"Early to Bed, Early to Rise, Work Like Hell and Advertise." -- Ted Turner

I could not get back to sleep this morning and the irony is that I could sleep in. So at 6:30 am I find myself at the coffee shop getting a scone and some java. I think I'll try to catch up on my reading today and maybe work on the array. I enjoy this time of the morning !

I recently learned that Ted Turner has a ranch where he raises a herd of semi-wild buffalo. He said he raised them for 20 years amd they bred so much that eventually he found himself having to eat them and serve them a the main fare in his chain "Ted's Montana Grill." When asked what he was doing with all the buffalo in jest --he replied "I'm trying to feed the world". He took the opportunity to highlight hunger as the single most dangerous problem afflicting mankind and put a price tag of $100 billion a year (to be shared by all developed countries) to take a serious stab at wiping it out in 10 years. That got me thinking about the scope of different problems we all tackle and just how formidable a task he was taking on. What an amazing human being.

That's not all --he's also involved in an organization called the Energy Future Coalition and this alliance is trying to think about solutions to the world's energy problems. Here is something I pulled down from their charter.

Strategy and Approaches
The Energy Future Coalition's analysis of past efforts to affect U.S. energy policy found them to be too academic, too narrow, or too sectoral, and for the most part uninformed by practical political experience. The Coalition has focused on practical political coalition building, reaching out to new partners in the business and labor communities and avoiding battles that have been fought in the past, or that clearly divide along partisan lines. Each of the Working Groups has outlined policy options that are significant in their own right and that will attract the support of important political constituencies. Combined, they will create a compelling response to the three energy challenges driving this initiative:

* The political and economic security threat posed by the world's dependence on oil.
* The risk to the global environment from climate change.
* The lack of access of the world?s poor to the modern energy services they need for economic advancement.

Wow ! Talk about tackling the world's problems and making a positive change in the world. Here is a list of all the philanthropic organizations he runs to give you an idea of what this man is contributing back to the world that gave him so much success. http://tedturner.com/philanthropies.html Cheers to Ted Turner for changing the world in a positive way. Not bad for a guy born in Cincinnati, Ohio.


ON an unrelated note -- Look what came in the mail yesterday ....