Say it Better

Warmthiness

First Stephen Colbert delivered his mock outrage styling of Bill O'Reilly's "talking points" - speaking on truthiness.

Now, James Wolcott writes of warmthiness. In the September issue of Vanity Fair find this excerpt from his article, comparing life in the White House today to the Paris Hilton/Nicole Ritchie reality TV show called "The Simple Life" (thanks Tama for tip), dubbing the presidency as The Simple Life: White House Edition:
"Lillian Ross's memoir of The New Yorker editor William Shawn was titled Here But Not Here; Laura Bush's presence alongside her husband could be called There But Not There. Through some strange optical illusion or Jedi mind trick she manages to recede into the foreground or project into the background--it's hard to decide which. Either way, she hasn't been supplying the warmthiness that every presidency and reality-TV series requires and desires as a sweetener."

Yet, despite what some say, she's not receding from the public stage regarding Burma (aka Myanmar). Putting that kind of courageous warmthiness in the foreground is heartening to me. Who knows what comes next? Integrityness? Maybe that can become the word of the year in 2008.

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He got a standing ovation

even before he started his lecture. I only hope I’d be half as wise, brave and funny as this 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, and video game trailblazer, Randy Pausch was last Tuesday afternoon.

Pausch is one of several U.S. university professors invited to give a best “last lecture.” This is not a call for professors’ best insights on their area of teaching.

It is to answer the question, “What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?”

Here’s two pieces of advice he offered as he presented a series of large screen images of his life:
1. “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."

2. Be more patient. "Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you."

Then there’s his “deathbed conversion:” "I just bought a Macintosh."

He started his talk though with a big screen image of his CT scans, pointing out the 10 tumors on his liver. This inventor of “Alice” the software enabling people to "easily create 3-D animations” that was downloaded a million times in a year, this father of three has been told he has only a few months left to live.

“I just don't want to end up

...like Katie Couric. I want people to take me seriously," Miss USA Rachel Smith said last week when speaking to the Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network.

In the same talk she mentioned she wanted to do “some serious news” … “but some modeling too." That’s probably why her first comment when she was interviewed about the importance of winning the title was describing what she wore, “"I was wearing, like, a hot pink Rocawear sweatsuit and paraded around my room at the Waldorf, just dancing with my crown!"

No room for parody here.

Katie Couric’s pr spokesperson offered this comment, “"If she continues to offer such profound insight, she will not have to worry about anyone taking her seriously." Hint, when someone insults you, respond by elevating the conversation rather than getting down in the mud too.

When you throw mud you get dirty.

By the way, one of my favorite comparisons is witty, seemingly going negative yet ends on a note of admiration - a positive comparision – all packed into one pithy sentence.

Back in 1931 Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein drove down a street together. Pedestrians waved and cheered. Chaplin explained the scene this way:
"The people are applauding you
because none of them understands you,
and applauding me, because
everybody understands me."

How a “National Shame” Can’t be Hidden Any Longer

Watch a smart mob in action right now. The growing mob is google bombing. You, too, can use this powerful tool when you are outraged or inspired by some action and you want to draw the world’s attention to it.

Within 24 hours the bloggers of Brazil managed to stick two google search words, “National Shame” on the action they protested.

Here’s why they are google bombing and how they are doing it.

The president of Brazil’s Senate, Renan Calheiros, traded political favors with a construction company that covered some of his personal expenses. He almost got away with it. The Ethics Committee of the Senate recommended that he be impeached. In spite of that indictment, in a closed-door session, his Senate colleagues voted to let him off the hook. In the past, there was not much the people of Brazil could do at that point. But this Internet-connected world has changed the rules of engagement.

Outraged, Rodrigo Stulzer jumped into action. On his blog he advocated that others join him in google bombing.

How?

He asked other bloggers to write about the incident, and include the words “national shame” in their blogs and in their comments in each other’s blogs. Thus the growing crowd of online voices cements the connection between the Senate of Brazil, the vote it took and the words “national shame.” Collectively they raise that connection to the top of searches done via google for “national shame.”

In effect Stulzer and others proved that the Senators can run away from their vote but they can’t hide from it.

As of today, Stulzer had “gathered nearly hundred comments and trackbacks” according to journalist Paula Goes’ thorough coverage.

Reports Goes, at the same time, in another part of Brazil, Blender Blog suggested a more efficient way to google bomb:

“Instead of going around posting that the Senate is the national shame, I'd suggest you to do something different: NATIONAL SHAME. The more people link to these words like I've done, the quicker Google will show the world that the Brazilian Senate is the national shame. So, is anybody up for helping?”

I was intrigued by how various bloggers kept the pressure up. Read the rest of Goes’ story to see more ways to keep a campaign alive and spreading. Yet notice how many stories vy for that ignoble top search spot of "national shame."

Cyber-activism is happening all over the world. We can use variations of these same tools to protest a dangerous product or to celebrate companies that are going green or involving customers in product design. See what comes up now, for example, when one searches for an honest political candidate or a valuable service or a safe product.

By the way, what comes up first when you google search your organization, favorite interest, cause or colleagues? (We’ve all googled our own name at some point.) As the world flattens it become a more accessible world stage for any of us to play a bigger role. We just have to discover smarter ways to partner with each other and harness the power of us.

"In the sex war ...

...thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female."

So wrote the often witty English writer, Cyril Connolly. Thanks Mardy.

Turning towards the positive, to savor your weekend and onwards, there's this (do tell me if you know the source) ....

To realize the value of ten years:
Ask a newly divorced couple.

To realize the value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize the value of one year:
Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.

To realize the value of one month:
Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one hour:
Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute:
Ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second:
Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond:
Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have.
You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special.

To realize the value of a friend:
Lose one.

“Nearly all of the takers were women

...who were ‘eager and grateful’ for the freebies" reports wrote NPR’s Eric Weiner. Yet, the “men ‘frowned in suspicion, or distaste.’”

Guess what was being given away?

Maybe some of us have more time on our hands, considering this dour news from Microtrends authors Mark J. Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne.

Steve’s Fat Mouth Gets People Talking and Buying

It doesn’t matter how successful one has been. Most of us are reticent to be the first to do something radically different. That’s why there are so many “me to” imitations once we discover a competitor offering a much better way to see, buy share or do something.

Luxury and vacation home developers. Realtors. Resort owners. Two years ago in Hawaii, they were sitting comfortably in their seats at their annual conference, listening to me suggest that they seek out unlikely allies who serve the same kind of clients they serve.

Even if you make a quarter million a year (as most of the people in this audience do) you are still wary of looking foolish when doing something different.

That day, I suggested ways to forge a “first-ever" SmartPartnership that would make them the top-of-mind choice in their market. Perhaps even attract media coverage.

Or win a prize that many of their would-be clients and partners will hear about. Well, that’s what one person in that audience actually did – and told me about it today. Steve Saunders’ firm, The NextProperty Group, finds spectacular but under-developed property – especially for boomers seeking a second home or income property. Read how he partnered with local business owners to attract clients for their businesses – and for his. See how you could adapt his “Big Mouth” or “town crier” role to be the person people think of first when they want to buy your kind of product or service. Have a “talked about” title of your campaign, newsletter or special service. Add a contest that shows off others’ smarts.

Popular Travel Writer's Smart Peace Plan

The whole world's a stage. Yet even in this internet-connected world many Americans may be missing some vital scenes, stories and characters by not seeing them first-hand. And in a topsy turvy time, wisdom can come from some apparently unexpected places. Like Rick Steves.

Rick's insight, passed on by inveterate reader and world traveller, Ben Casnocha:

"I think if the world knew what was good for it, it would establish a fund to pay for Americans all to have a free trip for six weeks, anywhere they wanted around the world upon graduation. It would be the best investment the world could ever make. Because right now an America that is threatened by, fearful of and misunderstands the rest of the world is a costly thing on this planet."

Pass the word. Try "travel as a political act" (or lesson).

Did You Know? Beautiful People Tend to Have Daughters

This just in: Beautiful people are 36 per cent more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first-born child, Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics announced last month.

Did you know? Guess why?

According to evolutionary theory, parents are likely to produce children who benefit from the parents’ best traits.

Thus, when parents have traits they can pass on that are better for boys than for girls, they are more likely to have boys. Such traits include large size, strength and aggression, which might help a man compete for mates. Freakonomics co-author, Stephen J. Dubner, partially agrees.

On the other hand, parents with heritable traits that are more advantageous to girls, such as beauty, they are more likely to have daughters.

By the way, researchers have confirmed the obvious, “People from all societies agree on who is beautiful and who is ugly.”

Have you noticed the result when you’ve out and about people-watching?

In his controversial research, Dr. Kanazawa concludes that "because physically attractive parents have more daughters and less attractive parents have more sons, over time, the average level of physical attractiveness among women increases relative to men.”

Plainly speaking (‘scuse the mild pun), that means, according to this research anyway, there’s a beauty gap between the sexes – and it will widen.

Increasingly there will be more attract women than men. Wonder how that will affect courting behavior.

It ought to start some lively conversations, especially now that Kanazawa’s book with Alan S. Miller is out, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.

Interestingly, in past research, by Dr Kanazawa found that engineers, scientists and mathematicians who have systematic "male brains", are more likely to have sons than daughters. The same was true for big and tall parents, and violent fathers.

Conversely, nurses, social workers and kindergarten teachers with empathic "female brains" had more daughters.

Why Do We Cling to Blatantly False “Facts”

1. The side effects of getting a flu vaccine shot are worse than the flu.
True or false?

2. Only older people need flu vaccine.
True or false?

Both of these statements are false. They are also common myths.

Much to the shock of the folks at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people believed this folklore AFTER they had read a CDC educational flyer about the facts than before.

Within a half hour, “older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true.” Worse yet, “ Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual,” according to social psychologist Norbert Schwarz in a story by Shankar Vedantam at the Washington Post.

Adds Vedantam, “Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.”

It seems that the very denial – debunking false advice and urban myths – has a counter-intuitive effect. From many peer-reviewed studies, such attempts to educate people simply deepen people’s belief in the original myth.

As Vedantam points out, that’s probably why so many Americans still believe that Iraq was directly involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Or why many Arabs believe the Jews were behind the plane attacks on the World Trade Center.

Such deeply-held beliefs seem familiar and stick in our mind, as Dan and Chip Heath point out in their popular book, Ideas That Stick.

Perhaps we cling to myths because they seem intuitively right - and they become ever more vividly familiar than the truth when they are repeated, even in an attempt to "educate" us. Learn how you might be mislead or otherwise manipulated by reading the best book on the topic (in my humble opinion), Influence by Robert Cialdini.