Taking Risks and Reaping Rewards

My Beloved’s Birthday

Today is my wife Brenda's Birthday. I'll be busy today attending to her.

What can we learn from this?

I am not stupid. :-)

Looking Around Inside

This post is in response to a question from an American outside the United States about what's going on inside the United States.

Inside America we are bombarded by "news" that is more commentary than actual fact based reporting. Everyone seems to have a slant on what they are saying. In politics, the process story is the norm, so much so that I don't remember the last time there was a story about the "issues" that attempted to educate or inform anyone. Sad. When issues are addressed, they aren't fact based objective reporting, but rather biased slants on hand picked events. For the same event, one network says terrorists are another network says civilians. Same event, totally different spin. All we can be sure of is that more people are dead.

I don't see any attempt by any major organization to rise above this. Quite the contrary, they are all being pulled down to a tabloid level chasing audiences that's main predilection is "entertain me" and "tell me what I want to hear." In fact, that might just be the single thing that has been the biggest change. People can tune in and hear the news told to them in such a way that they aren't challenged, pushed or required to think. They can get the "news" spun for their own beliefs and positions.

This desire comes naturally to most humans - to feel like they are right and correct in our thinking. Others additionally like the emotions that come from others being wrong. This continues to result in a hardening of the positions and increased resentment for other positions. The only way for the news organizations to get an audience in this overwhelming world is to tell people what they want to hear better than anyone else. Also, it helps if you tell them why the other side is wrong, foolish, stupid, etc. Schadenfreude rules the day.

Capitalism is a potential culprit here. We are simply too greedy for our own good. We want our 401K and IRA to go up in value, CEO's want their lucrative stock options to vest for millions, and the culture has gotten a taste of big money in both a stock market bubble and a housing bubble. The meaning of capital is money and so capitalism is moneyism - a word that is far more direct description of our current culture.

This moneyism stems from the move in the early 80's from defined benefit pension plans to the more mobile and self directed 401K and IRA retirement schemes. This took average people with no desire to learn about or be part of financial markets or managing their wealth and pushed them, shoved is probably a better word, into it. Now they feel empowered and greedy. They not only want more money, they want, perhaps by now "expect" is a better word here, to have their ass kissed and be told how right their positions are like an aristocrat or royalty, not chided with facts that counter their opinions like would be expected by the proletariat or even the bourgeois middle class workers. And if they don't get what they want, they simply turn the channel. That hurts profits of the broadcasters, which are facing tremendous pressure from "new" media sources like the internet, and so we have "news" that isn't objective and rational, but biased and slanted. All in search of an audience that provides basis for the advertising revenues.

News used to be a public service. Now it's a competitive business in a money culture and the fastest way to make a buck is to lower your quality. News is no longer an exception.

Value and Context

In a recent study, one of the world's great violinists, the recipient of the Avery Fisher prize for being the best classical musician in America, preformed incognito in a Washington, DC subway in rush hour with a open tip jar. He preformed great masterpieces on a priceless instrument. The concert if staged in a traditional manner would have cost a hundred bucks per ticket. What did he make in his 45 minutes? $32 bucks from 27 people, only 7 of which bothered to even slow down and listen.

When you are considering spending money, consider the context in which you are spending it. The value of the concert isn't just the music, it's the event, it's the venue, it's the crowd, it's your frame of mind and priority at the time. Don't spend money when you can't really enjoy what you are buying and when you do spend the money, take the time to enjoy it.

Want to try this experiment yourself? Buy a great bottle of wine, then drink it out of a plastic, disposable cup while your in the middle of feeding the kids and trying to do laundry.

Context has a great deal to do with value. The wine is still great, as was the music, but you have to be in a position to appreciate it. If not, don't waste the money, just do the laundry.

Humor and Organic Humor

Some people are funny. They just are. What they do makes us laugh. This is organic funny. It's natural. Robin Williams is organically funny. On Inside the Actors Studio, with nothing more than a girls scarf, he had me falling out of my chair in stitches.

There is also processed funny. It's still funny but you know they work really hard at it. They do jokes, skits, song parodies, etc. Jerry Seinfeld is like this. He's a stand up comic that prepares material and delivers it. But you don't expect him to be funny walking down the street. That's fine, but we don't look at it the same way.

What's not apparent to you or I and what I didn't notice until recently is that many of the people that seem organically funny are actually just very skilled in what they do. They appear to be organically funny. The interesting thing (to me at least) is that when we are told that they aren't organic, we feel bad. The funny goes away. Perhaps because we feel duped, that the joke was on us. Two examples of that happened recently that really made me wonder if what we see is real or just a very well done magic act.

The first was on Jon Stewart's show. He showed a series of Robin Williams interviews in which Robin was being his outrageous self except he was using the same lines over and over again and just inserting the host's name. What appear spontaneous on Leno, appeared spontaneous with Katie Couric and with Regis and Kelly. This quickly gave the appearance that he isn't spontaneous and witty, just practiced and skilled at looking so. He's acting like a comic genius, he isn't actually a comic genius. Pulling back the curtain like that on something you have believed in for years, well quite frankly, stinks. I'll never look at him the same way again. Now I know why they don't show you how they do the magic trick. Because not knowing what's really going on is the key to the entertainment.

The second example was brought up today as a speaker was describing how to use humor in a speech. This was planned humor, not improv. He mentioned that the best part of the Carol Burnett show was when Harvey Korman and Tim Conway were so funny they would bust each other up laughing. Which of course the audience, me included, loved. But, he went on to say that was all planned!

I can't remember the last time I felt the air leave the room that fast. It was like he told everyone that Santa Claus wasn't real, the Easter Bunny is fake and the money from the tooth fairy came from mom and dad. We were crushed.

He went on to tell us how back stage they would collude to make sure that they were on the same page about what part they were going to crack up.

"Tonight, you crack up in the third skit on the fourth joke, okay Tim?"

"Okay, Harv. Got it."

I don't think anyone could breath for three minutes. That's just not right. There is too a Santa Claus! You shut your mouth!

If there was ever a good reason for denial, this was it. Don't ruin my beliefs and don't rain on my parade. I want my money back.

This got me thinking about all that we see that appears real but is really an act. We all know that the pundits and politicians aren't really saying what they think. They are playing to their audience. We certainly know that advertising isn't telling us the truth and we have no problem accepting that without ill will.

But when people pull the curtain back and expose us to the errors of our real beliefs, things that we hold to be true and above reproach, that's a killer. That really takes the wind out of us. The mere idea that Robin Williams is just a stage act and that he goes home and practices this stuff deflates us. We know not to trust the other people, the "sales people". We are in it with them. We're inside. We know the deal. But when we feel duped; when we feel betrayed; we feel despair and emptiness.

Is Robin Williams just a public face on an otherwise completely different guy? Is that even possible?

Does Tim Conway even think Harvey Korman is funny? Do they just sit backstage playing cards, then come out, fake it, and then go home? Tell me it ain't so, Joe. Tell me it ain't so.

You know what they say, anything is possible.

I thought I was getting organic and I find out it's all processed.

I am so depressed.

On the other hand this does explain why right before the tooth fairy came my mom would say she needed to get some change.

Judgement

Do we really have to be judgmental? To say that we must is to say we can't be objective, we can't step back and consider, ponder and wonder without creating a judgement as to good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or not.

Some old dead philosopher once said, "It is the educated mind that can hold a thought without accepting or rejecting it." Is that the opposite of judgmental?

Happiness

Taking a job because it will allow you to retire can result in selling your time simply for money. This goes back to the quote that "the ladder you climb may be on the wrong wall". I would suggest that it's the choice and ascension of the ladder that leads to happiness, not only the result of standing on the wall.

Thinking

I would suggest that there is a step between research and action, that I call "thinking" By this I mean, you have to understand what you are reading and being told, not just accept it. Then come up with a plan that will work for you. Health magazines, as with most other media, are full of ads and other misleading information cloaked in the shape of articles. Research is being done everyday by food producers that results in studies that mislead us to thinking that their products are better than they actually are. The beef council pays for beef research that tells us beef is fine, the chicken council pays for studies that say the opposite. The genetic farm companies say that's fine, the organic farmers say it's not. You see my point. You can't believe what you read or are told buy anyone without that step between hearing it and taking action that I call thinking.

Spin exists in finance

Inaccuracy is in the eye of the beholder. We see this in politics every night on TV. Watch the same story on CNN and on Fox and you will see slight differences that some would call inaccuracies.

One of the main reasons for posting this is to make very clear that spin exists in finance. We used to use different charts in the financial reports depending on which one looked the best. Not different numbers, but the selection of income over cash flow was based on which one looked better. Sure all the numbers were there but the chart of steadily increases looks better than scattered volatility. That's spin. I did it. Everyone does it. As investors, managers and business owners, we need to be aware of it and consider it when making decisions.

Roots of education

The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet - Aristotle

or one of my other favorites....

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." -T.S. Eliot

Hello world!

As Tiger Woods said at the begining of his first press conference as a professional, "Well, I guess...Hello World!" This is my first post in my new blogging world. Much like Tiger at his first press conference, I am a bit unsure of my footing, yet full of enthusiasm. I will surely not rise to his level of accomplishment. But I don't think it's unreasonable to hope to pull off a great shot on occasion. It's those great shots that keep even the worst players coming back and wanting more in golf. And hopefully there will be enough great shots here to keep you coming back and wanting more as well. Time will tell.