Test Your Limits – It Seems To Me

Musings

Growth

ByHeather 2009-01-272017-01-26

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Perhaps it is my natural temperament to do things deliberately and with purpose (after all, it is the tortoise who wins the race). Maybe it is my persistent skepticism. Quite possibly it is an outgrowth of my intuitive personality type (INTJ). Whatever the reason, I have always been resistant to Wall Street’s incessant demand for growth from public companies.

Musings

Contentment

ByHeather 2009-01-012017-01-29

There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

— G. K Chesterton

When Linda and I returned from our stint in London, we landed in New Jersey. Within a few weeks of our US re-entry, and for reasons that still escape us, we bought a beautiful, 2,400 square foot house with a large basement on the north side of Princeton. Despite the delightful, well-groomed neighborhood, we quickly began to discover the folly of our ways. The sweeping windows that let in so much light in the spring became a greenhouse in the heat of summer. It seemed cavernous to heat and cool. Finding enough furniture to fill all the rooms took the better part of a year. …

Musings

Spelling

ByHeather 2009-01-032017-01-27

People who can’t spell a word in more than one way are dumb.

— W. C. Fields

I stumbled upon this quote early in my career and have had the opportunity to recite it countless times. I taught high school for two years right out of college and the students were merciless. I moved on to teaching at the college level for many more years where the students were more forgiving but no less astute. Then I made the move to corporate America where, as a business professional, there no end to the opportunities to make presentations or take notes at the whiteboard. Despite my passionate commitment to correct spelling and grammar an occasional misspelling in front of the class or a typo in the PowerPoint deck is inevitable.

Here is where our old friend W.C. Fields comes to the rescue. After discovering a spelling mistake in front of a group of people I simply recite his pearl of wisdom, wait for the mild aknowledgement of smiles, and move on. No need to have your confidence shaken or allow the audience to derail your message. Just move on quickly with wit and aplomb.

The aphorism plays equally well from the audience as it does from the podium. It is a great way to help a presenter through a rough spot if they become unnerved by a typo.

Musings

Simple Financial Recovery Plan

ByHeather 2008-10-102017-01-27

My new favorite podcast is Planet Money. As the economic turmoil has progressed from frightening to surreal, the NPR crew at Planet Money have done a wonderful job explaining the intricacies of the complex financial world in terms that are easy to understand.

Here is what I have been able to figure out so far. Forget about the subprime mortgage crisis. A huge part of the problem is these credit default swaps – to the tune of $55 trillion dollars. These “insurance policies” were not only taken out by people who lent money to protect themselves against potential loss. Financial gamblers were also taking out credit default swaps on other people’s loans! This is raw gambling. Some analysts estimate that for every CDF taken out to by a lender to protect a loan, ten other CDFs were sold by and for third parties on the same loan.

Musings

TV Ads – Too Many?

ByHeather 2009-04-162020-03-16

We are in the business of providing the material that prevents the commercials from all slamming together . . . that’s what we are doing here. That’s what we are doing on the West Wing set. We gotta deliver them twelve minutes of stuff to separate the Chevy commercials.

— Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. Executive Producer of the The West Wing. Quoted in an NPR interview, January 2006.

I counted forty-two ads in last week’s episode of Lost. And that does not include any that aired before the show started or after the credits started to roll. Just forty-two ads in five breaks squeezed between six seven-minute segments of content. There were almost nineteen minutes of ads in a sixty-two minute time slot. That’s almost 30% of the air time dedicated to noise from advertisers.

Musings

Be the Best of Whatever You Are

ByHeather 2009-01-252017-01-26

If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill,
Be a shrub in the valley – but be
The best little shrub by the side of the hill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass,
But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, some have to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here;
There’s work to be done, and we all have to do
Our part in the way that’s sincere.

If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail,
Be the best of whatever you are.

— Douglas Mallock

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