thc: a cure for career hangovers?

Hugh,

I didn’t think what I’ve done for humanity was on-topic here and certainly did not ask for you to plug my life or deeds but I appreciate the fact that you think it matters in this context that I be doing *something* good in order to give credence to my objections. So, here’s a small example (sorry, there’s no url available*).

Every week my fiancée and myself have date night. I’ll bet you know many couples out there that do the same thing. Sometimes I take her out to dinner at a nice place and I earn enough to do this every week if we wanted. More often than not I cook a nice dinner instead. Cooking has been a hobby for a while and I could easily do it for a living at some fine restaurant (BTDT: to avoid going bat-shit crazy I keep it a hobby). 🙂 Typically, preparing the dinner takes a considerable amount of time and effort, sometimes extending days before doing various prep finding ingredients, etc… It is less expensive than going out, but good quality local ingredients don’t exactly come cheap either (not to mention all the equipment). It sure would be easier to go out! But, there’s benefits.

There are many who benefit from my effort: the local farmers, who maintain a market because of people like me who give a damn about quality; everyone else benefits too, indirectly, by enjoying a slightly less polluted world because of this localization (see _Omnivore’s Dilemma_). My fiancée who gets to enjoy a great meal benefits by not having to deal with traffic (and we cause less traffic) and or dressing up. I get to have a little fun AND enjoy the fruits of my labor. I love knowing that she loves me for doing it. It is long-term and short-term benefits all around.

IIRC, you talk about the benefits of long-term and short-term views in your first book (and in many cartoons). As I recall, you also talked about the productivity benefit of reining in one’s drinking habit.

Yet, here we are on this very page talking about some product that purports to take care of one side effect of drinking-to-excess and simultaneously has about 99.999% (five-nines is en vogue after all) chance of not working. See http://quackwatch.org for many discussions of other worthless supplements. Drinking in moderation does not present this side effect.

Mr. Adams no doubt benefits from the sales of his “product” and he also, no doubt, supports the employment of at least a few other people (clearly all dues paying members of humanity) so one can say humanity as such does benefit. It’s not as bad, say, as funding places like Halliburton (which is pretty darn *good* for humanity based on the number of people they keep employed), but it’s along that line. At least drinkable THC is unlikely to be killing people directly, even if it may encourage excessive drinking. This is what the consumers of Mr. Adams’ product are getting for their hard earned money. I see benefit for him and his suppliers alone. Maybe an unfulfillable dream of a night out without consequence for the buyer counts too, is that what you’re trying to support?

I do things for the short-term too. I am a union employee and voted for concessions last summer because I thought it was the right thing to do. I know for a fact the guy sitting next to me voted the other way because “why should we care?” It’s a valid mentality and Mr. Adams’ is just as valid.

Again, without having read the book–I believe there are many evil plans that have nothing at all to do with inventing something, or starting/improving a business as such. That’s why I gave the examples I did.

SEO is a dangerous word. If by SEO Mr. Adams means things like optimizing a site’s meta tags and consulting on the benefits of signing up with Google’s et al webmaster tools then great, he’s helping humanity and I’m all for it. Somehow, based on this THC thing, I get the idea that he means SEO in that *other* way. The other way being controlled link-farm generation, paid shills, and other things which are currently poisoning everyone’s search results while researching commercial products and services on line. Of course there’s no proof of this intent, but perception is a powerful thing. If someone has the will to invent and sell a worthless product, what else are they willing to do?

It’s a little like email service providers. There are white-hat ones and black-hat ones, but also ones with hats in various colors of grey; SEO is the same. That’s why it’s a dangerous word. If a site is really worth it, and all the technical pieces are put together correctly, the algorithms will pick it up without any “SEO” at all. Business execs clearly see it differently and they have to, as my view as a consumer is NOT in their company’s best interest. See the recent JC Penny SEO scandal…

I hope Mr. Adams comes up with some better and more helpful product ideas since he obviously has the marketing arm down pat.

Hugh, I hope you continue to plug people who are the Davids of this world and who have small businesses selling real things. Things like beef jerky and wine and people that do great server hosting and selling cartoons which become real when they represent valuable ideas.

But this plug right here is not the right direction to be going and this guy is no David right now. He and many others are benefiting only due to a law change in the early 90’s making such products legal and unregulated in the U.S. Change a few names and Drinkable THC would match right up to the spam in my inbox! Please find people more worthy of the attention, that’s all I’m asking.

I respect most of your views very much; I have paid-for stuff of yours hanging on my walls and sitting in a bookshelf to prove it. No doubt my recommendations to and conversations with friends and associates is worth even more? It’s all about the conversation, right?

The conversation (what’s wrong with “word of mouth” BTW?) is just not great, sorry about that.

All the best for the future,

Jason

*There’s no url available, yet my fiancée does frequently post pictures of the meal and descriptions of it on Facebook (which I suppose could be another benefit to humanity since it may encourage others to do the same thing). Amusingly to me, these posts of hers about our meal together seem to be quite popular with her friends and that is a conversation.