Category Archives: Politics

You Need To Seek Out Ideas and Opinions That Are Different From Your Beliefs

[Editor’s Note: This post’s title was changed on September 16th from “if you’re a conservative, tell me which liberals you read: if you’re a liberal, tell me which conservatives you read.”]

I was born and raised in Canada and really didn’t start paying attention to politics until I moved to the US, so most of my understanding of politics comes through the lens of American politics. Watching the Democrats and the Republicans fight (bicker?) year after year starts to get intolerable. As , many American agree with this sentiment.

Part of this is a result of our to seek out opinions that confirm our own previously held beliefs. That is, if one is more liberal, they are probably more inclined to watch MSNBC and/or read the New York Times. Similarly, if one is more conservative, they are probably more inclined to watch FOX News and/or read the Wall Street Journal. There’s no “good” or “bad” here, though I would .

So, if we know that we have a tendency to seek out opinions that confirm our previously held beliefs, it would behoove us to intentionally seek out opinions that we know are counter to our own! That sounds a lot easier than it actually is — especially in today’s world of RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and personalized news.

Not to pick on Facebook, but the friends you have on Facebook, more than likely, share your political affiliation. It’s just natural for us to befriend those and even if you have a few friends from the “other side,” the news that they share on Facebook will most likely: a) get drowned out by all your other friends’ sharing news; or b) won’t be elevated to the top of your newsfeed because you tended not to click on the links provided by these friends.

While I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” with it, I do think that there’s something that we should be doing about it. If you’re a conservative, there are a critical mass of people out there who think that your opinion on issues of the day are wrong. If you’re a liberal, there are a critical mass of people out there who think that your opinion on issues of the day are wrong. What are you doing to try to understand why they think your opinion is wrong?

And yes, there are things that you can do.

Lifehacker proposed to do this:

  • Get random reading content delivered to your inbox
“The easiest, no hassle way to get a random selection of news is to have it delivered right to your inbox.”
  • Automatically get different points of view for articles you read
“When you’re browsing the news it’s easy to stick with the sites you know. Sometimes that means you’re missing an entirely different point of view.”
  • Randomize your start page
“Your browser’s home page is a great place to dump interesting and random content for your accidental and automatic discovery. Obviously you don’t want to do this on your work computer in case you get distracted, but it’s a good way to discover new things when you have the time.”

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Head on over to the for more details and specific suggestions (for your start page). There’s one more suggestion I want to make (as it’s something that I do): Twitter. Instead of just following/reading news from people/accounts that I know are similar to my previously held beliefs, I have sought out those accounts that often discuss the issues from a perspective that is not native to me. This way, I’m able to read about the news from an entirely different perspective and from one that I may not have considered were it not for someone giving words to it.

So, I ask: if you’re a conservative, tell me who are the liberals that you read — if you’re a liberal, tell me who are the conservatives that you read.

Wealth Distribution in America: It’s Not What Americans Think or Want

There were some interesting enlightening findings published last year from two well-respected researchers (Norton and Ariely) on the topic of wealth distribution. I remember seeing it last year when it came out and it being rather startling. I came across it again a couple of weeks ago and had it bookmarked to see if I could glean any other insights from it. I stumbled across the bookmark this morning and thought I’d post it here, in case any of you had any thoughts you wanted to offer on the research findings.

Specifically, I’m referring to a chart that came from the article the two researchers published and was reproduced by Mother Jones (political magazine). Here’s the chart from Mother Jones (note: the chart from the published journal article is the same in content):

Average Income by Family, distributed by income group.

A bit startling, huh? I find it fascinating that Americans want the top 20% to have ~32% and that they actually have almost triple that much!

Some important things to think about from the authors [emphasis added]:

Given the consensus among disparate groups on the gap between an ideal distribution of wealth and the actual level of wealth inequality, why are more Americans, especially those with low income, not advocating for greater redistribution of wealth? First, our results demonstrate that Americans appear to drastically underestimate the current level of wealth inequality, suggesting they may simply be unaware of the gap. Second, just as people have erroneous beliefs about the actual level of wealth inequality, they may also hold overly optimistic beliefs about opportunities for social mobility in the United States, beliefs which in turn may drive support for unequal distributions of wealth. Third, despite the fact that conservatives and liberals in our sample agree that the current level of inequality is far from ideal, public disagreements about the causes of that inequality may drown out this consensus. Finally, and more broadly, Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes toward economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap.

The ironic piece to this entire discussion is that conservatives and liberals agree that the level of inequality is ideal. However, as with just about everything in politics these days, these two ideologically different groups of people disagree about the best way to resolve it.

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 8

It’s been quite awhile since I last did a post in my series of “”Who I’’m Following”” on Twitter. In fact, it’s been 6 months! That’s almost half as long as I’ve been participating on Twitter. In looking at the some of these old posts (see below) of who I’m following, I seemed to have unfollowed a number of folks. I wish I had kept a list of the people I’ve unfollowed, so I could offer reasons as to why I decided to unfollow some folks. Briefly, I can say that sometimes the reason is because the person isn’t very active on Twitter. Other times, it’s because I became frustrated with the amount of negativity (sometimes in the form of the person retweeting “trolls” or people being unnecessarily negative in the form of ad hominem attacks). I most certainly won’t be able to get to all the new people I’m following on Twitter (it’s approximately doubled!), so look for a few of these posts in the coming weeks (or months).

If you missed any of the earlier posts in this series, here they are:







Part 7

Here we go!

Big Think@bigthink: Big Think aims to, “help you move above and beyond random information, toward real knowledge, offering big ideas from fields outside your own that you can apply toward the questions and challenges in your own life.”

Wired@wired: Wired is the digital home of Wired Magazine and it acts as a daily technology site.

Austan Goolsbee@Austan_Goolsbee: Goolsbee is a Professor of economics and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago). He is also the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Richard H Thaler@R_Thaler: Thaler is a Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the Booth School of Business (University of Chicago) and the co-author of Nudge.

Maria Popova@brainpicker: “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.”

Ashoka Changemakers@changemakers: “The latest in innovation, social entrepreneurship, and how you can make a difference. Why? Everyone Can Be a Changemaker.”

Ashoka@Ashoka: “Ashoka is an international citizen-sector organization that is leading the way to an Everyone a Changemaker World.”

Rick Mercer@rickmercer: Mercer is a Canadian comedian and political satirist. He’s an alumnus of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and is currently the host of the Rick Mercer Report.

Josh Barro@jbarro: “I write on fiscal and economic policy issues at all levels of government. Areas of particular interest for me include tax policy, entitlements and public employee compensation.”

Matt Yglesias@mattyglesias: “Matthew Yglesias is Slate‘s business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect.”

Lifehacker@lifehacker: “Lifehacker curates tips, tricks, and technology for living better in the digital age.”

Timothy P Carney@TPCarney: “Timothy P. Carney is the Washington Examiner‘s senior political columnist.” Carney is also a prominent conservative voice.

Joseph Weisenthal@TheStalwart:  Joe Weisenthal is the Deputy Editor Of Business Insider. “He previously was a writer and analyst for Techdirt.com, and before that worked as an analyst for money management firm Prentiss Smith & Co.”

Bob Rae@bobraeMP: Bob Rae is the current (interim) Leader of the Liberal Party (of Canada). He was previously the leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

Mediaite@mediaite: “The site for news, info and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media.”

Susan Rice@AmbassadorRice: Susan Rice is the US Ambassador to the United Nations. According to Wikipedia, she is not related to Condoleezza Rice.

Josh Rogin@joshrogin: “Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.”

Andrew Exum@abumuqawama: “Andrew Exum is a Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security,” and “Abu Muqawama is a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter@SlaughterAM: “Princeton Professor. Director of Policy Planning, U.S. State Dept 2009-2011. Foreign policy curator.”

Library of Congress@librarycongress: “We are the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in our collections.”

Bill Nye@TheScienceGuy: “‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer, and scientist.”

Bill Cosby@BillCosby: “Bill Cosby is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist.”

Jeffrey Levy, EPA@levyj413: “Jeffrey Levy is the EPA Director of Web Communications, Co-Chair of the Federal Web Managers Council, and Gov’t 2.0er.”

Ed Husain@Ed_Husain: “Ed Husain is a Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of ‘The Islamist.'”

Daniel Drezner@dandrezner: “Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.”

John Green@realjohngreen: I just wrote a post about John Green’s Crash Course in World History. Check it out!

Amazing Photography@AmazingPics: This Twitter feed regularly posts some of the best photographs. You’ll want to see these.

kelly oxford@kellyoxford: Kelly Oxford’s current Twitter Bio: “Writer. Designed to make you feel like everything is going well. I am your Perestroika.”

Joe Randazzo@Randazzoj: “Joe Randazzo is currently the editor of the satirical newspaper, The Onion.” As you might think, his tweets are often sarcastic (and funny).

Ken Jennings@KenJennings: Of Jeopardy! fame. He’s written a bunch of books, including Maphead. His tweets are often intended to be funny.

Seth Meyers@sethmeyers21: “Seth Meyers currently serves as the head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody program segment Weekend Update.”

Anjeanette Carter@anjeanette: I found Anjeanette’s twitter feed as a result of this article. “The aspiring actress isn’t afraid to let the sarcasm fly – and sometimes that’s just the sort of thing you need to pop up on your screen.”

Andy Carvin@acarvin: “Senior strategist at NPR. Online community organizer since 1994. Former director of the Digital Divide Network. Writer. Photographer. Dad.”

AJELive@AJELive: “Breaking news alerts and updates from Al Jazeera English, a 24-hour news and current affairs channel.” By now, you should all know that I’m a big fan of different perspectives (here or here).

Brian Stelter@brianstetler: A really good person to follow if you enjoy things in “meta.” Stetler reports on TV & Media for the New York Times.

johnmaeda@johmaeda: “President, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, College, Museum, USA, 1877, Laws of Simplicity, MIT, Design, Art, Business, Technology, Life.”

OMG Facts @OMGFacts: As you might expect, this Twitter feed specializes in tweets that are facts that might “knock your socks off.”

BuzzFeed@BuzzFeed: “BuzzFeed is a website that combines a technology platform for detecting viral content with an editorial selection process to provide a snapshot of “the viral web in realtime.”

Tim O'Reilly@timoreilly: “Founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media. Watching the alpha geeks, sharing their stories, helping the future unfold.”

Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu: “I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and study new media. I don’t do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter.”

daveweigel@daveweigel: Dave Weigel is a political reporter for Slate. While his main focus is politics, his tweets are often laced with humor.

Mark Knoller@markknoller: Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House Correspondent. Similar to Stetler, he sometimes comments on what other networks are reporting.

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I’m well past my self-imposed 1000 word limit, but I wanted to begin to squeeze a bunch more feeds into one post (because I have a lot to make up in this series). As always, I welcome your suggestions in the comments or tweet me!

What if Every Major Religious Holiday Were a National Holiday?

There were a few articles (, , and ) in The Economist over the last few issues that got me thinking about religion. And not any one particular religion — all of them — and how they might be very much interrelated. At the same time, I often think about the growing . It seems the ways of balance has completely gone out the window.

There are lots of different explanations as to why people continue to overwork themselves. One from this claims that Americans mistake overwork for good work. Meaning, they think that if they work harder (they’ll be working better). by way of a calculator that lets you visually see how much time you’re spending on a variety of activities, which include: work, sleep, leisure, chores, meals, commute, etc.

Another contribution to the nature of overworking is the amount of holidays that people are ‘allowed’ to take. In some countries, it’s pretty to have 6, 7, or 8 weeks as holidays. We could also say the workweek itself is a pressure to work harder. In France, they have a . There’s also the idea that you need to work longer hours in order to .

Circling back to my initial point about religion: there are certain days in countries that are designated as . In the US, for instance, Easter and Christmas are holidays for which it is illegal to mandate that someone needs to be at work. According to , there are an assortment of religions represented across the United States.

So, my “big” idea: make all the major religious holidays national holidays.

When I say national holiday, I mean that these are days that are mandatory days off for businesses. I realize that this kind of idea would take an enormous amount of planning, that there would need to be legislation passed, that we’d need to define “major religious holidays,” and all that jazz, but just think about it (abstractly) for a moment.

Think about the extra days off to spend with family. Think about the prospect of religious acceptance for the younger generations. Instead of just “taking the day off and ,” parents could spend the day with their kids explaining to them what the major holiday means to that religion. Or, if there were no kids, the adults could take the day to learn about the culture and religion for the holiday. This could definitely foster a greater sense of compassion and empathy between people of different faiths.

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 7

Finally, finally, finally. I have caught up my “”Who I’’m Following”” series to the actual people I am following on Twitter. You’ll notice a decided conservative-flavor to these Twitter accounts because I noticed I was following a number of “liberal” folks. As a result, I wanted to make sure I was getting the viewpoint from the conservative side, too. If you missed any of the earlier posts in this series, here they are:






So, without further adieu, here are the people I have followed since my last post.

: Jonah writes on psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between the humanities and science. You can find his columns/posts on the and .

: Scientific American has been covering science news for the last 165+ years. A reputable source of science news for certain.

: “The best of the alternative press — are digests of independent ideas and culture. Not right, not left, but forward thinking”

: “…the world’s fastest growing platforms for social change, empowering millions to start and join campaigns for social change in their communities.”

: “Counterparties is a curated snapshot of the best finance news and commentary. It combines what we [ and ] find interesting, overlooked, and important.”

: Jonas is one of my childhood friends (!) and he covers the Toronto Maple Leafs for TSN Radio 1050.

: Rob Lowe played one of my favorite TV characters, , and often tweets about an assortment of things including politics and .

: I went to high school with Melissa — she’’s one of the smartest people I know. She’s just finishing up her MBA at  and who knows what wonderful things she’ll contribute to the world.

: Richard Branson is probably one of the most successful — ever.

: A hilarious stand-up comedian. One of my favorites from him was “.”

: One of the most important documentaries — bar none. If you haven’t seen it, go see it — right now.

: Brian Burke is the current GM for the Toronto Maple Leafs and he’s got a reputation for .

: “An international magazine for Intelligent Optimists about the people, passion, & possibilities changing our world for the better.”

: Meghan McCain is the daughter of former Republican Presidential Nominee, John McCain.

: He is a very reputable economist and has a at universities and think-tanks.

: “Politics, election news and other jokes. From your friends at Comedy Central.”

: Seth Godin is one of the most influential people in business today, especially with regard to marketing.

: “Information graphics and data from The Wall Street Journal.” I’ve previously written about my affinity for data (in visual form).

: Jen is the writer/director/producer of the documentary I mentioned earlier, .

:  This is the Twitter account for the Nelson Mandela Foundation… “contributing to a just society by promoting the values, vision, and work of our founder.”

: I went to university with Shane and he currently works in the non-profit industry. He’s sure to do great things!

: This Twitter account provides proverbs and quotes. I do enjoy a good .

: He is… “a political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the NYT.”

: “I write in the hope and expectation that people read people with whom they disagree to challenge their settled views. Suffice it to say, this isn’t generally the case, but I’m happy to continue behaving as though it is, as it is true of enough people to justify the effort.” ()

: , a modern-day philosopher in his own right, has said that Rove has read .

: “Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for National Review, where he has covered national politics for 15 years.”

: I have Paul Krugman before. Seems like I unfollowed him and refollowed him.

: “Gallup news and tracking data on politics, business, wellbeing, and the world.”

: Do I really need to tell you who Deepak Chopra is? Just in case I do, go .

: A sports network of over 300 blogs maintained by part-time writers who love their team.

: Joe Scarborough is the co-host of  and is a former Congressman from Florida.

: This is the official Twitter account for  not to be confused with .

: Erin Andrews, (one of my sisters-in-law), is affectionately known as .

: Christina Bellantoni is the Politics Editor for . She was also a fellow at the this past fall.

: Michael is a Politics Editor for  and is a noted conservative voice.

: Frum is a former economic speechwriter for George W. Bush and clearly, is a noted conservative.

: “ALL the news from TED: TEDTalks, TED Conferences, the TED Prize and more.”

: “The business journal of McKinsey & Company. Our goal is to offer new ways of thinking about management in the private, public, & nonproft sector.”

: “The latest Harvard Business Review blog posts, Management Tips of the Day, Daily Stats, and more.”

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And there you have it. You’re all caught up on the the accounts I’m current following on Twitter. As always, if you have any recommendations (based on the flavor of the people I follow in Parts 1 through 7), feel free to leave me a note in the comment section of tweet .

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 6

It’s been just about two months since I last updated the list of people I’m following on Twitter. I thought today might be a good day to give a brief update. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to catch “all the way” up to who I’m following. In case you missed the earlier posts:





So, without further adieu, here are the people I have followed since my last post.

: Louise Hay is the author of one of the most the most famous self-help books of all time – . It lends credence to the idea that your thoughts can affect your biology.

: “A collection of quotes that will challenge, motivate and inspire you to be the best you can be.” Curated by , Personal Development Trainer & Coach.

: He is a former Governor & Congressman and is currently . He has bee notoriously held out of , but has some intriguing ideas.

: CNBC is a cable television business news channel. They are dedicated to covering business headlines and financial markets.

: LeVar Burton played the lovable character from . He’s also a big proponent of literacy.

: Justin Trudeau is the son of the famous . Justin has gone on to become a politician in his own right.

: Since the passing of Jack Layton, Turmel has filled in as the interim leader of the NDP. Shortly, the NDP will pick their leader.

: Dahlia is a Canadian (eh?) and mostly tweets about issues regarding law and the court system.

: This is the account of the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron. I’m not sure, but I think the account will stay with the Prime Minister’s office, regardless of party.

: Melinda Gates is the co-founder and co-chair of the , which is the largest .

: Jim Carrey was born in (I lived there when I was younger!) and is one of the funnier comedians of today.

: Lewis Black is a stand-up comedian and is a regular on . His tweets are often funny.

: “Word Spy is devoted to ‘lexpionage,’ the sleuthing of new words and phrases.”

: Michael Steele is a former RNC Chairman. He is a contributor to MSNBC (often representing the conservative viewpoint).

: She is currently a Washington correspondent for GQ and often has interesting commentary on the political debates.

: Julie is one of my friends from SVSU. She currently works for the American Red Cross.

: The Dalai Lama is the most influential figure in Tibetan Buddhism. His “reign” has lasted over 60 years!

: This twitter account is aimed at iPad users, but during “The Rachel Maddow Show,” it often tweets links to articles of which Maddow is referring.

: Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and is a very well respected academic.

: I used to watch Ali back when he was on . I always found him to be very intelligent.

: From the Twitter account: “We work to help all people lead healthy, productive lives, focused on health, poverty, and opportunity.”

: I listened to a lecture of Prof. Aaker (look for it in my upcoming post in the series “, Part 6.”)

: The : Informing and inspiring leaders of social change.

: Bill Gates doesn’t tweet very often, but when he does, he often, “shares cool things he’s learning.”

: Jack Welch is one of the preeminent businessmen of our time. It’s great to be able to follow his commentary via Twitter.

: Tweets to articles in that have to do with news or insights for business education.

: I like to view information by way of charts, so it’s great that has an account dedicated solely to charts.

: Tweets from this account are from and have to do with business, finance, or economics.

: This is the Twitter account for a blog and there are often tweets about the economy, business, and finance.

: This account retweets Humblebrags. As is made clear on their about statement, “Humblebrags are different from brags.”

: Paul La Monica tweets — often — about stocks (what’s up, what’s down) and the economy. He’s quite a barometer for the market.

: Richard writes about social and economic theory. He’s current a at the University of Toronto.

: Roubini is a rather famous economist. In fact, he predicted the collapse of the US housing market and the worldwide recession.

: Felix Salmon is a noted finance blogger for Reuters. He’s won for his scientific reporting.

: “GOOD is the global association of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits powering what works.”

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As I said earlier in this post, I’ll do my best to catch up to the updated list of who I’m following in the next couple of weeks. As always, if there’s someone you think I might like to follow, leave me a comment, send me an email, or me.

Twitter: Who I’m Following, Part 5

It’s been almost 3 months since I last updated the list of people I’m following on Twitter. I thought today might be a good time to begin to update that list. In case you missed the earlier posts:




So, without further adieu, here are the people I have followed since my last post.

: Rogin covers national security and foreign policy for . He often tweets his column and other things that come up in the news that have to do with national security or foreign policy.

: Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at . She guest hosts for and from time-to-time. She’s also writes for .

: Dylan Ratigan is the host of . He also, somewhat famously, about the political system in the US.

: has high praise for Milne. In her book , she said that Milne turned ‘s comment section into a “truly global debating forum.”

: He hosts a progressive radio show that has nearly 3 million listeners a week. Interesting to me, before being a nationally syndicated radio host, he was a psychotherapist.

: He served in the and as the in the . Currently, he’s a professor at .

: In 2000, Donna Brazile became the first African-American woman to lead a presidential campaign (Gore). She’s currently a professor at .

: Politifact is a project , “fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups.” This is very helpful in judging the validity (or truth) of some of the things said by people involved in politics.

: “The National Debt Clock ran out of digits so start following the debt daily on Twitter. (+) or (-) means up or down from previous day’s debt total.”

: This is the Twitter feed for the popular TV series, The Big Bang Theory. I rather enjoy the characters and so too, does .

: I’m currently (2011-2013) a graduate student at George Mason University in the School of Management (). This is the twitter feed for Mason’s school of management.

: Nick Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times. He’s “bringing to light human rights abuses in Asia and Africa.”

: Wolf Blitzer is CNN’s lead political anchor and is often seen as the host of CNN’s , which, , airs from 4pm to 6pm weeknights on CNN.

: Scahill is the national security correspondent for . He also wrote

: Gergen is a Senior Political Analyst for CNN. He’s also the Director for Public Leadership and a Professor of Public Service at the Harvard Kennedy School.

: Revkin writes the blog for the New York Times. “Dot Earth tracks relevant developments from suburbia to Siberia.

: Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Washington Post. He’s also an MSNBC analyst and author.

: David Axelrod was the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Afterwards, he remained a senior advisor to President Obama.

: “The Charter for Compassion is the result of Karen Armstrong’s 2008 TED Prize wish.” Check out the video of the .

: I’m sure you recognize the name (Lady Gaga). I decided to follow (and subsequently look into her message) when I first clicked onto her twitter profile and found that she was quoting .

: President Bartlet is the from the television series: . Whomever tweets from this account captures the essence of how President Bartlet would tweet, in my opinion.

: Nassim Haramein is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I highly recommend checking out his work. You can start with his , but if you can, I’d get a copy of “.”

: Chris Cillizza writes for and is a contributor to MSNBC. He often live-tweets the debates or other important political events.

: Chris Rock is one of my favorite comedians, especially when he does bits like that speak to the dysfunctional nature of some of the things in this world.

: I was first introduced to John Legend’s music during my undergraduate degree. I can be quite particular about the music I listen to, but for the most part, I like Legend.

: Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the more accessible scientists of today. He has made many appearances on talk shows () and even a guest spot on “.”

: My first introduction to Billy Crystal was in the movie A great movie, indeed. Interesting fact: Billy Crystal has hosted the (currently 8, soon to be 9, which is well behind Bob Hope with 18).

: The have made some hilarious movies through the years (written and/or directed). I wonder if  (movie) will prove to be as successful.

: This twitter account focuses on tweeting infographics, particularly those from their , which is a collection of the best infographics from around the web.

: Hill Harper is best known for playing a , but I initially followed him because of his inclination to empowering tweets.

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I’m nearing my self-imposed word limit of (1000 words), so I’ll end this post for now. It’s worth noting that I’ve gone through and “purged” some of the accounts I’ve followed in the past (including some of the accounts in this post) and subsequently, added a slew of new accounts. Look for some of them in Part 6 of this series. And as always, if you have suggestions, leave a comment, send me an email, or tweet me.

Do You Know The Difference Between Left and Right?

This past weekend, someone for a YouTube video (of a ) that I was surprised I hadn’t seen. It was a rather interesting video that claims to isolate the differences between and . Based on research, the presenter related . This was different from the way , but similar.

The presenter, , spoke about 5 different channels for moralism: Harm, Fairness, Authority, In-Group, and Purity. The idea is that depending on one’s political leaning, they will rate these 5 different pieces of morality differently. Specifically, those with a liberal-leaning will rate harm and fairness much higher than authority, in-group, or purity. While conservative-leaning folks will rate all five pieces about the same. To differentiate liberals from conservatives then, Haidt distinguishes Liberals as having 2 channels of morality (harm and fairness), while Conservatives have 5.

This is not saying that conservatives are more moral than liberals, no. It is just saying that these two ideologies are channeling their morality to different areas. In fact, when you watch the video, you’ll see that there are even slight difference between nations. The graph that Hadit shows stays relatively the same, except the slope (from liberal to conservative) is slightly steeper (than the US) for different countries.

In giving this presentation to TED, one of Haidt’s main arguments was that we often tend to be around those who think like us. So, if you’re a conservative, you probably have more conservative friends than you do liberal friends (if any at all). Likewise if you’re a liberal. The problem with this is that we could learn so much from each other, especially those that think different from us. It is monumentally important that we have people in our workgroups that can see things differently from us (with some exceptions, of course).

It might not seem easy, but it can really expand your awareness. If your a conservative, I challenge you to have a conversation with your friend who is a liberal about something happening in the world (that you’re pretty sure that your point of view is the “right” one). Likewise, if you’re a liberal, I challenge you to seek out someone who has a conservative ideology and talk to them about something in the news (that you’re pretty sure your point of view is the “right” one). Before you begin your conversation, I’d encourage you to set aside your beliefs about the “other” ideology, but maybe more importantly, suspend your opinion about the topic you’re about to discuss.

If you go in assuming that your answer is the right one, you should know that there’s research that suggests you won’t even hear what the other person has to say. Meaning, when the other person starts talking about things that are contrary to your beliefs, your brain won’t take in what they are saying. Our beliefs can be very powerful and unfortunately, can restrict us from taking in new ideas. Knowing this, I would encourage you to suspend your beliefs. Consider your beliefs, loosely, ideas. It’s much easier to change an idea than it is a belief.

What’s On My iPod: Lectures, In and Around Metro DC, Part 5

iPod, iPods, nano iPod, : Songs, LA to DC
: Lectures, LA to DC
: Podcasts, LA to DC
Part 4: Lectures/Podcasts, Ottawa to DC

In the first four parts of this series, I wrote about the various music, podcasts, or lectures that I listened to on my various road trips. Now that I’m in the DC area on a more permanent basis (completing an MBA), I’m not really in need of a vast sum of lectures/podcasts to listen to as I drive across the country (or between countries). As such, I’ve decided to continue this series and continue taking in extra information, while doing an assortment of activities (commuting, working out, etc.). As with the previous lectures, I’ve obtained all of these from iTunes U and highly recommend you check it out, if you haven’t already.

Making the Perfect Pitch – This was a short lecture (15 minutes) and it was provided by Cambridge University. They interviewed Dr. Darrin Disley, who gave some very poignant advice on the infamous “elevator pitch.” He explained the 9 C’s of elevator speeches, in the form of an elevator speech. The one thing that I pulled from this lecture (which happens to be one of the 9 C’s) is that the elevator pitch should be conversational. The purpose of the elevator pitch is to get the person you’re talking to interested in your pitch (not necessarily sell them on a business plan). The point is just to get the ball rolling.

The Art of the Short Sell – This was a lecture that James Chanos, founder and president of Kynikos Associates, gave to an audience at Yale University. Chanos talked about “10 Lessons From the Financial Crisis That Investors Will Soon Forget (If They Haven’t Already!)” As you can see from the powerpoint presentation, there is so much information in this lecture. The one takeaway for me is that financial history has a way of repeating itself. Chanos says, “Some other firm will be the AIG of the next crisis!”

Lecture, lecture hall, lecture hall students, students, lecturing, students learning, professor, professor lecture, lecture professor, professor lecturing,

The following lectures were part of a series called “Building a Business” and were hosted by Oxford University:

Negotiation Skills – This isn’t the first negotiation lecture I’ve listened to on the road. When the speaker began the lecture, I was surprised to recognize the activity from the first negotiation lecture I heard. There were minor changes, but it was essentially the same game. The main takeaways from this lecture how important creating value really is to the success of negotiations. Many people enter negotiations thinking that there is a ‘fixed pie’ that will be distributed between the parties. Instead, the two parties can, together, create value and in essence, add to the pie.

Managing People, Managing Teams – This lecture was given by Tim Cook, (not the new CEO of Apple), but the Tim Cook that is associated with Oxford University. Cook comes from a hard sciences background, so I thought it would be rather interesting to hear his take on managing people. He talked about transactional analysis and recommend Eric Berne’s book. I had already read it and would say that it’s one of the many methods out there for understanding human interaction. He also talked about some other skills that were important like interviewing and the relationship between managers (and the people they manage), as well as the people they interact with, but have no direct managerial “control” over, like politicians, accountants, etc.

Marketing: Creating and Keeping Customers – This lecture was given by Jonathan Reynolds, a professor at Oxford. Given my limited experience with the marketing literature, it was very informative to listen to this lecture by Reynolds. He covered a lot of ground from internet marketing to social media to e-commerce. Reynolds explores the ideas and principles that are paramount to the field of marketing. Of course, there are some overlaps with other fields (psychology), but marketing is a field steeped in intricacies and — since it is based on humans — continually evolving.

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Do Politics and Economics Mix in School Policy? – This lecture was given by Eric Hanushek and Michael Kirst and contained the perspectives of both politics (Kirst) and economics (Hanushek). students in class, students, class, classroom, teacher, blackboard, chalk, kids, grade school, It was put on courtesy of Stanford University and one of the speakers boasted that Stanford has one of the best institutions with regard to education policy research. One of the lines that struck me about this lecture was when one of the speakers proclaimed something to the effect that when it comes to education policy, everyone has an opinion. They spoke about some of the pitfalls to teacher’s unions (harder to reward excellent teachers, among other things), and they talked about the idea that education policy, for the most part, would be better served by being a local issue.

The Financial Crisis, the Recession, and the American Political Economy: A Systemic Perspective – This lecture, by far, had the longest introduction (to the speaker) of any of the previous lectures I’ve heard. It was given at MIT. Given the variety of work achieved by the speaker, Charles H. Ferguson, I understood why there was such a long intro. Moreover, when the speaker began, I didn’t realize that he was “the guy” who made the movie Inside Job. (Note: this lecture was given right around the time of the release of Inside Job, which of course, later went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary.) While there are many theories as to how/why things happened the way they did, (my two cents), I always find it fascinating to take in more perspectives. I don’t know that there is (or could be?) a singular answer as to why things happened.

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This rounds out the lectures I’ve been listening to since my last post. As always, if you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments section (or through some other form: Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

What if Women Ruled the World?

So what if women ruled the world?

Really, I want you to think about it. What if women ruled the world? How would our world be different? (I’ll wait.)

Some of the things that came to mind might have been the various representations of women ruling the world that you saw on TV (or in a movie) or maybe you read about it in a book. Most of these, in my experience, are not what I would call “accurate” representations of how women would rule the world. They usually have women ruling the world, but they are playing a much more masculine role. If women ruled the world, do you really think they’d rule it like men have?

Women, typically, have more than their male counterparts. Of course, an integrated human would have both Yin energy and Yang energy, but like I said, typically, women are known for having more Yin energy. Because of this, I wouldn’t expect women to be overtly aggressive. That’s not to say they can’t be, but typically, women are going to be a bit more passive. Now, this is often seen as a negative quality (in general), but I think that this has only happened because men have “ruled the world.”  Because we’ve had men at the top, because men are typically the leader, the qualities present in men have been the qualities held in esteem.

One of the books I hold in high regard, , brings to light a different story of history (in a few chapters). That is, the authors review some of the important points in history and highlight some of the information that isn’t usually mentioned. As an aside, they raise an interesting perspective on evolution. More importantly to our topic of women ruling the world, they wrote about the beginnings of the United States of America. They wrote about how the  came to write the and how they came to write the . Of course, these authors weren’t there when these documents were forming, so their opinions (however based in ‘fact,’) cannot be assumed to be factual. I only say this because I’m sure there are lots of opinions about how such important documents as these came to be and I didn’t want to claim that the perspective I’m offering is the only one.

As I said, in this book, the authors talk about how these important American documents were formed. More than that, they talk about how the Founding Fathers interacted with the Native Americans and, in fact, how they [Founding Fathers] learned from them [Native Americans]. According to these authors, the two documents I referred to were influenced by what the Founding Fathers witnessed in the Native Americans. That is, how they interacted within their culture — with the land, with the people, and with the animals. It is a fascinating read, but the point I wanted to make with raising this book was that in the early Native American culture, women made the decision as to whether or not they went to war with a neighboring tribe. Let me say that again: women made the decision to go to war. Women. And the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were based on what the Founding Fathers witnessed in the Native American society.

Can you imagine what the world would look like today had women be the ultimate decision-makers with regard to going to war with a neighboring country? Do you think that the US would have been in as many wars as it has in the last 50 years had a council of women, , be the ones who made the final decision?