Have been planning to make a video of my daughter for two years. Got inspired to do it after going to an experimental film and video showing.

The basic assumption of the trolley problem is that we are likely to intervene in a situation where our involvement results in the death of one person versus several people. My first issue with the trolley problem is that it assumes I would have the understanding to intervene in that case. In most real life cases, we don’t have the knowledge or foresight to intervene or we have no idea what the real outcome will be if we do intervene. The trolley problem assumes all five people will be killed.

It also assumes the people stuck on the trolley tracks are the same nameless, faceless bodies. Assuming that we had the knowledge and foresight to intervene, what if the one person was a baby and the five were old people? What if the one were a famous celebrity and the five were homeless? In these cases, we’d be much less likely to intervene if we knew how, especially if the one person were a relative and the five were not.

I recently listened to the Ethics Matters podcast about torture. In that podcast, Professor Doug Maclane explains why these contrived situations do not serve us well in matters of ethics.

In memory of Ray Underhill.

One of the most perfect moments in my life happened in early January 1985. I was following a small red Ford hatchback just outside Nashville, Tennessee. The song “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin came on the radio. I was hoping the driver of the little red Ford was also listening. The person I was following was Ray Underhill, and we were driving to California to pursue our dreams of making it big in skateboarding.

Ray was a great inspiration to me, and I’ll never forget the wonderful times we had.

Camus, like the other existentialists, was convinced that nihilism was the most vexing problem of the twentieth century. Although he argues passionately that individuals could endure its corrosive effects, his most famous works betray the extraordinary difficulty he faced building a convincing case. In The Stranger (1942), for example, Meursault has rejected the existential suppositions on which the uninitiated and weak rely. Just moments before his execution for a gratuitous murder, he discovers that life alone is reason enough for living, a raison d’être, however, that in context seems scarcely convincing.*

Since I’ve decided to give in and embrace my nihilism, I thought it would be a good time to go back and re-read Camus. I read his three major works (The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall) when I was a young man living in Southern California. They were a big influence on my life but obviously not enough to turn me away from nihilism.

The Stranger, upon which the song “Killing an Arab” by The Cure is based, is a short novel divided into two parts. Part one carries the reader up to the deadly act, while part two deals with the aftermath.

I enjoy part one for the details leading up to the murder, especially the final scene and the descriptions of the heat and the sea, but I find the main character turns into a doofus in the second part of the book. During the trial for the murder of the Arab, the main character seems to have no clue what is going on, where he is, or the impact of what is happening. He is much too passive during the trial, almost as if he’s watching it from afar.

Part two of The Stranger could have been stronger if the main character would have spoken for his act and placed it in context of his supposed nihilism. He didn’t seem to be nihilistic, just naive and unconcerned. There’s a huge difference.

A man named Rich Jacobs contacted me earlier this year, asking if I could contribute some of my old skate zines to his art exhibition called “there is xerox on the insides of your eyelids.” I had only published three issues of my zine, called Altered Skates, in 1982-83, primarily to promote a skateboarding series that I was organizing called MESS.

I rooted through some old stuff and dug up the last remaining copies of my zine, which, thanks to Rich, have now made it to London. The sad part of the story is that I sold a huge box of zines and other memorabilia a couple years prior to someone in Florida. I had a collection of approximately 200 skate zines, the first nine big issues of Thrasher Magazine, and the first issue of Snowboarding Magazine (with Steve Caballero on the cover), along with other odds and ends.

I hope to be able to view the exhibition one of these days, since I carried one around with me for years, not realizing the magic contained in that box of paper. I appreciate Rich for seeing the value that I didn’t see because it was so much baggage.

You need to get someone to notice you. Planes sometimes fly overhead, large ships navigate in the sea, and many different types of people use the river: fishermen, kayakers, tubers, etc. How are you going to make the best use of your index cards to get noticed?

1. You could lay them out on your cliff to spell HELP and hope passing planes (web surfers) see it. (Message on website)
2. You could write HELP on the cards and throw them into the sea, hoping a ship picks one up. (Press release)
3. You could write on the cards and throw them into the river, hoping one of the many river users sees one. (Social media strategy)

If you could pick only one option, #3 would most likely get you noticed the soonest. Ideally, you should be doing all three, portioning your cards to get the best results for your message. But the person who will most likely climb that mountain to help you down will be someone from the river. Make sure you respond appropriately when that happens.

As a social network without the internet, it’s simple to retrace how our network was built. Our central node was the annual pro-am skateboarding contest held each summer at Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville, Florida. It was the only east coast opportunity for us to meet the pro skaters that we saw in the pages of Thrasher Magazine each month.

More importantly, we meet each other. In 1983, the same year that Transworld Skateboarding Magazine began publication, each major metropolitan area in the non-coastal east boasted maybe 5-10 hardcore skateboarders. In the summer of 1983, there were about a dozen skate ‘zines published: Squid Meat from Dayton, OH, Rolling Papers from Oak Ridge, TN, The Monthly Shredder from Huntington, WV, to name a few.

We built the network by traveling thousands of miles each year to skate each other’s ramps, hold contests, and hang out with like-minded individuals. We built it. We shared it. No one owned it. Out of it came a lesson in social media that is relevant today as PR professionals seek to understand the occasional backlash against their incursion into social media.

As I mentioned earlier, Transworld Skateboarding Magazine (TWS) entered the market at a bad time for skateboarding (much to their credit). Their main competitor, Thrasher, spoke to skaters who understood the Skate or Die mentality that was reinforced by the mainstream press declaring their favorite pastime dead or a passing fad, like disco.

Transworld tried to differentiate itself by rejecting the Skate or Die attitude and pursuing more of a boy scout image for skateboarding. It wasn’t the most popular move but it got some dialogue going. In an effort to further grab some street cred, TWS posted a list of all the ‘zines it had received, without asking permission from the owners of the ‘zines. This created a backlash from some ‘zine publishers.

TWS thought it was doing a good thing by helping to get the word out, but ‘zine publishers prided themselves on building their own networks and choosing who could be in it. Now they were being flooded with requests for subscriptions for a ‘zine that they spent their hard-earned dollars creating and mailing.

Thrasher had maintained a list of ‘zines but it had already established itself as part of the network by hiring Garry Davis, the creator of one of the first skate ‘zines (Skate Fate). TWS thought it could instantly join the network but learned otherwise.

A few years later, I became the managing editor for TWS. I dealt with that betrayal of trust for a couple more years, even though I was well respected in the skateboarding world.

If you’re looking to join a network in order to promote a product or service, take the time to learn about it before taking any action.

Takes too much time should never be an excuse when finding the best way to communicate with your audience. People said the same thing about bringing email into the organization. I’ll bet some people said the same thing about phones way back in the day.

The sooner you start using and understanding new tools, the easier it is for your employees and your organization to adapt. The longer you wait, the more frustrated your employees and your audience will become.

There are many people doing the research for you. Take a little time to learn what they have to say.