My heart was recently warmed to read about the Chains of Cheer inspired all over the country by Starbucks’ “Pass the Cheer” campaign. There are stories all over the news like this one about people buying coffee for the person in line behind them. It just made me so happy to hear about all the seemingly random kindness. But it got me wondering, does it really spread cheer or is it just a good way for people to temporarily feel “better” and a great way for a huge corporation to get even more publicity?

So I decided to take an assessment. I went to our our local Fred Meyer on December 23rd, which has a Starbucks stand in it.

To perform my test, here’s what I did:

First, I ordered my coffee, and while paying asked to pay for the next person in line. I should also mention, this caught the cashier off guard. Maybe she didn’t get the memo?

Second, I sipped my Jo, did my shopping, and did my assessment, which consisted of two parts. Part One: For every person I passed head-on I tried to make eye contact. Then, if eye contact was made, Part Two was to elicit a smile. My requirements were modest, I wasn’t after a big toothy Ho-Ho-Ho smile, but just a simple regular-ole acknowledgment of holiday cheer: a grin (and perhaps a nod).

The store was over-crowded with last-minute gift-buyers and grocery shoppers, an atmosphere, it seemed to me, ripe for the spreading of cheer. I was wrong.

I passed a total of 68 people. Of those, 11 made eye contact with me. That’s a paltry 7.5%.

Even worse, of the 11 people that did make eye contact, only 2 returned my smile. That’s 1.4%.

So, perhaps it was the holiday stress. But isn’t it “lame” that at the height of the holiday season, when cheer should be at its pinnacle, I got such results?

I did some reading in the blogosphere about the Cheer Chains, and turns out there’s a lot of criticism against Starbucks. The yuppies that populate the Starbucks’ drive-through might be in need of an attitude adjustment, but that’s about it. They don’t need food, clean water, sanitation, vaccinations, etc. Why not take all those thousands of donated cups of coffee, pool the money together, combine it with an in-kind donation from the huge corporation, and spend it in lump on a group of truly needy people? Seems to me this would make a true impact instead of sprinkling “cheer” around on people who will go back to being grumpy in a few days anyway.

My experience in Fred Meyer cemented my agreement with the criticism.

I do plan to do my assessment again sometime after the holidays have passed, just to see if it was the stress of that day or if in fact it’s true that only 1.4% of people want to share a smile. And if any of my readers care to do their own assessment and comment the results I would be very interested!

Tonight we watched the movie “Once”. It’s not often that I see a flick that really strikes me as truly out of the box, unique, poetic, and entertaining. Tonight was one of those nights, and Once was one of those movies.

It’s not a love story, it’s not a musical, it’s not a typical indie quirky, it’s not funny, it’s not dramatic, it’s not surprising… yet it is all those things. Perhaps it’s that I really liked the music or the organic way they made the movie. Whatever it was, it struck me enough to inspire me to A) watch the “extra features” on the DVD, B) write about it here, C) buy the soundtrack, and D) have it make a lasting impression on me. So there ya go. My thumbs-up. It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen get a 98% on rottentomatoes.com.

Here’s a great scene, Guy singing “Say It To Me Now”:

Scientists have been able to create DNA in a test tube for 50 years or so, but only in small amounts (IE: one or two genes). Now that is changing. Thanks to computers and other magnificent (and/or scary) technologies we are able to compose entire strands of DNA much like we would a computer program:

“Today a scientist can write a long genetic program on a computer just as a maestro might compose a musical score, then use a synthesizer to convert that digital code into actual DNA. Experiments with “natural” DNA indicate that when a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell’s old DNA and become its new “brain” — telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute.” (Source: WA Post, Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms)

The ramifications of this are quite huge in many aspects of society: medicine, disease, performance, comprehension, growth, energy, and not to mention the capability of basically being able to engineer a being. This raises a lot of questions for me, the main one being: What is nature? For further reading on synthetic DNA, here’s a Google news search.

Walrus can’t swim for long periods of time and they depend on the ice along the water’s edge to hang out. With the gradual decline of Arctic ice, thanks to the warming of earth’s oceans, this creates an over-crowding problem. When something spooks the herd a stampede ensues and invariably the young/weak pay the price.

“As a result, walruses came ashore earlier and stayed longer, congregating in extremely high numbers, with herds as big as 40,000 at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a “haulout” for a century, scientists said.” (source)

This year, out of 200,000 walrus an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 were killed from stampede.

After filling in the basic setup info, the first thing I did was let Facebook search for and find some people I knew. I let it scan through my email contacts list, and it went out and searched its own records for my fellow graduates and other people I “might know” based on information I gave it. Then I got curious and started typing in names of people to search for. I was able to re-connect with some wonderful gems from my past whom I didn’t think I’d ever talk to again. A few of us went so far as to get on the phone for an epic catch up. A few more I’ve been able to meet up with while the timing and location is right.

Online, “friends” exchange nods and comments on the threads each other are sharing. A simple click of the “Like” button joins you to a conversation and affirms to the other end(s) that you’re listening. A few keystrokes in the comment box extends and adds value to the conversation. When you join conversations, you expose yourself. Many people simply “lurk“, while others engage in conversation and open themselves up to growing their network.

Everyone has their own sort of metric for how they decide whether or not to “friend” someone. Or, in more practical terms, who to add to their social graph. I tend towards the more open side of things and will add someone to my graph if I’ve met them in person or if we share some significant common interest or circumstance.

As such I make sure to pay attention to who is listening. Initially Facebook was a place for sharing personal threads, but over time my graph has grown to include many of the professionals I work with.

If you’re not sure what this social networking stuff is, here’s a handy vid from the swell folks over at Common Craft:

If you haven’t heard of http://del.icio.us by now, then you’re in for a treat. This is *the best* way for you to get an introduction to social networking while at the same time solving that pesky “OMG I have too many bookmarks” problem.

Below is a video that explains it all (thanks again to the folks at Common Craft), and for more detail checkout my “Web 2.0 for Beginners” online class.

Halfway through reading up on this story I had to stop because I couldn’t see my monitor anymore through the tears blurring my eyes. Maybe it’s because I’m a new father, or maybe it’s just that the story is so damn heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Anyway, I wanted to pass it along.

First, here’s a good overview of their story: http://cjcphoto.com/can/

Second, photo galleries on their Team Hoyt website: http://www.teamhoyt.com

Third, go to youtube and look at their videos (just search for “team hoyt”): http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=team+hoyt&search=Search

And lastly, for further reading, Team Hoyt is well documented in the blogosphere.