Circular Logic

Naming the Bears

Earnings season at work, so the blog posts have been slim recently. However, I was struck by the idea that you could bid to name the bears at the San Francisco Zoo.

Given the mindset of most of Silicon Valley these days, I would think people would have had enough bearish sentiment. Maybe someone could start a bidding contest for the bulls (okay, maybe they're just cows) along I-280 near Stanford.

It gives branding a whole new context.

A Dog's Life

Roughly 2600 years ago (370 dog years), two infants are said to have been nurtured by a she-wolf on the banks of an Italian river.

I'm thinking about this because our eight-year-old Golden Retriever, Moxie, is sick. Not death's door sick, but definitely vet-worthy sick. Weak and dragging herself around, and bleeding from her posterior. Nothing a $200 vet bill and some antibiotics won't fix, though.

Amazing how much we all rely on antibiotics. Hard to imagine a time when they weren't around, but in reality it wasn't all that long ago. Less than 100 years (about 14 dog years).

It seems as if every human scientific advance also comes with a built-in regulator. With antibiotics came growing viral resistance. With the automobile came traffic. With computers came viruses (and Microsoft). With email came spam.

The ancient Romans knew nothing of antibiotics, yet they had self-regulating advances of their own. The famous roads that helped the legions conquer the world also carried the Barbarians to the gates. The aqueducts quenched a thirsty empire, but they also poisoned the emperors with lead. And Latin, the language of law, politics and commerce, quickly became the language of a young and defiant Christian faith.

Some say that dogs -- dogs not much different than Moxie snoring next to me right now -- represent one of the first major advances of the human species. Domesticating wild wolves was a giant leap forward, enabling more efficient hunting and shepherding as well as fostering companionship and security.

There are now more than 65 million pet dogs in the U.S. Wouldn't that old she-wolf be proud.