Miscellaneous Briefs

Discrimination

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Two things that are considered to be intellectual faults are actually great and useful intellectual tools. I’m talking about the capacity to make generalizations and to discriminate.

You make a statement and people say, “That’s a generalization.” And you think, “Of course it is. I’m trying to make a generalization. That’s what smart people do.”

Or you feel that a certain type of person dressed in a certain way is dangerous. And you are told to ignore that feeling because it is “discriminatory.”

That is ludicrous. We discriminate naturally. It is the part of our limbic brain system that helps us make quick and necessary decisions. We generalize because we want to understand our experiences and our instincts. Being able to do this is a function of our neocortical brain.

These are the highest powers of both our rational and also our emotional intelligence.

Discrimination based on generalized assumptions can indeed be harmful. When, for example, the merits of individual people are inhibited by the discriminatory practices of groups that have power.

But it is perfectly rational to make generalizations and discriminations based on observation, so long as you allow for the exceptions and do not impose restrictions upon classes of people that you believe, in general, to have certain undesirable traits.

Miscellaneous Briefs

This Is Not a Pipe

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What I like about Magritte is that he never claimed he was creating another language. When asked what his paintings meant he always said they mean nothing. He even painted pipes with the tag, “This is not a pipe” to make it clear that the painted image is its own thing and sufficient in itself.

Miscellaneous Briefs

There Are Plenty of Good Jobs

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The idea that there are more good and qualified people who want to find jobs than there are appropriate jobs for them is a myth (perpetuated by academia). The opposite is true. There are plenty of good jobs, but most people who apply for them are unqualified to fill them.

These are people at the bottom of the employment chain, people whose “skills” have been rendered largely useless by the advance of technology. In the age of the Internet, we no longer need people to open and sort mail. Nor do we need people to enter data when it is done automatically.

What we need are people who have learned to think rationally and communicate effectively — things our educational system is not set up to teach people to do. So they are put out into the marketplace, a marketplace that has no room for them.

Unless education radically changes, the poor will always be with us.

Miscellaneous Briefs

From Our House to Bauhaus

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Antoni Gaudi is a great architect — one of the best in my view. He is the Frank Lloyd Wright of Spain. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi’s style was distinctive. Also like Wright, he preserved some of the past while making his designs new. But I believe Gaudi is the better architect. You can see why I say that by visiting both architects’ buildings. Gaudi’s are more beautiful, more innovative, more structurally sound, and more durable.

When judging an architect’s work, this is what you look for:

  • Beauty inside and out. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But there is a reason that classical and neoclassical buildings are still thought to be beautiful by millions of people while some modern buildings – particularly those built by communists and urban planners of the 1970s — are simply ugly.
  • Creativity. If all the architect is doing is following suit, he is not a great architect. The great ones are innovative, both in terms of aesthetics and structure.
  • Respect for tradition. Innovation without a respect for tradition is arrogance.
  • Structural soundness. The building has to be able to support itself. This seems obvious but many modern architects don’t do a good job of it. Some, in fact, design buildings that can’t even be built. And they get awards for them! Many architects today lack useful knowledge of engineering and construction. Their designs always have to be altered to be able to be built practically and within budget.
  • Functionality. The building needs to be functional. If it is a music hall, it not only needs to be the right size to accommodate the musicians and the audience, it must have good acoustics. If it is a house, it must be a place where a family can comfortably go about their daily activities.
  • Durability. Since the 1950s, most buildings have been built to disintegrate within 50 years. Many of them start falling apart almost as soon as they are occupied. Good architecture should last.
  • Holistic approach. The great architects of the past, and particularly those who were designing buildings toward the end of the 19th century, took a holistic approach. In addition to designing the building itself, they designed the interior décor, including such details as banisters, doorknobs, and furniture. This makes sense.
  • Projects completed. Great architects do more than simply draw plans. They complete projects. And not just ordinary projects – great ones.
  • Commercial viability. The final criterion is just as important as the others. Great architects are commercial tradesmen. They must design buildings that sell.

Recommended reading: Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House

Miscellaneous Briefs

Snake Venom

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About five years ago my son told me about a guy he knew who had an odd pastime — injecting himself with snake venom. When I met him a year later I was surprised by how smart and normal he was. When he told me his age I almost couldn’t believe it. He attributes his youthful looks and the fact that he doesn’t get sick to his snake venom regime. National Geographic is doing a show with him. Here’s the trailer:

 

Miscellaneous Briefs

Common Sense

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There is a widespread idea about liberals – held by liberals – that they are smarter than conservatives. Studies show that this is not the case. People who identify themselves as liberals tend to have more schooling and they may, as a result, have some higher academic skills. But there is no evidence that they think more accurately or effectively than conservatives.

One of the most obvious examples of poor thinking among liberals is in the area of macroeconomics. Liberals want bigger government and more debt because they believe that a small group of people who think as they do can regulate something as complex and organic as the economy.

Common sense tells you that debt is bad. And common experience tells you that it is nearly impossible to regulate a single household of six people, let alone a nation of 300 million.

Miscellaneous Briefs

“Welcome Gauntlet”

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Every business consultant these days talks about developing “relationships” with customers. They say, quite correctly, that this will lead to more sales, fewer problems, and greater profits.

When you get a new customer, you have the potential to double or triple his lifetime value. By lifetime value, I mean the net dollars he will eventually send you. It starts with the very first experiences the customer has with you. These experiences are crucial. They make an impression that will last forever.

My colleague Dan Kennedy encourages his clients to send what he calls a “stick letter” to new customers. A good stick letter, Kennedy says, reduces refunds by restating the promises and benefits made in the sales letter and then giving them a bonus.

But I think you should do more than that. My recommendation is to create a “welcome gauntlet” – a series of communications that go beyond delivering what the customer is expecting.

A welcome gauntlet should be so good that it not only satisfies the customer, it surprises and delights him. By doing that, you are showing him how much you care about him… and laying the foundation for a strong, mutually beneficial relationship.

Miscellaneous Briefs

Gullible

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The mainstream media is amazing. The stuff they publish. The way they manipulate facts to promote their viewpoints.

The New York Times is a good example. Recently, the Times ran an editorial noting that investors are running from stocks and buying bonds. The reason for this, says the Times, is that the stock market has become untrustworthy because it isn’t regulated.

They don’t know what they are talking about. They ignore the fact that people went into the market when it was unregulated – precisely because it was unregulated. And the Times apparently never stopped to consider that exiting the market right now just might be a good thing.

Fox News is another good example. They are always featuring “news” events that are nothing more than silly little stories that pander to the prejudices of conservatives.

This raises the question: Why do so many people believe this crap? And I think the answer is that most people are not capable of rational analysis. Our educational system does not include – as it should – basic courses in logic, discourse, and reasoning. These are considered “elective” subjects for college students. Yet they should be part of every grammar school curriculum.

Lacking the ability to reason, people need to make decisions nonetheless. So they rely on prejudices they learned as children. And they look to the media to reinforce their prejudices and, thus, justify their decisions.

Miscellaneous Briefs

5 Skills You Need In Business and Life

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If you want to be a successful entrepreneur or CEO, there are 5 skills you need to master:

  1. Hiring superstar employees
  2. Firing mediocre ones
  3. Managing key employees
  4. Recognizing which products to launch and which to kill
  5. Determining which advertising campaigns will work

You need roughly the same skills to succeed in your personal life:

  1. Finding friends and associates who will have a positive effect on you
  2. Distancing yourself from people who will have a negative effect on you
  3. Working consistently to improve the quality of your personal relationships
  4. Recognizing which habits and pastimes enrich you, which are wasteful, and which are self-destructive
  5. Eliminating the self-destructive habits and pastimes and gradually replacing wasteful ones with enriching ones

Miscellaneous Briefs

The Best Cities to Visit: Travel & Leisure versus Me

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Criteria: Sites, culture/arts, restaurants/food, people, shopping, value

Best Cities in the World

 Travel and  Leisure                 

  1. Bangkok
  2. Florence
  3. Istanbul
  4. Cape Town
  5. Sidney
  6. Rome
  7. New York
  8. Hong Kong
  9. Kyoto
  10. Paris

My Picks  

  1. Rome
  2. New York
  3. Paris
  4. Barcelona
  5. Madrid
  6. Hong Kong
  7. Istanbul
  8. Buenos Aires
  9. Chicago
  10. Cape Town

Best Cities in Europe

Travel and Leisure                      

  1. Florence
  2. Istanbul
  3. Rome
  4. Paris
  5. Barcelona
  6. Venice
  7. Madrid
  8. Vienna
  9. Seville
  10. Siena

My Picks

  1. Rome
  2. Paris
  3. Barcelona
  4. Madrid
  5. Istanbul
  6. Aix en Provence
  7. Florence
  8. Prague
  9. Milan
  10. Siena

Best Cities in North America

Travel and Leisure              

  1. New York
  2. Chicago
  3. San Francisco
  4. Charleston
  5. New Orleans
  6. Santa Fe
  7. Vancouver
  8. Savannah
  9. Quebec City
  10. Honolulu

My Picks

  1. New York
  2. Chicago
  3. San Francisco
  4. Washington, D.C.
  5. New Orleans
  6. Santa Fe
  7. Savannah
  8. Vancouver
  9. Honolulu
  10. Charleston
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