I watch this HBO original series and am consistently impressed by how well written it is, and how great a job all the actors do.    I watch the show because I think the show puts on center stage many changes that are occuring within the American culture.   Of course I also like understanding the ‘why’ behind peoples actions…

http://www.hbo.com/intreatment

I cannot stand how channels are programmed to be louder than the programming it is played between.   Can someone please make it stop!?!    It almost makes me want to stop watching TV.

Apartment For Peggy is a movie I stumbled upon.  It happened to be on the TV–about half way through to the end–when I turned it on today, and I sure am glad it was.  I watched the entire last half of it, because it was so well written and articulate.    Perhaps I read into movies too much, but I think the movie is great, and perfectly fitting for a young leader.  I think the movie does a good job of illustrating a number of lessons.  In addition, the movie was surprisingly watchable for being so old.  Some of these lessons include:

• focusing on money, makes you short-sided,and unable to see the forest among the trees
• a tree takes a long time grow big and tall, but it is beautiful once it has
• don’t raise peoples hopes prematurely
• philosophy means the love of wisdom
• leadership may naturally follow passion
• a positive attitude is infectious
• the wise continue learning all through out their lives
• anything worth doing, isn’t easy
• times sure have changed (women are treated much differently nowadays)

Watch the movie, and maybe post some lessons you took from the movie as comments to this post!  I would love to read them.

If there is no such thing as a “dumb question,” why is there apparently such thing as a “great question” or an “an interesting question”? Over and over, I hear really smart people say things like “that is a great question”, and I think this must mean that the speaker is judging a question on a scale of quality. My question is thus do “dumb questions” really exist, and can they be identified as that question which is not followed by “that’s a great question”?

Tonight, I learned some interesting things from the experimental man, author, and Esquire magazine editor at large: A.J. Jacobs.   He came to the university to talk about what he has learned from the series of “life experiments” in which he has immersed himself.   He is famous for these experiments because he commits himself to the project, for better or worse, then writes about what he learned.

Some of the experiments he has undertaken, and the books or articles that resulted, include:

• The book The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (2004)  –   He spent an entire year reading all 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
• The Esquire article “My Outsourced Life” (2005)  –  For 30 days, he out-sourced his life to two personal assistants in India and who did everything for him from answering his e-mails, to reading his children good-night stories, to arguing with his wife.
• The Esquire article “I Think You’re Fat” (2007)   —  He, for 30 days, practiced radical honesty, which required that, among other things, he verbally express whatever thought that came to his mind at the moment that it came to his mind.
• The book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007)  –  He lived for one year according to a strict and literal interpretation of all the instructions that the Bible provides for how people should live their lives.   This included, as examples, that one should stone adulterers, blow a shofar at the beginning of every month, and refrain from trimming the corners of his facial hair (which, he followed by not trimming his facial hair at all, because he didn’t know what the corners of his facial or head hair were).

The takeaway

So what was did I take away from his speech and talking with him afterwards.  First, that he is a nice guy who has a very loving/patient wife, but also that we can learn so much about ourselves, and each other, as very social and political animals, when we put ourselves in these extreme lifestyle experiments.   Most importantly, the experimenter learns a great deal about their own personal moral code.   Jacobs, for example, shared with us that he learned a great deal about how he feels about religion and how he came to the conclusion that he wants raise his children to be exposed to at least some form, from his Living Biblically experiment.  There are other lessons, but the important take away is that if you want to learn about yourself, conduct an experiment, with you at it’s center.

So, one of the unclear ideas that has been bouncing around in deep–almost subconscious recesses–of my brain was this idea that my leadership skills had anything to do with my background, which very much includes having experienced depressing environments and phenomenal teamwork.  Well, this TED talk by David Logan on the idea of ‘Tribal Leadership’ has helped me understand the value of my experiences and how it helped make me the person that I am.

Apparently (I read somewhere) you don’t want a Fog Index score greater than 20 if you are giving a speech to a live audience.  This is important to those of us that feel we should write as if we were going to read our writing to a live audience, because this implies our writing should also have a Fog Index score not greater than 20.

The Fog Index is a type of readability test for your writing that essentially indicates how long–on average–your sentences and words are.   The longer the words and sentences, the more difficult it is for readers to read, and the higher the score will be.

If you want a quick tool that calculates multiple readability tests (including the Fog Index) for your writing, check out:    The Readability Test Tool.

so here is something that is curious to me…

One of my favorite TV shows is ‘The Mentalist‘ and it is broadcast by CBS, and, unlike NBC, CBS does not offer the ability to watch full episodes of their TV shows online.

It would be so great if I could watch full episodes of The Mentalist online, and as much as I hate to admit it, I think it makes a lot of sense from a marketing and advertisers point of view as well.   And here’s why:

As much as I hate commercials, I would actually watch them if I was watching my favorite show online–especially if the network eliminates the automatic increase to the volume of commercials (but that is a different blog entry).    What I don’t understand is why other TV are not following NBC’s lead.   I see it as an easy sell for the network’s Chief Marketing Officer…

Tell advertisers that you’ll be able better target advertisements to viewers because you’ll know who they are after they log into the website.  Then continue by telling them that you be better able to target advertisements to us as a result.   Then close with, “and if you don’t believe me, proof that the online viewer will see your advertisement is the fact that he is there in the first place.  That is, a person does not accidentally find himself watching a full episode of a TV show.  An online viewer deliberately goes online, browses to the TV show homepage, and finds the episode–so you know they are watching.   How do you know if I’m even watching a show on TV?  …couldn’t I have left the room/house and the TV powered on and tuned to that channel?”

This makes so much sense that I wonder why CBS and other networks have not put their episodes online.  Did TV manufacturers tell them that if they do so, that they are no longer going to be friends?  What is it?

If there is a Chief Marketing Officer for a major TV network reading this right now, please correct me by leaving me a comment below.

I know they aren’t the healthiest thing to munch on, but they taste so good…

Hands down, the Kettles Chesapeake Bay and Beer Potato Chips made by Terra chips are the best potato chips I have ever eaten.   Check them out at:    http://www.terrachips.com/products/chesapeake-beer-chips.php