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The Sexualization of Platonic Business Relationships: How Many Families Do You Need?

I’ve always found it odd when people you work with, or collaborate with, or may work with in the future, use the phrase “getting into bed together” as a business condiment as if to somehow oddly sexualize what is, in fact and deed, a working relationship that is, if anything, asexually platonic by necessity of average function.

I wonder why there is a need to make a business contract a personal and intimate formality in such a dramatic manner.  Private relationships are bound by blood and emotion and decrees of love and passion.  No public business should operate under any of those terms.  I always wonder why that “in bed” phrase is so important for some people to utter during a negotiation or in a team spirit meeting.

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Science Park: A Last Look Around Pau

Pau is a small provincial city, it has long been a haven for the British wanting to escape Blighty for the good of their health. There are many spas in the area and the climate is reputed to be good for your health. The older architecture is a mix of “alpine’ grand villa and a good dose of British garden. There is a cathedral and a university and the small provincial airport is now opening up to fulfill Pau’s emerging status as the gateway to the Pyrenees.

The airport’s development and the expansion of the scientific departments at the University have led to the development of a science park on the outskirts of the city.  I have, on past visits, caught tantalizing glimpses of some of the buildings and was determined to explore further before we left Pau for good.

After one particularly frustrating afternoon, I declared a time out and went exploring and headed straight for the science park.

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Are Google Voice and Blogger Next on the Axeman’s Block?

I am still devastated by the news Google Reader will be killed as a service on July 1, 2013.  As a writer and publisher, 50 times a day, I get all my clean feed news from Google Reader.  Sure, Feedly seems like an okay replacement for now, but what concerns me most about the demise of Google Reader is what that closing means for other non-tip-of-the-spear products like Google Voice and Blogger in the Google arsenal of free services.

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Counterattacking the I See You Mannequin with Stealth Wear

Forget the Rise of the Machines — the mannequins are spying on you!  Now, as you shop, you have non-human orbs watching you from afar and evaluating your every move.  Don’t look now, but the empty stares flirting around you are committing you to memory!

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Boles Blogs Browser Wars: Chrome vs. Firefox vs. Safari

As you may know, Boles Blogs is now a combination of 14 other blogs that used to make up the Boles Blogs Network.  Everything is simpler, and more “findable” now that we’re all under the same mindset, and that’s a good and grand thing.  We’re also now on the WordPress.com “Business” platform, and that bundling of valuable resources all in one place is one of the fine benefits of being hosted on WordPress.

One of the chits of the Business platform is having free and unfettered access to any and all “Premium” WordPress.com themes.  We are currently using the keen and very clean premium “Elemin” theme you can see in the screenshot below.  I’m viewing the page in the Chrome browser for Mac:

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Why 14 Blogs Became Boles Blogs on WordPress.com Business

For several years, I have published, and edited, and managed, a 14-blog strong consortium of blogs loosely called “The Boles Blogs Network” right here on WordPress.com.  It was a great delight publishing all those blogs, but now that WordPress.com is bundling services for single blogs, it started to become clear to me that I needed to condense and consolidate my blogs in order to keep them not just alive, but thriving. Out of 14 blogs, I initially kept three blogs:  Boles Blues, the newest and fastest growing, GO INSIDE Magazine, the first online entity that found great success in publication, and Urban Semiotic, the first blog I owned on WordPress.com.

Going from 14 to three blogs was an eye opener.  Everything was faster to publish and articles were easier to find.  As I began exploring the WordPress.com store, I saw a Pro Blogger bundle of services for $99.00USD per year and a “Business” class of service for $299.00USD a year.  Here is what the WordPress.com Business bundle offers:

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The Lack of Durable Goods and Intentional Obsolescence

When I was a young boy, I was raised on a consumer mindset that if you purchased something — a watch, a machine, a car, a bicycle, something mechanical, etc. — you could expect that, if you treated it right, that product would at least last the rest of your lifetime.  Now, as an older man, I have come to realize that new, expensive, things purchased today have an intentional obsolescence built into them that forces you to re-purchase those things several times in your lifetime, creating a Möbius Strip of non-durable goods that endlessly cheapens your purchasing power.

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LeRoy Neiman Blended Business with Brushstrokes

LeRoy Neiman was — more than anything — a businessman.  He knew how to make money with bright colors and call it “art.”  I don’t really consider LeRoy a True Artist — and I don’t think he did, either — because he was sort of cynical about the Art Game and he played the corners and surrounded the edges of the business of squeezing as much profit as possible from his palette of colors.  He was more publisher than painter.  More printmaker than trailblazer.  Yesterday, LeRoy Neiman died rich at age 91, and the Art community is left behind to struggle with the aftermath of his legacy of commerce over providence and the fact of how the bottom line can mockingly override original intention.

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Titanic Perfume for that Dead Fish Smell: Ten Sentence Story #152

Becky was watching the debut of the Yankees against Tampa Bay this afternoon when she decided to figure out what she wanted to watch after the baseball game.

Her eye landed on QVC and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing from 8-10pm tonight in the program description:

New, HD, Jewelry, tableware and fragrances inspired by artifacts from the Titanic. (Shopping, 60 Mins.).

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The INTJ Interpreter

On June 24, 2005, I wrote — Mark of the INTJ Rational-Mastermind — and today, that article has over 440 comments:

My temperament type is INTJ or Rational-Mastermind and I’ve known that over many tests over the arc of my life and here is a fun link to a fancy online report on my personality type that makes it really easy and clear to understand how your type affects you and others around you.

Living as an INTJ can be challenging because so few people really understand how you think or where you’re coming from, and in a business setting, we INTJs really need to be careful because our comments are so often negatively misunderstood as we operationally make our way through the world.

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