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Here’s a genius idea: Include a bone marrow swab kit in bandage boxes! Next time you cut your finger and reach for a bandage you’ll also find a bone marrow swab kit in the same box. Swab your blood, stick a bandage on your wound and mail the packet! You’re registered and officially a lifesaver on reserve.

Although there may be many out there it is incredibly hard to find a bone marrow donor if you have a blood disease. The biggest problem is that most people are not part of the bone marrow registry. All it takes is ordering a free kit, swabbing your cheeks and mailing the package back. That’s it, you’re registered and if a match is found, you can save a life! Yet most people don’t do it because they’re afraid, unaware, etc. Or perhaps it’s just not convenient or urgent.

This product’s solution: Make it convenient and then there’s really no reason not to. Maybe having a wound will also prime you to the plight of others and make it more urgent to send in that registry kit.

There has been a lot of research done on bone marrow donor trends. Asian Americans in particular are really bad at registering unless they personally know someone who needs a donor. The main reason for not registering is that people are afraid of the actual bone marrow donating procedure. Yet, If people get past the hurdle of registering, they’ll be highly likely to overcome their fears if they are a match for someone. Knowing that another human being needs you, and probably only you, to stay alive will motivate you like nothing else in this world.

For more on the Help Remedies product read here.

If you live in the bay, you can’t help but go wine tasting. There are at least 5 wineries within walking distance of where I live. Friends and I went wine tasting in Sonoma for Barrel Tasting Weekend yesterday. This is one of those events where you get a wine glass, a wristband and access to 100+ wineries. It was a perfect day: warm and sunny. We had a great time hanging out, chatting, drinking good wine, buying futures (first for me) and people-watching. The people watching was a glorious and endless form of entertainment.

These things draw three types of people:

1) Amateur wine experts - This person has a list of wineries that he really wants to hit. He smells, swirls and sips. He admires. He pours the rest. Perhaps he buys a bottle. He chats with the winemakers usually about shit he does not fully understand. He drops buzzwords like a freshly minted MBA grad.

2) Ex-Frat Boys reliving Rush Week - This persons rolls up in a large group of clonally dressed and built ex-frat boys. He does not smell, swirl or sip. He simply gulps. He goes hard at each and every winery. He knows only two types of wines: red and white. He prefers the red, it gets him drunk faster. He has cases of bud light in the car to maintain the buzz between wineries. Also, bud light tastes better than wine.

3) Old People - This person is, well, an older version of 1 and 2. He has a caddy for his wine glass. He takes wine somewhat seriously. He takes shaking his head at the state of young people these days even more seriously. He hits up 3 wineries, takes in the views, chills on the patios, chats it up with whomever will listen to him, and then calls it a day.

This event brought out all three types in full force. Here’s a random smattering of what we saw:

1) Hot damn, it smells like Marina in here. The SF Marina crowd (The cream of the crop of Type 2) rolled up in SUVs, stretch SUVs and, my personal favorite, La Cucaracha. The latter being a replica Mexican chicken bus. Bud light was freely flowing. One group classed it up with pacifico in their limo.

2) Stretch PT Cruiser full of middle aged, tipsy ladies. Drunk by noon.

3) Shuttle Bus with middle aged folks dressed identically in black tops and dark blue jeans. All of them uniformed and uniformly drunk by 1pm.

4) Serious looking older man in tie-dyed shirt, khaki shirt, tube socks and white sneakers who sipped, slurped, and get this, spat! He actually spat. In all my wine tasting I have NEVER seen this.

5) Chihuahua dressed in a pink shirt guarding a purse.

6) Multi-cultural 25-35 year old Yuppies engaged in constant snarky banter about everyone and everything around them.

We were (6) and we snarked it up professionally.

Heard on KQED today that the City of Berkeley is considering imposing a fee on commercial landlords who leave their properties vacant for long periods of time. Based on tax rates and other expenses, it’s sometimes more profitable for landlords to leave their properties vacant than to lease them for cheaper rates. We’ve seen various businesses get shutdown or not get started in Oakland. I’ve also run into the same problem with my company.

Take the old Parkway space in Oakland. It can’t possibly be anything other than a shabby-chic theater but the landlord refuses to work with potential tenants to bring the Parkway back. My company was in a business park that was probably at 20% occupancy and constantly losing tenants. Yet the landlord had no interest in negotiating lower rents. There were properties less than a mile away with much lower lease rates but these dudes didn’t give a shit. Nobody’s gonna turn down rental income, even if it’s less than what they want, unless it’s more profitable to not take it.

In this crappy economy, businesses need to account for low revenue and low financing options by lowering their burn rate. So any currently operating business is looking to cut its rental expenses. New businesses are starting up in a very risky environment and need to keep rent expenses low to make sure they survive the economic downturn. Besides, given the low occupancy rates and a crappy property market tenants have every right to look for cheap rents. Cities also have a financial incentive to keep and increase businesses within their city limits. More business means more tax revenue and more jobs!

I’m a little surprised that the city of Berkeley is actually taking measures to spur more commercial development. Usually, they try really hard to make everyone’s life in Berkeley more unbearable. Then again, while they’re thinking about the right problem, I think they’re taking completely the wrong approach. Imposing fines is counter-productive. It penalizes landlords who may be having genuine trouble attracting business tenants. It might not even be their fault, maybe their property in a neglected area of the city. Also, will the city scale the fines according to property values, sizes, etc to make sure there’s enough pain to motivate filling of vacancies? Most likely, the landlords will keep the properties vacant and just pass the fees onto their other tenants.

Instead, why not provide incentives to landlords to encourage occupancy? The cities could offset the tax write-off benefits. Maybe incentivize both the landlord and the potential tenant (i.e. lower tax rates, lower other fees, lower bureaucratic burdens) to really spur business growth. Perhaps encourage and facilitate sharing of rental space between multiple businesses to make rent more affordable for each? The cities could even offer to throw money at the landlords to improve their properties for attracting new businesses.

Then again, it’s just so much easier to fine people. The fine will also generate revenue for the city and they definitely need more revenue. There’s also not much real risk in fining the landlords. It’s not like the landlord is going to sell his property in a down market. He’s just going to screw his other tenants and, well, that ain’t the city’s problem. Until the tenant decides to take his business elsewhere.