I think there is some cultural intricacies that are common to all island peoples. The Dominican Republic is somewhat unusual as an island state in that it shares the relatively small land mass with another country.

I have lived on an island for over two years and I love the way things are more relaxed. The pace on an island is just different.

Another thing that is different is Food. A typical meal in the DR might consist of rice, red beans, stewed goat meat, salad and fried plantains. Did you know that beans and rice provide a nearly perfect balance of dietary protein? If you have an aversion to spicy foods, use caution in the Caribbean. I was at a small concert in North America that was being catered by some ladies from the Caribbean and their Jerk Chicken nearly made my head explode. But it was delicious.

I hadn’t realized that the Dominican Republic is served by several international airports due to its size. If you are vacationing there, try to arrange a fight that lands near your destination to avoid the expense and delay of a lot of overland travel.

I have been snorkeling for two years now and I would love to see what a Caribbean coral reef looks like in person. In the DR, when you are finished swimming with the fishes, you can go back to a beach side restaurant and have dinner with their less lucky schoolmates.

I would be happy to see so many tourist dollars flow into poor countries like the DR that everyone in the country can have a significant benefit from the tourist industry. Agri-tourism and Eco-tourism are real growth markets that deserve some serious consideration as well. I know about a Fair Trade Cocoa Co-op that I would love to visit and I have never been in a real jungle.

Back when I used to have a 6-2 job roasting Fair Trade Organic Coffee, the co-op was expanding into Fair Trade Chocolate production. My production supervisor was showing a guy around the coffee roastery one day and she introduced him to me as the guy who was going to be running the Chocolate Factory. I love it when I can manage to think up and deliver a joke simultaneously. I spoke in a regretful tone warning him that it wasn’t going to be at all like the movie. Willy Wonka was in theaters at the time.

He also had a quick wit. He corrected me by saying that he expected it to be exactly like the movie and then as, an afterthought, confirming that we were both talking about Chocolat.

Gift Card Lab lets you Design a Custom Visa Gift Card with Your Own Photo. The possibilities for making a personal statement with these cards are limitless. The range of the actual value to the receiver of the card can be anything from $25 to $250. The person ordering a gift card pays an added fee of $5.95 and there is no extra charge for uploading a custom image and you can also add two lines of embossed text for free.

The cards will be available in November in time for the holiday season but you can try your hand at designing a card right now by taking part in a design contest with big cash prizes. I like the idea of Visa gift cards more than store gift cards. I know a few kids who tend to have a favorite clothing boutique and they think everywhere else sucks. I think the boutique store that they like sucks, but Christmas is not a time to have an argument about personal taste…

Peace on Earth

I said yesterday that I was going to present a diagram of a chaotic system. Here it is.

If the water flow from the tap is at just the right level, this water wheel will change direction at irregular intervals. It is, by definition a chaotic system.

It is not random. There is a way to graph a record of the direction changes over time that reveals an intricate pattern. I think.

The new show from the creators of the OC, Gossip Girl, was once destined to be a feature movie starring Lindsay Lohan. I hate to sound like a gossip, but I have heard that she is hard to work with. When the original plans went awry, the OC’s executive producer was approached with the idea of creating a television series around the popular book series.

Episodes of this guilty pleasure air on CW at 9 p.m. EST on Wednesdays.

The video below is me pretending to gossip. No animals were harmed during the making of this video.

I have a very happy and satisfying relationship because we are in agreement about almost everything that matters. A broad topic where we sometimes diverge is education. I have somehow been indoctrinated to think that progressive education is a fine idea.

The arguments that Catherine makes against it are compelling and reasonable. I just have this selfish and emotional urge to participate in progressive education. We used to work together at a democratic school.

Now that our kids are safely ensconced in public schools where they don’t have to worry about learning anything, I am feeling that urge. I have decided to engage my blog reader(s) with a really cool example of a chaotic system. It would be even cooler if you were to build one of your own and send pictures to me

Check tomorrow for my really cool diagram of a chaotic system…

Permission based email marketing is the future. It is also a going concern in the present. iContact grabbed my attention when I saw that they have a Manifesto.

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions. Permission based marketing is a hallmark of marketing with good principles.

What you get from iContact is an on-demand web-based tool that empowers you to take advantage of a host of contact options. You can effectively get your message out to customers and prospective customers. Subscription sites can also use iContact in many effective ways. Mass emailing, newsletters, surveys, autoresponders and even blog updating are made easy and effective using iContact

Once you have a receptive opt in audience, the thing you need to maximize with communication is immediacy.

If you were using iContact as a communications tool, this is basically what your page would look like.

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I think they really may be able to simplify your communication.

You know how Tom was everyone’s first friend on Myspace?

If Microsoft actually does buy Facebook, maybe Bill Gates should be the default first friend. I have a Facebook, I hardly ever look at it and when I do there are people from my extended family inviting me to take part in weird applications.

I also have a MySpace profile that I hardly ever look at. When it was still of some interest to me, I invited all of the various puppets to be my friends. Many of them obliged. Grover is a stuck up jerk. One of my favorite friends is Puppet Tom. He emulates the real Tom from MySpace in a humorous and edgy way.

I think Facebook may soon need a Puppet Bill Gates. I don’t have the time, or the indoor-face-colored felt needed to do this project justice, so I am putting the idea out there to see if there are any takers.

The Colorado State University is in a bit of turmoil after the editor-in-chief of the school paper published an emotional opinion piece that included THE BAD WORD. This doesn’t sound like much of a big deal, but he directed it towards the White House Administration. Republicans within the university community are called for his resignation. He has emphatically said that he will not resign and is making it a 1st Amendment issue. People are pretending to be offended and asking that he be fired.

If you are not damaged by reading the word, go check out the comments that follow J. David McSwane’s published refusal to resign.

I am not offended by profanity. I am not impressed by it either. If I had been looking over Mr. McSwane’s shoulder as he wrote, I would have advised some revision. What’s done is done though and I hope something good comes of the stand that he is now taking on the grounds of freedom of speech.

The phenomenal success of reality tv is spilling over onto the Internet. Check out this wholesome Canadian girl auditioning for a show called The Next Internet Millionaire.

Several episodes have aired already and four contestants have been sent packing. Jaime from Toronto is still hanging in there. Joel Comm is the host and executive producer of this thing. He is a successful internet marketer and the big prize in this contest is a joint venture with him. His experience, connections, and of course CAPITAL, will most likely make the winner of the show very wealthy. Even the losers in this show are learning valuable lessons in marketing. Losing on a reality show is probably less stressful than failing with a startup of your own, and possibly less embarrassing. Most entrepreneurs that are going the conventional route don’t, however, find themselves eating worms.