Mark Pincus Blog

Voice and Choice

i have teamed with youthspeaks to create a new division focused on cultivating political voice in disadvantaged kids. youthspeaks already has done an amazing job of inspiring an incredible diversity of inner city kids to find their inner voices through their form of poetry slams. many of these kids and their slams already take a political slant talking about subjects like not wanting to fight george bush's war and books not bars. i'm excited to see youthspeaks take this to the next level.

the new program will focus on educating the kids about political facts and issues, teaching them about the bill of rights, asking them to think of what the youth bill of rights should include. what really excites me is the potential for this forum to help generate a body of spoken word content and a new group of young articulate leaders who can engage with their peers before the next election cycle. this could help fuel my dream of a youth inspired bloodless revolution where the people led by kids rise up and take back our government; where the kids prove that they are not apathetic, but rather prove we have suffered from apathetic career politicians who bend so many ways to raise their precious campaign funds that there's nobody left; and suffered from limousine liberals who's good intentions are lost in their lack of vision and leadership.

i hope you will all learn more about youthspeaks and that some of you will even give some money. the program only costs $200k which is cheap against the prospect of igniting a revolution.

Anal is the New Blowjob!

a tribe friend of mine, zigzag, has blogged about an interview i did for my friend emily's edgy new podcast show, sex with emily. one of the points which came to me after seeing 'inside deepthroat', (the indy documentary on the story around cultural impact of that film) was how the demarcation line for sexual mores has moved so far in 30 years amongst women (ironically while the fascist right tries ever harder to enforce out dated laws on 'decency'). anyway, my net point was that through the making of a segment for a home made cable tv show ('searching for sex in san francisco'), we found that most urban 20 something women saw anal as normal while those in their 30's and 40's saw it as something taboo, racy, raunchy, slutty (take your pick).

also, of interest, the story on 'deepthroat' was that it grossed over $500m because all of mainstream suppressed america rushed out to see this racy film that exposed and celebrated the blowjob which had been a dirty secret totally unknown to most women. the story is that all of the money went to the mob which made the film available across the country through deals with the police. i for one am thankful to the mob for enabling america to get such a major dose of sex education. what was sad was that the guy who starred in the film (you may guess how he qualified) was actually prosecuted and sentenced to 5 years. he was lucky that jimmy carter came into office and a more liberal court released him on appeal but went on to face a lifetime of shame, homelessness, alcoholism only to end up a happy realtor in park city. 

also funny and related is the movie now on hbo about the life story of larry flynt (starring woody harrelson and courtney love i think) in which there is a scene where the governor of ohio admits that he was unable to resist buying the mag and therefore argued it should have been banned. who are these idiots and how do they get elected to office? isn't it embarrassing to think that our own leaders are telling us that temptation is ok, its the apple that's evil. very consistent with a policy that has a war on drug dealers and growers rather than education and rehab for the drug takers; a society that spends 5x on prisons what it budgets for schools; 10x on war over aid...

ok, we all agree loudly on all this. we have to find a way to move from agreeing with each other about how fucked up this is to making real change...and back to the topic, 'inside deepthroat' stirred this all up for me, and somehow the current divergence in social mores around anal sex seems like another great chapter in a long running historical series.

where are your mores on sex? what do you accept as 'normal' and view as weird and dysfunctional? do you catch yourself judging this rather than observing? we all do and that's ok. we just need to be conscious of it lest we find ourselves being unfairly judged for our 'normal' lives.

another awesome new film on this topic is 'kinsey report' (i think starring leam neeson). i do particularly enjoy studying the history of hypocrisy in our country. you gotta love us adults. do as i legislate not as i do with hookers on capital hill!

Milford Utah

greg and milford 008
Originally uploaded by markpinc.

the halfway point between aspen and sf is a little 'town' (or plane fueling tank) called milford. it's beautiful, a high desert at 5,000 feet. funny how one stop become vegas or palm springs and another remains milford.

Wrong about Firefox/Mozilla

after more carefully reviewing the mozilla press release and getting comments here, i realize that the new for profit subsidiary is wholly owned by mozilla foundation. i would be interested to understand how they are compensating board members, but cant say those people as well as employess of the venture wouldnt deserve equity upside for their participation. will be fun to watch.

Add Delicious to Typepad!

why doesnt typepad and delicious cut a deal so that i can add a module that lets any of my readers tag my posts? kevin burton has blogged about enabling his readers to tag him though i cant find it on his site. fred wilson writes about how blog tools should get better and easier to do tagging. tom evslin has hacked a way to add a 'tag with delicious' link to his typepad posts which i'll try to add. however, why couldnt tom or someone hack something simpler that would just let me put in tag words and hit 'submit' like on flickr. if i'm not a delicious user then ask me to register. or why make me register at all?

Firefox Team Cashing in?

i read that mozilla is launching a 'for profit' subsidiary so they can 'better compete with microsoft's IE'. there is a lot in this i dont follow. first, why does a for profit stand a better chance of competing? i guess they think they can attract more capital which makes sense to me. but, i'm really confused about how you distribute equity in such a venture. how does a non-profit transfer assets and then equity ownership to individuals? i just cant see a fair way to do this. if this is possible, why wouldnt all companies start as non-profits and then change status and transfer valuable assets (cash and IP) at a convenient time? there must be a big piece of this story i'm missing. can anyone fill me in?