Why Are Jews Liberal?

I have just finished reading, on my Kindle, Norman Podhoretz's excellent book "Why Are Jews Liberals?"

Podhoretz's Wall Street Journal article, bearing the same title, does a good job summarizing the book, but to form your own opinion, do read the longer essay.

One of the best passages in the book is reproduced almost verbatim in the article:

Of course in speaking of the difference between left and right, or between liberals and conservatives, I have in mind a divide wider than the conflict between Democrats and Republicans and deeper than electoral politics. The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.

In this realm, too, American Jewry surely belongs with the conservatives rather than the liberals. For the social, political and moral system that liberals wish to transform is the very system in and through which Jews found a home such as they had never discovered in all their forced wanderings throughout the centuries over the face of the earth.

I couldn't agree more.

The reasons behind the historical liberalism of American Jews, as laid down in the book, are almost undisputable. Podhoretz's conclusion as to why Jews remain liberal now is more controversial:

Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right. And to the dogmas and commandments of this religion they give the kind of steadfast devotion their forefathers gave to the religion of the Hebrew Bible. For many, moving to the right is invested with much the same horror their forefathers felt about conversion to Christianity.

Podhoretz convinced me. Read the book and tell me if he convinced you too.

Ken Is Calling It As It Is

Ken Magill nails it in an article titled "Stupid Statement Watch: Umm, That’s Not True":

Goodmail is not a way for marketers to buy their way past ISPs’ spam filters. In order to get Goodmail certified, marketers must adhere to certain best practices, among which are avoiding spamming.... to say Goodmail creates a two-tiered system, one for paying spammers and one for everybody else, is ridiculous.

Read the entire article here:
http://directmag.com/magilla/0929-goodmail-rpost-patent-lawsuit/

All In One Click

From my latest contribution to the CertifiedEmail blog:

One of the most important business rules, whether you sell widgets or services, is that you want to make it easy for customers and prospects to buy from you. This rule certainly applies to e-Commerce on the internet, and it does not pertain just to the sale transaction per-se, but to virtually all interactions between an organization and the individual customers it serves.

Leveraging on Goodmail's CertifiedEmail technology, Goodmail partner, Striata created One-Click, No-Registration, In-Email Payments

Read the entire blog post here.

Another Myth

What's the deal with mom and pop sports shops? My experience, over the last couple of years, is that, not only do chains offer a better selection, but they also provide a much better service. I have had bad experiences with a couple of bay area bike boutiques. Not bad enough to mention them here by name, but quite disappointing nevertheless.

On the other hand, whenever I visit Sports Basement in Sunnyvale, or Performance Bike in Mountain View, I am getting an A+ service from passionate, knowledgeable and courteous employees. They provide good advice, they fix my bikes, they fit Emma with the optimal wetsuit, and they treat me well.

Go big business!

It’s a Painting of a Girl in a Shell

After burning through a small stack of physical (i.e. "real") books, I finally got to read on my Kindle 2 a first fun book: the only other item I had purchased for my Kindle is a reference book, which one doesn't read linearly, cover to cover.

The fun book is Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart of Italy, by Sergio Esposito (yes, he of Italian Wine Merchants). It's a lovely, well-written book. I'm almost done reading it, so I'm slowing down to prolong the joy and delay the inevitable.

The only downside with Passion on the Vine is that it makes me hungry and thirsty, constantly craving hearty food and good wine.

Using the Kindle's "clippings" feature, I can share a passage:

And then there is unjustifiable beauty. It’s personal beauty, imperfection, ambiguity. It’s beauty you cannot argue for because you have no material proof, only your own certainty. This was the magnificence of Bartolo’s wine. It was constantly morphing, evolving, impossible to know entirely. You could experience it an infinite number of times and you would never be able to master it. This was the true beauty, the kind of great art that transcends its time and invites its admirer to continue searching within it for the answer to some unknown question. It wasn't a catchy pop song or a girl in a makeup commercial. You couldn't pin it down by saying it smelled like rose petals. That was as reductive and senseless as looking at The Birth of Venus and saying, “It’s a painting of a girl in a shell.”

CertifiedEmail: Now with DKIM

When we designed CertifiedEmail, a few years back, there was no suitable standard for digitally signing an email message. Goodmail thus went and used standard components, e.g. RSA for the digital signature, and SHA-1 for hashing a digest, but we were forced to define our own process for combining these components into an authentication layer.

Over the past few years, an email authentication standard emerged: first in the form of DomainKeys, and later, its successor, DKIM.

It was a relatively simple matter for us to substitute DKIM for our original authentication layer. The authentication layer was, and still is, a rather prosaic component of CertifiedEmail. The other security components, the “secret sauce” that made CertifiedEmail the best and the only secure email certification system, remain in place. DKIM-based CertifiedEmail is as secure as the original specification of CertifiedEmail.

By adopting DKIM, not only do we embrace and help further propagate a worthy standard, we also provide our customers with additional value. Beyond the large number of mailboxes operated by providers who agreed contractually to grant privileges to CertifiedEmail messages, senders of CertifiedEmail will now also enjoy improved deliverability with other receivers who value the fact that CertifiedEmail messages are signed by a trusted third party.

You can read the press release (replete with quotes from luminaries and a car safety metaphor) here.

WSJ - Video Gets Entrée Into Email

Read the whole Wall Street Journal article, but let me cherry pick a few gems (mixed metaphors, I know):

Technology From Goodmail Opens a Long-Sought Horizon for Marketers

Video is coming to email.

Email-security firm Goodmail Systems plans to introduce Thursday a new technology to help marketers and media companies send videos via email. It screens video messages for bugs and viruses and emails them to consumers who have opted to receive them. The Mountain View, Calif., start-up is launching its video email service with Time Warner's AOL unit.

Adding video to email marketing boosts customers' interaction -- such as opening the email or clicking on any of the content -- by as much as 200% to 300%

Live Nation will be among the first marketers to test video emails with Goodmail. The concert promoter relies heavily on email marketing, sending 15,000 promotions last year to customers who subscribed to receive updates about events. Adding video to those messages will give Live Nation the chance to better showcase its artists and give consumers a preview of shows, says Bob Frady, the company's vice president of digital marketing. It tested emails featuring video of Katy Perry as part of its efforts to promote the pop singer.

The email newsletter DailyCandy, which covers fashion and culture for a mostly female audience, plans to start sending videos via Goodmail next week. The newsletter, owned by Comcast, will begin producing videos segments to complement its usual fare like shopping tips and restaurant reviews, says Catherine Levene, chief operating officer. It plans to sell short commercial spots to play before the programming starts.

Thrillist, a newsletter which has 750,000 subscribers aimed at young urban men, plans to send video messages only if they have been paid for by advertisers, says founder Ben Lerer. Thrillist said it has sold its first video campaign to camera maker Canon.

The Case Against Fannie and Freddie, as Made in... 1946

Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to “buy” houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief, in they long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment.

From Chapter VI "Credit Diverts Production" in Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson," first published in 1946

HT: Prof. Mark Perry

I got "Economics in One Lesson" as a present for the last holiday season. It was slowly percolating to the top of my stack of books to read; it just jumped to the top.

Paradigm Shifts: It's Not How Many Ideas You Have

When I started Goodmail, the Accenture consulting group used to run print ads boasting an insightful slogan:

"It's not how many ideas you have. It's how many you make happen."

And that’s indeed the difficult part, making it happen.

Five years into the venture that uprooted me and my family, from the land of milk and honey to the land of unbounded possibilities, it is time to pause, take a step back, and reflect on the journey so far.

So here are some of the topics I might cover in subsequent blog entries:

• Hiring: surround yourself with a team of losers and nothing will ever get done. Get the kind of people Joel Spolsky hires and there will be no mountain high enough.

• Venture Capitalists: a few geniuses, some talented guys, and so many worthless idiots. Masterminds can be found not only amongst the firms who invested in Goodmail (the best advice I ever got came from a VC who passed on the opportunity), but, taken as a whole, an unimpressive herd.

• Marketing: those standing to benefit the most from your product are not necessarily going to be your first customers. Required reading: Crossing the Chasm.

• Upton’s theorem: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

OK, But Why the Urge to Share?!

As spotted yesterday in the school's parking lot: