swallow his overly-emotional diatribes. I personally catch him once a week or so on his radio show during my morning commute.
• For that matter, the same goes for Sarah Palin haters. Granted she did have some horrible gaffs in her interviews with Katie Couric, but again, I have yet to find anyone who can vocalize something substantive they dislike about her. Folksy-ness and interview gaffs are not nearly as bad as the poisonous ideas spewing from the progressives which  keep growing the federal government monstrosity. Personally, I’m not a big fan of Palin, but I think the mass criticism of her is revealing of how powerful the Daily Show is in warping the perceptions of the simple minded and morally vacuous.

“Is Your Startup A Cash or Equity Business?“, post by Elad Gil

This week I’m looking for outside opinions on the wisdom of bootstrapping an equity business.

Recently, I ran across the above blog post and have found it useful in describing startups to “big business” people.  By “big business” people, I refer to people who haven’t interacted much with startups and who really only understand 401Ks and regular W-2 paychecks.

Elad’s post makes the point that there are really two kinds of startups:

1. Equity Business:  Those whose hopes and dreams come from their equity value (i.e. one day they want to exit and exchange the equity for a chunk of change).
2. Cash Business:  Those whose hopes and dreams come from generating cash quickly and being their own boss (i.e. not really building towards an exit).

My co-founders and I are working to build a great company and one day hope to convert our equity into a chunk of change.  In the categories defined by Elad, we resemble an Equity Business in every way, except in our approach to raising money.  For instance,

• We believe that our employees will ultimately make a chunk of change themselves through their equity.  They are in turn willing to take less than market salary, yoking themselves alongside us founders in building value into that equity.
• Each month, we choose to spend more than we make as we reinvest to grow.  So we are not “throwing off a lot of cash” upfront, as discussed by Elad.
• We are creating a uniquely valuable position in the marketplace that will ultimately provide nice returns for the company, even though our first few years will be cash losers.
• There are strong network effects with the technology that are slowly coming into motion.
• There are strong barriers to entry, including patents, trade secrets, and the fact that our product is really hard to build (much more so than a website startup for instance).
• There is customer lock-in as people finding great results with our product come back to order more from the menu.

With all of the above characteristics, we are an Equity Business.  Yet in raising money, we are bootstrapped and small angel funded – which are the hallmarks of a Cash Business.

As far as I understand, this is a unique position for a startup, especially one like ours that has been generating revenue for 18 months already.  This provokes two questions:

1. Are we in a startup “no man’s land” from which few ever emerge successfully?  If so, why do you think?  If not, can you name bootstrapped companies that have had nice exits?
2. Or, are we just part of the increasing “cool” trend for startups to reject traditional VC funding avenues, opting instead for the Super Angel-like alternatives?

What do you think?  I’m looking for honest feedback – I have a thick skin so don’t worry about offending me!

Brother Eric in 1986 - Sleeping on Stomach

Son David in 2004 - Sleeping on Back

In 1986, science said putting a baby on its stomach was the “right” thing to do, so that’s how my siblings and I slept. By 2004, science had changed its mind, so my firstborn slept on his back. He cried, and we were miserable. In 2006 and 2008, we were told to put our daughters on their backs. We ignored the experts and had a much better experience!

How many times have you read an article or heard a news broadcast where the phrase “according to scientists…” is used? The phrase is used to lend credibility. Occasionally, journalists actually cite the particular scientists; most times they do not.

There is a lot of trashy science out there. It is increasingly difficult to discern truth from error.

The root of the problem is that scientists have skewed incentives. Publishing is king, along with building a network of scientific allies who make it easier for you to publish. Yet, the peer-review system often does nothing to verify results, and scientists have no accountability for reproducibility.

There are a few initiatives trying to fix this problem. For example, in my field of computer vision, there exists the Insight Journal. This journal promotes the concept of “open science” wherein you submit your paper along with code and data so that other people can reproduce your results. The reviews are totally open. Everything is made public. Unfortunately, this initiative seems to have lost steam over time. We’re all still wedded to the system of closed reviews and irreproducible results.

Intensifying this problem are too many students flooding the world with too many papers. Unfortunately, scores of those papers are erroneous and sloppy, another chunk of them are simply fluff that no one cares about, and some of them are blatant lies designed to further an agenda. The truly good ones often get lost in the weeds.

Another problem, less openly discussed, is that some scientists can be flat-out cocky. A variety of things scientists study and claim to “know” are just preposterous. Man-made measurement systems are often too inadequate to study complex natural systems. So scientists build “models” to sweep the true complexity under the rug. Wherever models are used, we should have a Surgeon-General-like warning on the results: “Warning: Man-made models were used to convert God’s complex creation into a feeble human-designed computer simulation.”

Examples of scientific areas that I believe to be extraordinarily complex include neuroscience, climate science, and archeaology. Because so little is truly understood in these areas, true discoveries can be extremely fruitful. But bad things happen when we start placing faith in results that are overly contrived or extrapolated from inaccurate and sparse measurements.

Problems with science lead to problems in policy, as the media attempts to create headlines out of research. This invariably leads to the phrase “according to scientists…” and the dangerous practice of believing that scientific consensus is worth beans.

Michael Crichton gave an awesome lecture at Caltech on the issue of consensus science. Go read that now!

Over time, I’ve become very skeptical of articles claiming this or that. I find myself deciding to err on the side of calling most stuff bologna.

Wish it were otherwise, and wish I had a solution to this problem. I don’t have a solution; at least I don’t have a practical solution. Do you?

“WikiLeaks: It’s all fun and games until some helpful Afghan gets his eyes poked out.” ~Angus McRae

WikiLeaks made headlines again in recent days with the “Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010.” For those unaware, WikiLeaks is a internet site where people can dump documents to expose to the world. It is run by mysterious people about whom not a lot is known.

This presents a moral quagmire that is often overshadowed by the leaks themselves:  Is the concept of WikiLeaks a good thing or a bad thing? Are you happy it exists or not?

The media seem to be tacitly thankful for the leaks, as it has produced troves of information fueling their stories. You would likely be hard pressed to find someone who wishes they personally did not have access to the leaked information. Many seem to champion the exposing of government secrets. Checkout the TED audience reaction to Julian Assange, spokesman for WikiLeaks (skip to 10:40 to see the audience vote):

The main voice of disapproval seems to come from the leaked, in this case the Department of Defense.

Yet, something about WikiLeaks also just does not sit well with me.

I don’t think my queasiness comes from the mere fact that WikiLeaks is “breaking the law” by releasing other people’s classified documents. Mainstream news organizations often leak classified information, playing the important whistle-blower role. Whistle-blowing is an important and necessary function in society.

I guess what it comes down to is the people behind the organization. I just don’t feel comfortable with WikiLeaks gaining traction as a whistle-blower when the people behind it are so mysterious and covert. With mainstream news organizations, you have the filter of professionalism, editorial boards, and accountability. With WikiLeaks, you have none of that – you really don’t know what you have.

From Crovitz in today’s WSJ, “Disclosure is usually good, but WikiLeaks has undermined the cause. Releasing this information is the equivalent of publishing the sailing dates of troop ships.”

If WikiLeaks continues to gain credibility, it is perfectly feasible that falsified documents could be released and gain traction to meet the agenda of whomever is behind this thing. No, I don’t trust that Benford’s Law is going to figure this out for me.

How do you feel about WikiLeaks? If you disapprove, what can be done to diminish its role? If you approve, then you can probably sit back and watch the documents keep rolling – cause it looks to be gaining steam.

I’ve been an enrolled student most of my life – K-12, 4 years at BYU, and 4.5 more at Georgia Tech. Over time, I’ve developed a belief that there are WAY too many students out there.

Lifelong learning is a beautiful and noble endeavor that should be extolled as a virtue. But the policy of extolling “college” as the path to prosperity to all of our K-12 youngsters is not the right approach. Formal schooling, where some sort of tuition is paid and a brick & mortar classroom exists, is over-promoted and under-criticized for what it actually produces.

With all this formal schooling, we’ve lost the art of apprenticeship and have ended up with a bunch of educations-to-nowhere. Here’s my hack at a formula to determine if an education is worth pursuing:

Is the cost of the education

+ the opportunity cost of not getting trained on-the-job

+ the opportunity cost of wages & experience lost

less than

the benefit of the education for future incremental wage?

Education is like buying a gym membership. You can spend a ton of money on it. But if you don’t do the tough stuff, you aren’t going to see any benefit. In a gym, you’ve gotta sweat and you’ve gotta quit eating crap. You can do that without a gym. In education, you’ve gotta read and write. You can do that without being enrolled.

In a recent lecture on entrepreneurship, college dropout Josh James, who recently sold his company Omniture to Adobe for $1.8B, explains how he learns. Hint: He reads! The whole lecture is awesome – I’ve watched it twice this week. The segment from 20:50 to 22:20 is the part about reading.

Josh James, December 8, 2009 from Rollins Center at BYU on Vimeo.

Some random additional thoughts:

1. In addition to books, high-quality resources are available online, such as MIT’s Open Courseware. Also, there are cool communities for learners, such as Atlanta’s OpenStudy.
2. Students, like government employees, are a necessary evil. They do not, of themselves, generate products or services in the economy. In many cases, both the student and the larger society would be better off if those years were spent in a more productive apprenticeship.
3. Students pay big bucks that have, over the years, generated a massive education machine. This machine is a self-interested, heavy promoter of the idea that everyone should go to college.
4. With our state and federal student programs, we continue to edge more and more towards socializing college education. For example, with guaranteed loans, students and lenders skip natural and needed cost/benefit analysis. Hrm, sounds a lot like sub-prime mortgages.
5. The need people feel for “college education” probably has more to due with failing K-12 schooling than it does with the virtues of a college education.
6. Enrollments are purposely kept low in some professional programs, such as medical and dental programs where the AMA and ADA have incentives to keep supply low.
7. Becoming a “student” is the de facto cover young people use to cover an absence a life plan. Too many 20-somethings wallow in “student-hood” and end up worse than if they had simply started working out of high school.
8. There are too many PhD students. A big chunk of them churn out stupid papers that either no one cares about or that flood the world with confusion… this is a topic for a future blog post I’ve already entitled, “Err on the side of bologna!“
9. It’s unfortunate that companies use a college education so heavily in filtering. It’s an artificial crutch used in lieu of skillful interviewing and in response to diminished ability to fire the losers.

Do you agree or disagree? What changes in our educational culture would lead to a better outcome?

“Instead of linking to a few articles every day, write one.” ~D. Mahoney

Ok, I’ve decided to give-it-a-go at blogging.  I have no clue how much time I’ll be able to put into this, nor do I know if anyone will care to participate.

I have to admit, though, that I’ve been hesitant to start this blog because it seems I might be breaking two blogger rules:  1) No consistent theme, 2) Flammable material.

#1: No consistent theme. I don’t have one, yet.  And I’m not sure it matters.  My blog would probably be a mix of startups, politics, religion, family, and technology. Do you have to have a consistent theme to blog?

I’m not going to blog about GPUs here, because I participate in our company blog.  I’m not really interested in doing a startup-only blog – there are a gazillion of those in the world and a half gazillion of those in Atlanta already.  I’m not really interested in a technology blog – there are even more of those than there are startup blogs.

What I’d really like for this blog is described nicely in a TED Talk by Michael Sandal who says, “Democracy thrives on civil debate, but we’re shamefully out of practice.”  If I can use this blog to engage with some friends about issues that matter, I will be thrilled.

#2: Flammable material. Since my interests are centered on topics that can be sensitive, several of my gray-haired mentors have cautioned against publicly talking about these things.  Should I be careful?

I’ve never been one to care much about hiding my beliefs. In fact, I wish more people would talk about these kinds of things because it would make them WAY more interesting (several people with blogs in Atlanta fall in this category).  But I’m probably the weird one on this subject.

An interesting dissection of the flammable material problem was posted today in the NY Times by Tom Friedman.  In his article, he talks about the editor that was fired from CNN for tweeting something objectionable.  He responds, “What signal are we sending young people? Trim your sails, be politically correct, don’t say anything that will get you flamed by one constituency or another. And if you ever want a job in government, national journalism or as president of Harvard, play it safe and don’t take any intellectual chances that might offend someone. In the age of Google, when everything you say is forever searchable, the future belongs to those who leave no footprints.”

So there you have it, two simple questions to start this blog:  1) Do you have to have a consistent theme to blog? and 2) Should I be careful?

Hello!  Thanks for visiting my website.  Unfortunately, I’m not yet hosting anything substantive on this site.  Someday I’ll start a blog, but for now you can link to me in any of the following social networks: