Even if you're superstitious, dates are arbitrary

A Friday-afternoon rantTM

Here comes 07/07/07. A very lucky day--ask Tony and Eva or other engaged couples--no? Well, no!

What about 06/06/06? Wasn't that supposed to be the devil's day? No again.

When will we realize that each of the numbers that makes up a date is an arbitrary creation of man, lacking any consistency or objective meaning?

AD 2000 wasn't 2000 years after the birth of Jesus (various sources place the date between 7 B.C. and 2 B.C.). And if you don't follow Christianity, what meaning would that number have even if it were accurately counted from Jesus' birth?

The month/day numbers have changed as recently as 1582, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

It's time to stop worrying about what's going to happen on a specific date. Truth is, if there are fateful dates out in the cosmos, we wouldn't be able to pinpoint them anyway. So savor the present moment.

(Picture by shadowkill via stock.xchng)

Friday afternoon rant, dates, superstition

It's 08/08/08, and dates are STILL arbitrary

This 2007 post is still relevant a year later, even down to the day of the week...

A Friday-afternoon rantTM

The Beijing Olympics are opening on 08/08/08 at 8:08 pm. An auspicious date, according to this horoscope writer.

And 07/07/07 was a very lucky day--ask Tony Parker and Eva Longoria--no? Well, no!

What about 06/06/06? Wasn't that supposed to be the devil's day? No again.

When will we realize that each of the numbers that makes up a date is an arbitrary creation of man, lacking any consistency or objective meaning?

AD 2000 wasn't 2000 years after the birth of Jesus (various sources place the date between 7 B.C. and 2 B.C.). And if you don't follow Christianity, what meaning would that number have even if it were accurately counted from Jesus' birth?

The month/day numbers have changed as recently as 1582, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

It's time to stop worrying about what's going to happen on a specific date. Truth is, if there are fateful dates out in the cosmos, we wouldn't be able to pinpoint them anyway. So savor the present moment.

(Picture by shadowkill via stock.xchng)

Friday afternoon rant, dates, superstition

Business bloggers, stop relying on Godin and Kawasaki for your material

A Friday-afternoon rantTM

Is anyone else getting tired of the many business blogs that lard themselves with reductive copies of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki posts?

The posts look something like this:

I was reading Seth's blog today and he said [fill in the blank]. He is SO right! Way to go Seth!

or

Guy Kawasaki's recent post on [fill in the blank], really hit home with me. He points out [main idea of original blog post]. I agree with Guy 100%!

Usually there's a picture to fill out the space, and "Digg It" and "del.icio.us" icons.

Why do people do this? The charitable explanation is that writing several blog posts a week is difficult, and recycling high-quality material helps to fill in the inspirational dry stretches.

A more cynical view is: if I can write a post that has lots of links to highly popular blogs like Seth's and Guy's, then those foolish search engines will list my blog when people are actually looking for information on Seth or Guy. And perhaps someone will click on the link, upping my traffic statistics.

blogs, business blogs, marketing

Somebody out there realizes how goofy software marketing is

While preparing the prior post on HP, I came across this very sensible rant by Jeff Ventura on his blog Graceful Flavor. Jeff should be hired immediately by every software vendor to improve their marketing.

software, marketing