According to this article in Investor’s Business Daily, the earth has been cooling. So I guess we’ve overcorrected. Our response to global warming was to stop driving Hummers, remove the freon from our refrigerators, stop spraying aerosol cans, recycle everything in site, drive Prius’, pollute fairgrounds on Earth Day, and use no more than one square sheet of toilet paper every time you use the restroom (with no flush). But we apparently went to far, because we went from heating the earth too much to cooling it too much. I wonder when we’ll hear the calls to reverse course….
Walk me through your resume…
The worst interviews I’ve ever had have always started with this question. They might as well ask, “So, boil down your 25 years of experience into a five minute answer.” That question is a sign that they haven’t taken the time to read the resume, and they want me to stall while they take that chance to read it for the first time. Sometimes I think the best response to that request is, “How about you take the time to read it, and then call me back with specific questions about my accomplishments.” Interviews are two-way. At this point…
Unoffendable
There’s always a desire to simplify the complicated. An interest in boiling down an intricate set of events or decisions into one convenient sound bite. So, here’s mine… Be unoffendable. Find humor and joy in everything. Don’t take it all too seriously. Be willing and able to laugh at yourself. There are way too many people actively seeking ideas, words, phrases, visuals, or actions that will offend them. I’m not sure what drives that. Need to justify innate anger? Wanting to have a cause? Seeking purpose? If you’re unoffendable, you’ll see some interesting changes around you. People will start…
A matter of perspective
When I hear people say things like, “we can learn so much from our children,” I can’t help but think that it’s the adults who are teaching the kids, not the other way around. But last night, I had one of those moments that reminded me of what those people mean. The kid and I were sitting and talking and there was a glass half full of water sitting there. So I asked, “Do you think this glass is half full or half empty?” She thought a second and said, “It depends.” “If you started with an empty glass…
Breaking free
I’ve not seen, in my life, too many sculptures that have made too great of an impression on me. I guess I’m more often moved by paintings and drawings than by the more physical arts. But I saw this image today, and I found it quite stunning. It’s a sculpture from Philadelphia called Freedom. The artist is Zenos Frudakis, and this is some of what he had to say about it: “I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break…
Fear: a key ingredient in bad decisions
On more than one occasion, my Dad has told me this story, and he swears it is true: One day, the President of his company was walking into their headquarters. As he was walking in, he noticed that some workers were erecting scaffolding around the outside front of the building. When he got inside, he went to the Building Services Manager and asked “What’s all the scaffolding for?” The manager interpreted the question from the President as a sign of disapproval and ordered the workers to take down the scaffolding. At the end of the day, as the President…
Changing the way we talk about politics
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. “ – Eleanor Roosevelt Normally, I’m not one for quotes. However, this one was pointed out to me as I was walking through a local grade school. It articulated something I had concluded about two years earlier. As long as I’ve been following politics, people have been talking about the President like they knew him personally. They would assign motives to every statement and assign credit for very complicated laws or regulations that were vetted by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It was about that time…
They can’t drive 55
Having never owned or shopped for a Suburu, I’m hoping a Suburu owner can help me out with a question. Is there something in the Suburu purchase agreement that prohibits the driver from driving the speed limit? Perhaps all Suburu’s come with a governor to limit speed? In my 30 years of driving, it has been as reliable as the sun that if you get behind a Suburu, you will most certainly be traveling under the posted the speed limit. (Not to mention accelerating 0-60mph in never seconds and beginning your slow down for a stop light 300 yards…
Doing the jobs humans won’t do
In the past week, I’ve run across a few articles about how robot caregivers are making a huge difference in the lives of our senior citizens. Facilities in Japan and Germany are using the robots to interact with the elderly. The robots challenge senior citizens with memory games and bring food and drinks to residents. Any why not? One look at a sidewalk, restaurant, bus, or shopping mall will show you that we’ve already lost the ability to look each other in the eye and hold a normal conversation. The best of friends will sit at a table and…
Apple invents… the newspaper
On Monday, during their Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple’s VP of Product Marketing, Susan Prescott, shocked the world by announcing that Apple would be selecting the top news stories that appear in their Apple News product. In other words, they’re going to behave remarkably similar to every other news organization with real editors and journalists. This is not one of Apple’s more groundbreaking innovations. However, many treated it as such. A Google search using the terms “apple news selecting stories susan prescott” returns several conservative news sites reporting the inherent bias built in to this model. They go further to…