7 Steps to a Successful Startup Aug. 4 in Dallas

7 Steps to a Successful Startup Thursday August 4 6pm, Hotel ZaZa, Dallas $10 Early Bird, $15 Online, $20 Door Author, serial entrepreneur, and Haas School of Business at Berkeley professor Naeem Zafar visits from the Bay Area to present 7 Steps to a Successful Startup. Naeem shares the basic building blocks of startup life from how to be sure you’re an entrepreneur to concept validation, team building, fundraising, and understanding the life of a founder/CEO. Whether you have a great idea … are starting a small business … or are an entrepreneur yourself, you are sure to receive invaluable tips from Naeem’s insights and experience. Naeem Zafar has written six books on entrepreneurship, including the law, finance, and funding.  He is currently working on his 7th startup in the area of enterprise mobility. More information & Registration

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Love trumps kids, income, jobs, faith & education

I’ve followed the online dating industry for 16 years.  Match.com shares some of their secret sauce in The Love Equation: How Match.com Calculates Your Ideal Mate.

One interesting fact – people don’t make contact if you don’t meet their visual/physical requirements like body type.  But they break their own rules otherwise.  Over 50% of people disregard their must-haves when it comes to kids and income.  Over 20% ignore job, faith, and education.

But it’s unclear whether that means flirting and sex know few boundaries, daters lack self-discipline, or we all lie to ourselves.

In any case, one truism remains.  Women DO like to date good Jewish boys.

Yes, I am a Comma Queen

I guess that makes me a grammar nerd, in addition to my other nerdly titles.  That’s ok for a guy who wrote at the Yale School of Drama.  But then this is about another school, the so-called Oxford (Dictionary) comma.  You know, the controversy about whether you stick a comma before the last term in a series – “Me, myself, and I” vs. “Me, myself and I”.

You have to have the final piece of the punctuation pie.  Really, how stupid does that phrase look without your friendly neighborhood comma, man?

That’s what I learned growing up.  Like a good adult I’ve questioned that orthodoxy and found it still all good.  It’s easy to learn, easy to read, and logical.  What’s not to love?  But journalism rags like AP and the New York Times have eschewed the lowly comma for the questionable esthetics of minimalism and mystery.

Now Oxford itself (University) is chucking it.  Read more here.   Well, they’re entitled to their (wrong) opinion.  But they’ll have to pry that mark from my cold, dead hands.  And keyboard.