My Dad grew up black, poor, and in the segregated South. As a little boy he wanted to be a professional basketball player, and by the time I joined the family that’s what he was doing.

Growing up with a father who was an extremely hard worker and who had accomplished what he had dreamed of seemed totally normal to me. I thought everyone had that same short synapse between hopes and dreams and real life, so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t fulfill my own hopes and dreams.

I encounter so, so many people who are simply daunted by even dreaming, and the idea of bringing a dream to fruition is not even possible. As an adult, I have realized even more how remarkable my father is, and how massive his impact has been on my life…mostly because I’m living out my dreams.

jed and i have been working non-stop to get this thing off the ground. the site is looking good, and we’re getting a lot of members and fans.

my friends have been such great participants in the process, and are the reason that fudha.com is so close to launch!

if you want to help:

1. Sign up at: http://fudha.com

2. Become our fan: http://facebook.com/fudha and tell your friends!

3. Follow us on twitter and tweet about us! http://twitter.com/fudha

4. Blog about us!

5. Come to our launch party at Barrio! Feb. 28, 1:00pm. Benefits the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.

i’ve had a lot of reasons to be really grateful for everything i have (and am) lately, and wanted encourage everyone to consider how much we all have by writing a list all the games i could think of that 3rd world kids play (or for my politically correct friends, children from LDCs).

dig a hole

fill in a hole

throw a rock the highest

throw a rock the farthest

throw a rock into a hole

throw the most rocks into a hole

fight grasshoppers/dragonflies/bees/ants

count rocks

sing a song

make up a dance

see who can yell the loudest

taunt wild animals

laugh

got anymore?

i was really encouraged after lunch today with jeff sloan, (a perpetual entrepreneur) co-founder of startupnation.com.  the only thing i feel like i need to improve is writing a business plan for every project.  i make the case in my head, and have been profitable without a business plan, but now as i approach selling my first sites, i’m realizing that a business plan helps clarify and solidify things for me…and potential investors.

for my fellow entrepreneurs, i wanted to recap the discussion…i think it’s always good to remind yourself why you’re married to your laptop.

passion + good idea + execution + business fundamentals = success!!!

“an average entrepreneur can take a great idea and fail.  a great entrepreneur can take an average idea and succeed.”

here are jeff’s tips (and of course you can get more from the phenomenal resources on his site):

• use equity to create value and pull in resources. can you get a great CEO to come on board for equity…do you want to own 90% of a grape or 10% of a watermelon? (wait…did someone say WATERMELON?)
• formalize your strategy for communicating with customers, employees, owners, etc. (what is your brand narrative?!) be proactive.
• outsource (not necessarily offshore)…farm out non-core functions, and be a good manager. (methinks the managing part is the hardest)
• team up with strategic partners who can help you achieve your goals faster and easier.
• PR is free.  Use your narrative. Get press. Position yourself as an expert (also known as mavenship).
• Manage your burn rate to the extremes.  Free pen? Take it. Make coffee at home (who pays $5 for coffee anyways?!).  Anyone who has ever bootstrapped knows what it’s like to have no money even though you’re working your ass off all the time, and you got your girlfriend to be your first investor…
• Know thy end game.  Where is the THERE? Work backwards from your goal.

my new favorite song is on lily allen’s latest fabulousness…”it’s not me, it’s you.”

check out some of the lyrics

“Look inside, look inside your tiny mind, then look a bit harder
Cause we’re so uninspired, so sick and tired, of all the hatred you harbour
So you say it’s not OK to be gay, well I think you’re just evil
You’re just some racist, who can’t tie my laces
Your point of view is medieval…

…You say you think we need to go to war
Well you’re already in one
Cause it’s people like you
That need to get slew
No one wants your opinion”

the song is called “f*ck you”…you should check it out on lily’s web site!

i often talk about building brand narratives, and it’s something i occasionally do for companies. often overlooked and underestimated – when there’s a great idea or product, but not really a great story – a lot of companies are not intentional about their narratives.  thus the cohesive story, internally and externally, is a total mess.

i’m not one to undervalue the power of the pen (obviously).  for those of you who have your doubts…i suppose images, flavors, and products could “speak for themselves”…per se.  but seriously, where would restaurants, artists, websites or even companies be without the written word (critiques, reviews, the text that is “the brand”)?

check out what spark media does…it’s what i want to do when i finally sell off my websites and have the reputation to consult full-time (from sparkmediasolutions.com).

“In the past, company voice and brand building has been accomplished through strong public relations, brand relations, and traditional custom publishing. With the successful outcropping of new media tools like blogs, podcasts, and wikis, more and more voices are participating in conversations about your industry and your company’s products and services. New media custom publishing is a must for any company in an industry swayed by online discussions.

Every organization has stories and internal wisdom that the public has yet to see. With decades of experience in traditional advertising, journalism, production, and publishing, Spark Media Solutions draws that knowledge out and presents it to the public in the most engaging, interactive, and thought provoking way.

Spark Media Solutions helps you create that industry leading voice in the following ways:

• Assess current business practices, thought leadership, and industry behavior.
• Tells the story of your company and product so customers and others can remember and retell.
• Develop editorial matrix to provide industry-leading content at every decision making point from discovery to purchase.
• Manage and create compelling content messages that can be distributed over a multitude of mediums: print, audio, and video.
• Distribute content and engage with other industry thought leaders via traditional and social media methods.”

Will Obama institute a new kind of preventive detention for terrorist suspects?

by Jane Mayer February 23, 2009

The last “enemy combatant” being detained in America is incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina—a tan, low-slung building situated amid acres of grassy swampland. The prisoner, known internally as EC#2, is an alleged Al Qaeda sleeper agent named Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. He has been held in isolation in the brig for more than five years, although he has never stood trial or been convicted of any crime. Under rules established by the Bush Administration, suspected terrorists such as Marri were denied the legal protections traditionally afforded by the Constitution. Unless the Obama Administration overhauls the nation’s terrorism policies, Marri—who claims that he is innocent—will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

On September 10, 2001, Marri, a citizen of Qatar, who is now forty-three, came to America with his family. He had a student visa, and his ostensible purpose was to study computer programming at a small university in Peoria, Illinois. That December, he was arrested as a material witness in an investigation of the September 11th attacks. However, when Marri was on the verge of standing trial, in June, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the military to seize him and hold him indefinitely. The Bush Administration contended that America was in a full-fledged war against terrorists, and that the President could therefore invoke extraordinary executive powers to detain Marri until the end of hostilities, on the basis of still secret evidence. That day, Marri was put on a military jet to Charleston, and since then he has been living as the only prisoner in an eighty-bed high-security wing of the brig, with no visits from family, friends, or the media.

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who has taken the lead role in Marri’s legal defense, says that the Bush Administration’s decision to leave him in sustained isolation was akin to stranding him on a desert island. “It’s a Robinson Crusoe-like situation,” he told me. In 2005, Hafetz challenged the constitutionality of Marri’s imprisonment. A lower court affirmed the government’s right to detain him indefinitely. After several appeals, the case is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in April. Hafetz calls the Marri case a pivotal test of “the most far-reaching use of detention powers” ever asserted by an American President.

The Court’s calendar requires the Obama Administration to file a reply to the challenge by March 23rd. Unless some kind of diversionary action is taken—such as sending Marri home to Qatar, or working out a plea agreement—the Court’s schedule will likely force the Obama Administration to offer quick answers to a host of complicated questions about its approach to fighting terrorism.

John Bellinger III, who served as the counsel to the State Department under President Bush, says of officials in the Obama Administration, “They will have to either put up or shut up. Do they maintain the Bush Administration position, and keep holding Marri as an enemy combatant? They have to come up with a legal theory.”

Among the issues to be decided, Hafetz says, is “the question of who is a soldier, and who is a civilian. Is the fight against terrorism war, or is it not war? How far does the battlefield extend? In the past, they treated Peoria as a battlefield. Can an American be arrested in his own home and jailed indefinitely, on the say-so of the President?” Hafetz wants the Supreme Court to rule that indefinite executive detention is illegal, and he hopes that Obama will withdraw Bush’s executive order labelling Marri an enemy combatant, and issue a new one classifying him as a civilian. This shift would allow Marri either to be charged with crimes or to be released.

The Obama Administration’s strategy in the Marri case will almost certainly establish legal principles that will have ramifications for future cases, as well as for the two hundred and forty or so similarly designated “unlawful enemy combatants” held in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. During the Bush years, the designation encompassed not just members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban but also anyone who associated with them, supported them, or supported organizations associated with them, even if unwittingly. In 2004, a Bush Administration lawyer told a judge that, in theory, an enemy combatant could even be “a little old lady in Switzerland” whose charitable donations had been channelled, without her awareness, to Al Qaeda front groups.

If the Marri case reaches the Supreme Court, it will test the limits of such theories. The case is therefore being closely watched by civil libertarians on both the left and the right. The Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal advocacy organization, and the Cato and Rutherford Institutes, which lean to the right, are among the many legal groups that have signed eighteen amicus briefs on Marri’s behalf. Individual lawyers who have taken up his cause include Nicholas Katzenbach, the Attorney General in the Johnson Administration, and William Sessions, who was appointed director of the F.B.I. by President Reagan. The editorial page of the Times has written repeatedly about the case, demanding that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ affirmation of Marri’s military detention be reversed: “People accused of bad deeds should be tried in court—not in sham proceedings. They should be put in jail—not secret detention.”

No matter how Obama responds to the case, his decision is likely to arouse controversy. Hafetz says, “If President Obama is serious about restoring the rule of law in America, they can’t defend what’s been done to Marri. They would be completely buying into the Bush Administration’s war on terror.” This view is widely held by Obama’s political base. Yet the political risks of change are obvious. In 2004, Jeffrey Rapp, an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, claimed in a sworn affidavit, without providing evidence, that Marri had met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and “offered to be an al Qaeda martyr.” The government’s theory is that Marri came to America in order to help carry out a second wave of terrorist attacks. “Al-Marri must be detained to prevent him from aiding al Qaeda in its efforts to attack the United States,” Rapp said in his statement, which is the sole public document offering reasons for holding him.

lost three hours of sleep (at least) to diarrhea nightmares.  finn ate the neighbor dogs’ purina, pieces of hearts made (of eggs, sugar, and flour) especially for saturday, and a butter wrapper that blew through the fence two nights ago.  it’s impossible to be mad at her, but the splatters of shit on the wood floor were the last thing i wanted to see at 3:00a, and then again at 6:30a.

at least she didn’t try to cover up the whole incident and eat it.  i can imagine the moment in her head where she thinks about getting in trouble, thinks about hiding her crime (which she’s fully capable of…believe me), looks at the poop, and decides to take whatever punishment may come, because there’s no way in hell she’s going to eat her own crap.

after several hours of playtime today, her appetite and attitude restored, she tried to steal her homemade (by sue) beef jerky valentine off the counter.  the finn/diarrhea monster sleeps…hopefully i will later.