Take a look at these 2 commercials and what sticks out the most?

Old School:

New School:

Anything catch your attention about the commercials. Of course the old commercial is corny but did you notice the difference in the families? Where is the father in the new family?

When I saw this on TV I got a little mad and said to myself. “Is it just the norm now to depict the black family as a single mother household?” “Have you ever seen an advertisement with any family sitting at the dinner table and it is not a traditional family unit?” But, I guess this is the new reality of how the black family is perceived. The statistics also don’t lie because we have so many children born out of wedlock. It is a subtle message but sometimes the truth hurts…

Posted by kdub under Opinions & Mahogany Alert & Posts worth wasting 2 minutes on | 4 Comments »

OK. If you haven’t heard already Dr. James D. Watson, Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer, does not like black people. I don’t know if that is the case but he does think that Africans are intellectually inferior…

In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Before I even address that comment I want to tell a story about myself in school working on my bachelors, wont mention the school but it is the best engineering school in the South, and when I had an epiphany about intelligence. There is a general class on electromagnetics that everyone has to take if you are majoring in electrical engineering. That was the hardest class I think I have ever had. I would study, study, study and I still only had a surface level understanding of what was going on in the class. It actually seemed like everyone else was in the same boat and the grades reflected it because the average was around the mid 30’s out of 100. But, there were two people in the class that just got it. A Russian dude that was probably 30 at the time and a good friend of mine from NY. He had dreads and looked nothing like a stereotypical engineer but he was a genius. The two of them basically taught the rest of us enough so we could just pass the class…and we were are all extremely bright but we needed help.

What I found was that there are a lot of smart people of all different races. The common denominators of most of them (not all)…a good drive to succeed, decent schools growing up, and someone at home (parents, mentor, etc.) that instilled good educational habits. Then there are just some that are plain geniuses and it was just a gift. I saw as many white, Asian, Indian, and Black people who fell in the genius category but way more middle-upper class white people in the pretty smart but not genius area. So, I believe that your environment and home factors really have a big factor on intelligence. Not race or sex and I base that only on the super smart people I have run into in my life because it has been about equal (by race) across the board.

Late yesterday, the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution in New York, issued a statement saying it was suspending the administrative responsibilities of Dr. Watson as chancellor “pending further deliberation.”

On Wednesday, Bruce Stillman, president of the laboratory, had issued a statement saying the laboratory’s trustees, administration and faculty “vehemently disagree” with the sentiments of Dr. Watson, who has served as director and president of the laboratory, whose school of biological sciences is named for him.

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor study plant and animal genetics, cancer and other diseases. Dr. Stillman said they did not “engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson.”…

There is wide agreement among researchers on intelligence that genetic inheritance influences mental acuity, but there is also wide agreement that life experiences, even in the womb, exert a powerful influence on brain structure. Further, there is wide disagreement about what intelligence consists of and how — or even if — it can be measured in the abstract.

For example, in “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, dismissed “the I.Q. industry” as little more than an effort by men of European descent to maintain their prominence in the world.

So to his comments…I have no comment. I’m not smart enough to understand. I will leave you with a little something a different Nobel Prize winner thought…

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.

In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

Article Link - James Watson
Article Link - Albert Einstein

Posted by kdub under Opinions & Current Headlines & Mahogany Alert & Posts worth wasting 2 minutes on | 2 Comments »

Your affiliate marketing business is just that … a business. To be successful, you need to treat your business like a business and focus on growth. Your affiliate links are your business; you are the owner of a marketing company, and it is an asset you can grow into more and more assets. Here are three strategies to build your marketing business.

1. Get your own website and domain name.

It looks cheap and marks you as a “newbie” when you post a long affiliate link in your ads. With domain names as inexpensive as they are now you can purchase your own domain name. You can then either forward your URL to your affiliate link or set yourself up with some free hosting and establish more of a web presence. Your best bet is to write a benefit-full description of your affiliate program and link to your program via an HTML link that is part of your description.

2. Build your own list.

Stop relying on one-shot ads to make you money. Real businesses have repeat customers that they cultivate in order to make more profits. You must do the same. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. Create an email list to keep in touch. Send out periodic tips or articles and focus on helping your customers. Only promote your affiliate links in unobtrusive ways; don’t make your emails one big ad.

One of the best ways to build traffic to your list is to write a short report that describes the benefits of your affiliate program. Make this report available only by email. When someone sends for your report, they are added to your list and you can continue to communicate with them.

3. Build traffic to your own site and list.

This is where you really make your affiliate links your own business. By having your own site and building your own list you are building your own business and brand, not just marketing someone else’s. By doing this, you can market to your own customers over and over again. Do not overlook this point: When your ad redirects a customer to your affiliate link, you have lost that person as your own customer because you lost the ability to communicate with them on a repeat basis. When you direct customers to your own site and list, they build a relationship with you.

There are many ways to build traffic: write articles, post in forums, market in safelists, advertise offline, etc. My advice is to pick one traffic-building method, work on it for awhile, and master it before moving on to something else. If you focus on offline advertising, write and rewrite your ads until you determine how to get the best response. If you market on safelists, make a list of the top 50, and send your ad to 10 each day. Keep testing to make sure your safelists are responsive.

These three strategies will help you build and grow your affiliate marketing business.

Posted by kdub under Personal Growth & seo & Opinions & Finance/Business | No Comments »