Barack Obama, Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, et al: Viva la Vida

Friday, 04 July 2008

As I reflect on the meaning of Independence Day, I cannot help but to see the stark contrast between the freedoms which we as Americans have come to take for granted and the situation in Romania, where the Romanian people struggle to live day by day under the capricious and self-serving will of oligarchs and authoritarians and a corrupt and impetuous government.

Never you mind that the 2008 NATO Summit was held in Bucharest.

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We the people of the United States, in order to form a

more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic

tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote

the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty

to ourselves and our posterity.

United States Constitution

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The purpose of human government is to enable the people to obtain, individually, for themselves every good and moral opportunity to pursue and enjoy the common good.

Regardless of geographical differences, the purpose is everywhere the same. This, the human spirit has taught us in its longings, triumphs, and struggles through human history. And this wisdom is made more compelling by our own tears, hopes and prayers.

George Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. understood themselves as instruments of human destiny. They saw that the implications of their efforts, sacrifices and triumphs were not limited to their time; they understood that the things for which they struggled for must also belong in a wider sense to humanity and the future.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator

with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The United States Declaration of Independence

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Justice, freedom, family, friendship, virtue, hope, safety, commerce and prosperity - all belong to our happiness. These necessities represent a common good to which we all agree and desire. These are the interests for which government must tirelessly labor- not the special interests, ambitions and profit of corporate lobbyists, secret societies, oligarchs and would be dictators.

Perhaps, this is why Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign message of hope and change has won so many hearts in America and elsewhere in the world. Black, white, yellow, red, brown and, maybe, even green. His is a voice that renews our trust in ourselves, our greatness, and our destiny.

Senator Obama’s voice is a voice that reminds us of our unalienable expectations about progress, human society and government - namely, the struggle and pursuit of a more perfect union regardless of our own individual and collective imperfections.

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Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us

stand with a greater determination. And let us move on

in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make

America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to

make America a better nation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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In the coming presidential election, Americans will be reaching out to reclaim a seemingly lost greatness as a people and a nation. Before that fateful November day, we must reflect on the approaching - and our defining - moment… to do something amazing, to allow miracles to happen and to be a light unto the world.

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The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand

firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or

mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the victory is sure

to come.

Abraham Lincoln

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Therefore, we must renew our pursuit of those more perfect aspirations… for justice, freedom and prosperity as the Senator Obama encourages.

We must do so because our greater aspirations are shared in the hearts of our fellow Americans. We must do so because our greater aspirations are also shared in the hearts and unanswered prayers of peoples everywhere and across time.

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Every step, by which [the people of the United States]

have advanced to the character of an independent

nation, seems to have been distinguished by some

token of providential agency.

George Washington, First Inaugural Address. April 30, 1789.

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If we can understand this as did George Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., let us pursue this more perfect union, the Dream, this revelation and this destiny with unrivaled enthusiasm, courage and determination.

Let us become an example- a greatness, a Truth, an abundant good amd an uncommonly beautiful milestone to even greater greatness.

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Below, Viva la Vida from Cold Play’s new album.
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Stan Faryna
July 4, 2008
Bucharest, Romania

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FEED UPON posts about moby, the electronic pop star, and me:

>> Easter Pilgrimage to Bucovina (A Four Part Recollection)
>> Good Friday and Happy Easter
>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

Or, perhaps, you may be interested in my other posts:

>> Get Good Coffee - Know how to make a great cup of coffee?
>> Second Amendment - What’s the US Supreme Court saying?
>> Facism and Romania - Is this a European trend?
>> Outsourcing - Is outsourcing still a cost saver?
>> Great Websites - What makes a website, great?
>> IAB Europe - What is the Interactive Advertising Bureau?
>> Online Strategy - What are marketing people talking about?
>> Open Source - Did it deliver on the 90’s promise?

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About Stan Faryna

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

Here’s my fair use policy for my content:

If you want to share my content with your own audience, you may quote a brief excerpt, if and only if, you provide proper attribution (Source: The unofficial blog of Stan Faryna) with a direct link to the source. Generally speaking, as long as you are not acting as an agent or on behalf of a corporation or institution, I am not interested in any payment for the quotation or use of a complete article. Nevertheless, you may not republish or translate the entire article without my written permission. Send your request for permission by inmail through Linkedin or contact me through Buzzfuse.

Please Comment and Rate

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Freely comment in the Buzzfuse widget below; Buzzfuse is a third party which will keep your identity private. Also, feel free to give me a 10 star rating; positive feedback encourages me to post more often. If you have a Buzzfuse account, please make sure you are logged in to ensure your rating and feedback is properly registered.

U.S. Supreme Court Embraces the Second Amendment

Thursday, 26 June 2008

In America, the rights of the individual prevail today over the sometimes questionable prerogative of state and government.

The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional right of an American to have a gun and, especially, for the purpose of self-defense in one’s home. This individual right has been clearly acknowledged independent of the necessities of military or militia service, duty and training. The ruling comes out of the Court’s review of District of Columbia v. Heller. Additionally: Washington, D.C.’s many year ban on handguns and a mandatory requirement for gun locks was deemed unconstitutional.

District of Columbia v. Heller is the most important Second Amendment case in American history. Today’s decision is a historical decision that will guide the way courts and States consider questions about the American right of responsible citizens to own a gun for a long time to come. The American right of an individual for self defense is more clearly defined as a Constitutional right.

This historical decision represents the deeply considered and powerful reasoning of Justice Antonin Scalia who led the majority opinion. According to Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett, Justice Scalia’s opinion “is the clearest, most careful interpretation of the meaning of the Constitution ever to be adopted by a majority of the Supreme Court.”

This opinion, writes Barnett in The Wall Street Journal, “is the finest example of what is now called original public meaning jurisprudence ever adopted by the Supreme Court.”

Get the decision here.

More from me about this historical decision soon. Check out my past blog post on the Court’s review of this Second Amendment issue here. Read about an eye witness account of the debate by Victoria Lloyd here.

Below, some initial remarks by others about this historical U.S. Supreme Court decision:

“‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’ is the best way to describe today’s decision,” writes Mathew Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law. “The right to self-defense is a liberty at the core of the American Revolution. It was ordinary people who defended life and liberty against organized tyranny. The King of Great Britain sought to disarm the colonists because he, like any criminal, knew that a disarmed people are a weak people who can easily be overcome. The Second Amendment stands as an impenetrable wall between tyranny and freedom.”

Wayne La Pierre, National Rifle Association’s Executive Vice President, writes in his NRA news blog: “It looks to be a phenomenal day for gun owners and District of Columbia residents. Our Founding Fathers wrote this as an individual right, they intended it to be an individual right, and the Court is now acknowledging that right. It’s a historic day for us as gun owners and us as Americans… The next step is to ensure that every American has access to this right, no matter where they live. This court decision, I believe, will help us get there.”

Within an hour of the release of the Heller decision, Lawrence Solum had his initial remarks online here.

“My initial impression is that Scalia made a compelling case for striking down the statute within the original public meaning framework. Moreover, he is surely correct that the prior decisions of the Court do not foreclose the result reached in Heller,” writes Solum. “Heller is important for many reasons, but one of them is that it offers a rare glimpse of originalist methodology operating outside the constraints of a field impacted by controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

“Anti-gun politicians can no longer deny that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right,” said NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox. “All law-abiding Americans have a fundamental, God-given right to defend themselves in their homes. Washington, D.C. must now respect that right.”

Below, Iron Maiden (Trooper) with footage from the movie, The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson.
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Stan Faryna
June 26, 2008
Bucharest, Romania

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FEED UPON posts about moby, the electronic pop star, and me:

>> Easter Pilgrimage to Bucovina (A Four Part Recollection)
>> Good Friday and Happy Easter
>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

Or, perhaps, you may be interested in my other posts:

>> Get Good Coffee - Know how to make a great cup of coffee?
>> Second Amendment - What’s the US Supreme Court saying?
>> Facism and Romania - Is this a European trend?
>> Outsourcing - Is outsourcing still a cost saver?
>> Great Websites - What makes a website, great?
>> IAB Europe - What is the Interactive Advertising Bureau?
>> Online Strategy - What are marketing people talking about?
>> Open Source - Did it deliver on the 90’s promise?

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About Stan Faryna

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

Here’s my fair use policy for my content:

If you want to share my content with your own audience, you may quote a brief excerpt, if and only if, you provide proper attribution (Source: The unofficial blog of Stan Faryna) with a direct link to the source. Generally speaking, as long as you are not acting as an agent or on behalf of a corporation or institution, I am not interested in any payment for the quotation or use of a complete article. Nevertheless, you may not republish or translate the entire article without my written permission. Send your request for permission by inmail through Linkedin or contact me through Buzzfuse.

Please Comment and Rate

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Freely comment in the Buzzfuse widget below; Buzzfuse is a third party which will keep your identity private. Also, feel free to give me a 10 star rating; positive feedback encourages me to post more often. If you have a Buzzfuse account, please make sure you are logged in to ensure your rating and feedback is properly registered.

The Yellow Brick Road: Adventures in Yuwie-land 0-3

0-3 Letter from a friend - oh boy!

Learn about Yuwie here. Read the previous Yellow Brick Road post here. OR read my initial thoughts about Yuwie here.

Below, some music for the right mood: Ease on Down the Road from The Wiz with Diana Ross and a younger, less controversial Michael Jackson.

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Letter from a Friend Regarding Yuwie (slighlty edited)

Stan,

Yuwie’s about hope! It’s about hope for me and mine and lot of good peeps you know around here, you know. Could be about hope for a lot more people than you or I can imagine when you are writing and thinking high in your fancy, palace-like office in Bucharest. Yuwie’s about me believing there’s some kind of chance to make it through the roughest times we did see. We’ve done it before. You know, we’re tough as nails. We’re gonna do it again and again until we don’t have to no more. If it takes one year or two years like you said, I don’t care! Oh well, I do hope you’re wrong. I know you ain’t wrong much, but “sometimes” you are “mistaken” every now and then. I can count them on one hand, you know. Could be, two. That’s why I hope you are “mistaken” again this time. Don’t you be mad at me for this hope. I know how you get! Stubborn, obstinate mad about the possibility of being mistaken, wasting your time and making mistakes - you want to forget that there’s this messy, fun side of being human. Can’t be human without it.

Understand me, you know. I gotta do something that gives me hope that one day, things will work out, that ends will meet and that that Damakleez (ms?) sword is removed from hanging over our heads on a thread. Over our hearts. If you know a better way that I can do something from home when the kids are at school or sleeping. Tell me! If you don’t have a better idea, get on the bus and tell the driver where to go. Do you remember that you told me that getting a computer and internet was the right thing. You told me that it’s going to change my life. Yes. It did. It opened Jeff and my minds. Our map of the world and ideas got bigger. I think you called it “weltanschauung.” Its a big word, I know how you like them. But I need a bigger change. Something I can feel. Something I can feel like a big, big sigh of relief because something good is finally going to happen, you know. Do you get me?

The recession ain’t just a scary news headline like it’s for you! It ain’t just an intellectual’s “problematic” for you to think about while your sipping your cafe-o-lays or whatever you call them. Whatever name that sell-out media gives to the problem, it’s a problem that our family has to live with: higher prices at the gas pump, grocery store and just about everywhere else. Everything’s more expensive! But ain’t like we’re making more money. Ain’t like we can either, you know. Jeff’s already working 40 hours of overtime per week and hes taking anything he can pick up on the side. We’re going to lose the house if its to keep on going like this another six months. Get on the bus!

So you were right about how bad things would get: unemployment up, pay down, prices up, access to credit down, gas up, gold up, stock market down and the value of a dollar going down down down. I hoped you’d be wrong about these things. What’s that Romanian word for “things”? Chestie? Nevermind. How do you say it when experts or others are “mistaken”? “Hasty conclusion”? Or something like that? I know you’re not glad the “problematic” came out jus like you said it would. I know that must be hard on that big compassionate heart of yours when you’re right about something bad happening and real people you know get hurt and you don’t feel like there is anything you can do about it. It’s not something you can gloat on, I know. God’s gifts are stranger than fiction! You know that better than me. This time, you do something about it! Get on the bus!

This time you don’t have to sit there, being a helpless sympathetic far, far away, commiserating with me on my problems in the email and do nothing. Do the right thing. Help me and others figure out Yuwie and how to make money on it. Yuwie doesn’t guarantee people will make any kind of money. So! They don’t promise anything to anyone in the small print, you know. So. But Yuwie got a hard-coded system that is designed to pay out. The way I see it we only need some bright guys to put their heads together and figure out how to get that pay out without breaking Yuwie’s rules. Like they say, keep it simple, stupid. You have to figure out how we can get the payout because the system can’t not give it to us. Are you in or are you out? Surprise. You have no choice. Your in. I just signed you up. If you call yourself, my friend, that is. Get on the bus and tell the driver where we going.

This time I’ll prove that your “very much mistaken” (another expression that you like to say) about Yuwie. If you still call yourself my friend, you will help me prove you, “in fact”, were “mistaken”. Ain’t that jus deserts! As I view you, you need to laugh at yourself more and this is going to help you develop a real sense of humor. Not that cynical, almost-British, bloodless sarcasm that you think is a sense of humor. Its ironic that you hate London when I can see that you would be so at home there, you know. Back to what I was saying. If you’re half as intelligent as I think you are, you’re gonna figure out how honest people like me can make an honest living on Yuwie. It doesn’t make sense that there’s no way that most people can’t make more than $20/month like you were saying. So if a week’s not enough time and you need time to think it our, take two weeks. If you need it, take more time. I know you’re not feeling well and it could be that your a little scared that your time may be coming, but I know God is going to use you to do more things. I have no doubt. Jus don’t overwork yourself on this. Take care of yourself, you hear! “Somehow” I know you do never take care of yourself and my words are wasted on your eyes. If its about your health, I know I’m wasting my words unless I’m talking to Nicole. What’s her email, again? And Yuwie? Jus figure it out.

Yellow brick road! YELLOW BRICK ROAD! I’ll give you a yellow brick in the head !&^%$@)*@^! ^^!~*&^A^!

Oh yeah, I got your note asking if it was going to be ok with me that you include more of our “correspondence” in your blog. All I got to say is don’t you dare mention my name in blog posts of any kind, anywhere or I’ll beat you double silly the next time you try to come around here, you hear? If it helps you, it’s ok for you to use what I wrote. No name. No city. No date. Never. No matter what. No matter whom. Or your dead. “Really. Really…” dead. Oh, I almost forgot to mention how I liked how you edited my email to you. If you have time, fix this one too. Spell check it. I know you got no time for that nonsense. HAhaha! Jus do it, you know. My friend Sally didn’t believe that I had wrote the last email after your edits. You’re good. You’re also a good Man. Do you know I pray for you? Not a lot of good men out there in the world that have the power to make things happen. Your one of them. Here comes my very much relished opportunity to quote Booker to YOU for once…

“Keep on keeping on.”

Yours truly,

[author's name omitted at the author's request]

Learn about Yuwie here. Read the previous Yellow Brick Road post here. OR read my initial thoughts about Yuwie here.

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FEED UPON posts about moby, the electronic pop star, and me:

>> Easter Pilgrimage to Bucovina (A Four Part Recollection)
>> Good Friday and Happy Easter
>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

Or, perhaps, you may be interested in my other posts:

>> Get Good Coffee - Know how to make a great cup of coffee?
>> Second Amendment - What’s the US Supreme Court saying?
>> Facism and Romania - Is this a European trend?
>> Outsourcing - Is outsourcing still a cost saver?
>> Great Websites - What makes a website, great?
>> IAB Europe - What is the Interactive Advertising Bureau?
>> Online Strategy - What are marketing people talking about?
>> Open Source - Did it deliver on the 90’s promise?

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About Stan Faryna

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

Here’s my fair use policy for my content:

If you want to share my content with your own audience, you may quote a brief excerpt, if and only if, you provide proper attribution (Source: The unofficial blog of Stan Faryna) with a direct link to the source. Generally speaking, as long as you are not acting as an agent or on behalf of a corporation or institution, I am not interested in any payment for the quotation or use of a complete article. Nevertheless, you may not republish or translate the entire article without my written permission. Send your request for permission by inmail through Linkedin or contact me through Buzzfuse.

Please Comment and Rate

Don’t want to register to comment on this page?

Freely comment in the Buzzfuse widget below; Buzzfuse is a third party which will keep your identity private. Also, feel free to give me a 10 star rating; positive feedback encourages me to post more often. If you have a Buzzfuse account, please make sure you are logged in to ensure your rating and feedback is properly registered.

The Yellow Brick Road: Adventures in Yuwie-land 0-2

0-2 Preface, Yellow Brick Road, Adventures in Yuwie-land

Note: special thanks to Stuart Godwin for inspiring me to try writing in a different style.

…

Don’t play it. Really. Don’t do it. Because it’s god-awful: Eminem, Yellow Brick Road

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Don’t know what Yuwie is about, then read my initial thoughts about Yuwie here.

NOT Yuwie again!

‘Fraid so.

An hour ago, I got a message in Yuwie from an old friend. My G-mail inbox is flooded with Yuwie messages- 24-7.

Note to self: make new a new email account for spam and registrations. Soon.

“So, now what? How do I make money?”

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Below, a little quickie to set the mood: Follow The Yellow Brick Road

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I calmly replied in my typical know-it-all cool:

“Don’t expect to make money anytime soon - if ever. If you’re lucky and you work really, really hard and you work really, really smart on this, maybe you’ll just have your heart broken.

Maybe. But I doubt it. It will prolly be worse.

This is nothing like going down the rabbit hole! This is more like following the yellow brick road. And we all know what Dorothy finds behind the curtain.”

Below, background music for your heightened reading pleasure: Goldfrapp, Happiness.

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Then, I started to get nervous, I lit another cigarette - unaware that a lit cigarette was burning in the ashtray. And I wrote more:

“You’re going to regret all the time you put into Yuwie - especially if you try this all by yourself. It’s a bigger time sink than World of Warcraft… or, perhaps, even Travian. [gasp!]

You’re going to blame me later for encouraging you in this madness.

Or you’re going to blame me right now for discouraging you and, ultimately, holding you back from discovering your true potential in network marketing. That sucks for me. Either way.

Honestly, I don’t know if you can make money on Yuwie - I haven’t seen more than a few proof of payments that go as much as a hundred bucks for a month. Worse, my gambler’s sense gives me a feeling of a happy fool’s paradise.”

…

And my post script:

“Your chances to make the kind of earnings that you’d actually appreciate are a lot higher if you were to become a compulsive blogger and promote your blogs like mad through Buzzfuse’s premium services.

“At least hold off a bit on Yuwie until I can work out some s.m.a.r.t. goals, pull some people together, and we can set out on this misadventure in the right frame of mind.

Can you hold off a week? Please.”

I pushed send.

…

Then, I started to imagine her writing her reply…

“What will I be doing, six to twelve months from now?! And why can’t I use Yuwie as a platform for blogging and Buzzfuse promotion?

What will I burn time on doing- if not Yuwie? Will it be yet another thing that I can’t build upon and neither grow, nurture, see flower and bud, nor pluck fruit from?

That’s what the Internet is about, isn’t it? Keeping busy? Building and growing value of our user-centric online activities?

So why shouldn’t I start growing something on Yuwie now- even if it takes 12 months or more? It’s time to plow the furroughs and seed them. It’s spring, didn’t you know!

Besides, if Yuwie takes off, I want to be one of those early adopters that rake it in when Yuwie topples MySpace and Facebook! I want to be part of something significant, exciting, and glamorous. I want to ride a trend on the uptake.

Maybe, this is all old goose for you Mister Internet Rock Star since 1996. But what about ME?!

So now what? Why aren’t you getting behind me on this! How shall I lay the first stone of my new empire?

Anyway, can’t we just be foolish… together!?” [nudge, nudge]

Bottomline: No Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Magic Soap for you come Christmas - if you don’t figure this out fast. [OMFG!]

…

This was what I imagined might be her reply.

And I was about to write a reply to her when I suddenly realized that I had merely imagined her reply to my reply.

Everything was going to be OK. Or not.

…

Instead, her reply would come like a flurry and rain of slaps far worse, more furious, and terribly unforgiving - much more than I imagined myself deserving of…

I paused, lit a cigarette, and took a deep, long drag.

“This is going to be a long night,” I thought to myself.

…

Hopefully, she watched the explanatory videos at the beginning and end of the overly ad-crowded sign-up process.

I checked my Gmail inbox.

Yuwie had sent me a message: check my Yuwie inbox.

I had many new messages waiting for me in Yuwie.

Hopefully, again, and for her sanity and mine, she skipped all the MLM and other ads in the sign-up process.

I checked my Yuwie inbox.

…

Yup.

There was a message from her.

Learn about Yuwie here. Read the next Yellow Brick Road post here. OR read my initial thoughts about Yuwie here.

…

Below, background music to surf the web by: Mika v. Pull Tiger Tail, Grace Kelly.

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In case you missed it, the blog post that started us down the yellow brick road is here.

Stan Faryna
April 18, 2008
Bucharest, Romania
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FEED UPON posts about moby, the electronic pop star, and me:

>> Easter Pilgrimage to Bucovina (A Four Part Recollection)
>> Good Friday and Happy Easter
>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

Or, perhaps, you may be interested in my other posts:

>> Get Good Coffee - Know how to make a great cup of coffee?
>> Second Amendment - What’s the US Supreme Court saying?
>> Facism and Romania - Is this a European trend?
>> Outsourcing - Is outsourcing still a cost saver?
>> Great Websites - What makes a website, great?
>> IAB Europe - What is the Interactive Advertising Bureau?
>> Online Strategy - What are marketing people talking about?
>> Open Source - Did it deliver on the 90’s promise?

………………………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………………………………………………..

About Stan Faryna

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

Here’s my fair use policy for my content:

If you want to share my content with your own audience, you may quote a brief excerpt, if and only if, you provide proper attribution (Source: The unofficial blog of Stan Faryna) with a direct link to the source. Generally speaking, as long as you are not acting as an agent or on behalf of a corporation or institution, I am not interested in any payment for the quotation or use of a complete article. Nevertheless, you may not republish or translate the entire article without my written permission. Send your request for permission by inmail through Linkedin or contact me through Buzzfuse.

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Making Lots of Money on Yuwie?

Below, some beautiful and exhilarating music for your reading. Polovtsian dances from Alexander Borodin’s opera, Prince Igor. Performed in this clip by the Berliner Philharmoniker and conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

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Make Lots of Money

Less than a year online, another social network platform is slotted for takeoff on the runway of success. It’s called Yuwie. Based on open source technologies used by MySpace and others, Yuwie allows users to customize profiles, import videos and pictures, blog, easily make friends with Yuwie members, make clubs, and interact with their Yuwie group of friends.

According to Alexa, the Internet traffic keeper, Yuwie is one of the top 500 most trafficked websites. But what’s driving the popularity of Yuwie is not its features and cheap dressing on an open source solution. It’s the business model. Yuwie ’s business model is based on sharing advertising revenue with its users. Remind you of MLM? Yup. Yuwie is MLM. And the so-called unwashed masses of online users like that idea a lot.

People like it so much that Yuwie boasts almost 600,000 registered users within nine months of going online. It went online in July 2007. According to my estimates, Yuwie has about 3,000 active users on the website at any given time. If Yuwie is lucky, they have about 200 users that are so active that those users spend four hours or more per day, everyday, on Yuwie.

Revenue Sharing

Some critics are horrified by Yuwie’s seemingly indecent revenue sharing plan. Revenue sharing seems to some to be a contradiction to the spirit of social networking. Although name brand companies and rock star developers are championed on Wall Street (NYSE), Hyde Street (London), and elsewhere for the unrealistic cash value of their social networks, the same financial analysts suggest that social networking, users, and money should not mix. That it’s vulgar.

Those critics are terribly mistaken.

Yuwie has problems, but the concept of sharing advertising revenue with users is not one of Yuwie’s problems. In fact, not sharing advertising revenues may become a big problem in the near future for MySpace, Facebook, HighFive, and Linkedin. Web 2.0 without users is nothing more than Web 0.0 (game over).

Already, Yuwie is capturing on MySpace, Facebook and Youtube defections and recruitment at a rate of thousands of users per day.

Yuwie

That’s not to say that Yuwie doesn’t have all the ear marks, tell tale signs, and stink of a hustle, scam or pyramid scheme. In fact, Yuwie promises users some very abstract concepts on how users can earn money from page views. Yuwie also seems to deliver less than a little of the cash it gets from advertising. Worse, most of Yuwie’s ads represent cheap bulk ads handled by the same weasels that do spam and spyware. Despite these often discussed problems, Yuwie users seem to be more forgiving than any other user base.

By the skin of the founder’s teeth (Korry Rogers), Yuwie just barely avoids being defined as a scam or pyramid scheme. However, many suspect Yuwie to be a scam and a scheme. Using Yuwie’s website and services costs nothing; anyone can register and get started without a credit card or paypal account. In my opinion, Yuwie’s users might benefit from paid premium services. But let’s leave that rant for later.

In a BBC News feature on Yuwie, Korry Rogers seems to suggest that Yuwie users can make between 400 and 500 dollars per month. In Yuwie introduction videos, it is also suggested that it is possible for high performance users to build up to incomes as much as $5,000/month. After corresponding with active Yuwie users, I found there are very, very few people who have been known to make thousands of dollars in a single month. Most people are self-reporting earnings a lot less than they had expected.

Pyramid Principle

Yuwie earnings include earnings based on referral or downline activities. According to an article in the UK’s Guardian, earning on the downline can reach down to 10 levels of referral’s referrals. However, few users are reporting having downlines past level three at this early stage. The bigger problem, explains one active Yuwie user, is keeping the downline focused on the recruitment, mentoring, and creation of interesting content that will generate sufficient page views.

Below, some more background music. Cold Play, See You Soon.

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Yuwie Earnings

Yuwie earnings are based on pageviews lasting from three to five seconds each. These pageviews generate the ad impressions that Yuwie provides to advertisers and online ad networks. A user’s pageviews include both the personal pageviews of the user (looking at other people’s profiles and content AND those pageviews of the user’s profile and content made by others. As most realize, building a strong downline seem to be key to Yuwie earnings. Alone and single-handedly, the most hard-working user may not get $20/month for 16 hours/day of Yuwie contact building.

Best Practices

According to some of Yuwie’s most successful earners, building a successful Yuwie practice and downline requires six things:

1. Coming into Yuwie with a group of 12+ persons committed to roughly two to four hours per day through a two year effort, come hell or high water…

2. Developing ongoing insight into common issues, the big challenges, and Yuwie-user best practices

3. Converting insights into strategy, methods and practices that can be easily adopted by the group and effectively used by every level of the downline

4. An attitude of experimentation and open-mindedness to trying out new methods with the patience and understanding that most of this will not pan out as individual experiments

5. Technical support to develop scripts and other tools that will enable automatic realization of Yuwie connections, etc.

6. Determination of each individual to succeed in developing a powerful downline and their empathic ability to provide morale support for the other members of the group.

Imho, any business is likely to succeed with such a force behind it.

Case Study

Myself, I’m interested in making a case study of Yuwie and I’d like to form a group of 24 persons (ideally, half that never had any experience with Yuwie but are interested in it and half that may already be involved in Yuwie). Whatever happens will happen.

I am mostly interested in the experience of users across the long haul. Such a case study may provide me with the needed insight to strengthen a business plan that I am developing for a new kind of social network service. This doesn’t mean that I won’t participate actively in the group’s work. In fact, I can provide several of the needed factors to ensure we are doing everything we need to do for this group to succeed.

With the help of a top Yuwie user, I have set up my Yuwie profile and achieved a high level performance (1000 Yuwie friends and 16,000 page views) within 15 days with no more than two hours spent on Yuwie per day. I am told that the average user would accomplish the same results in three months with 2x to 3x the hours spent per day.

For example, I have retained a top Yuwie earner that is providing consulting to me on best practices and common problems. I’d like to get started with this next week. What about you?

If you would like to join me in this online adventure in network marketing, please let me know by contacting me through Buzzfuse or Linkedin.

If you would like to learn more about Yuwie, click here. OR read more about Yuwie in my Yellow Brick Road series, click here.

Below, some beautiful piano music. Helen Grimaud plays the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 17, The Tempest.

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Stan Faryna
April 16, 2008
Bucharest, Romania
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FEED UPON posts about moby, the electronic pop star, and me:

>> Easter Pilgrimage to Bucovina (A Four Part Recollection)
>> Good Friday and Happy Easter
>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

Or, perhaps, you may be interested in my other posts:

>> Get Good Coffee - Know how to make a great cup of coffee?
>> Second Amendment - What’s the US Supreme Court saying?
>> Facism and Romania - Is this a European trend?
>> Outsourcing - Is outsourcing still a cost saver?
>> Great Websites - What makes a website, great?
>> IAB Europe - What is the Interactive Advertising Bureau?
>> Online Strategy - What are marketing people talking about?
>> Open Source - Did it deliver on the 90’s promise?

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About Stan Faryna

Mr. Faryna is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

Stan Faryna is also a Global Voices author and translator. Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna also served as editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

Here’s my fair use policy for my content:

If you want to share my content with your own audience, you may quote a brief excerpt, if and only if, you provide proper attribution (Source: The unofficial blog of Stan Faryna) with a direct link to the source. Generally speaking, as long as you are not acting as an agent or on behalf of a corporation or institution, I am not interested in any payment for the quotation or use of a complete article. Nevertheless, you may not republish or translate the entire article without my written permission. Send your request for permission by inmail through Linkedin or contact me through Buzzfuse.

Please Comment and Rate

Don’t want to register to comment on this page?

Freely comment in the Buzzfuse widget below; Buzzfuse is a third party which will keep your identity private. Also, feel free to give me a 10 star rating; positive feedback encourages me to post more often. If you have a Buzzfuse account, please make sure you are logged in to ensure your rating and feedback is properly registered.

A Sermon for Sci-Fi Fans: Who knows right from wrong?!

Below, the cinema trailer for Season Four of the new Dr. Who.

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Although the large base of Dr. Who fans tend to be from the UK, the BBC sci-fi tv series made some headway in Europe and in the US in the past. And, also now in the present. Dr. Who is about a human-looking alien (his mother was an Earthling) who has a fancy for Earth, humanity, and British chicks. Dr. Who may be the longest running sci-fi tv series ever, anywhere. It first aired in 1963. The television show has also received many British television awards through the years.

Below, background music. Geoff, Rose.

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For those unfamiliar with the Doctor, the Doctor travels through time and space in an unsual and, perhaps, organic, transportational unit called the Tardis. The Tardis looks like an old British police call box from the outside. The Doctor tends to “land” or “appear” in the nick of time to save the day - wherever and whenever the Tardis “lands” or appears. Another thing: the Doctor reincarnates which makes it convenient for the producers to change the actors playing the Doctor.

And another thing: the old show was more of an intellectual experience; it was more about the human story. In fact, the special effects, sets and costumes were really proaste. No, I mean really, really bad…

Romania: Authoritarians Trample On Constitution, Civil Rights

Treading fearlessly…

Sounds and images from Kazakhstan (wink) for your reading background music (below)

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In preparation for the NATO summit and during the period of the NATO Summit in Bucharest, the Romanian state and Bucharest city government may have violated all or more than the following Romanian Constitutional articles:

1. Article 21 Access to Justice
2. Article 23 Individual Freedom
3. Article 24 Right to legal counsel
4. Article 25 Freedom of movement
5. Article 29 Freedom of conscience
6. Article 30 Freedom of expression
7. Article 39 Freedom of assembly
8. Article 40 Right of association

In consideration of these abuses of national and local government powers, a Romanian civil liberties group has filed an official complaint with the Romanian Public Ministry - the same institution which may be responsible for said violations. Some Romanians, however, believe that complaints should be taken to the EU Courts for Human Rights in Brussels. They argue that the Romanian Public Ministry is unlikely to condemn itself or those officials within the institution which continuously demonstrates its contempt for the Romanian Constitution.

The most cynical of Romanian critics believe this civil liberties group is conspiring with the Romanian government to take the heat off by allowing such questions to be handled by the foremost guilty party and, as soon as possible, to be swept under the carpet and forgotten. Interestingly, this is no serious story about this in the mainstream Media (Television, Print or Radio).

NATO Summit in Bucharest may have been too big for Romania

02 April

NATO Summit in Bucharest

As the minutes tick closer to the start of today’s NATO Summit in Bucharest, some Romanian bloggers question the zeal of their leaders in ensuring there is neither public protest nor questions to the value of NATO for Romania or other European states- neither in Bucharest nor Romania in general. Although an outspoken and public critic of the flagging commitment of other NATO members, Romanian President Traian Basescu believes that NATO remains a national priority for Romania.

Yesterday’s press conference on the arrival of President Bush and the upco