The real solution to the financial crisis: Recession

This doesn’t sound fun, but it rings true:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/ysmith;_ylt=Au.2hhNecXnidvDWTK9hctQDW7oF

Dancing with the President of the United States of America

I am convinced that the people at my office care more about the outcome of reality TV shows than who wins the election in November.

Conservative or Liberal? Workspace Reveals All

Your office or bedroom holds telltale signs of whether you are a conservative or a liberal, finds a new study. While political conservatives tend to keep a tidy, organized office, political liberals favor colorful, more stylish but cluttered spaces.

A person may hide their political ideology from others, including from pollsters, but the researchers were delighted to learn that a peek into subjects' living quarters or even workspaces could give that away.

Conservatives and liberals leave behind distinct "behavioral residue" that can be picked up by savvy scientists and possibly other observers, according to the study by New York University psychologist John Jost and his colleagues. The results are set for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Political Psychology.

Office snoops

The researchers took inventory of five office locations - a commercial real estate agency, an advertising agency, a business school, an architectural firm and a retail bank - all in a large U.S. city. They had observers check out the workspaces of 94 male and female employees. The subjects' average age was 37. The snoopers had no idea of the workers' political orientation.

Political orientation was measured with survey questions.

Liberals' offices were judged as significantly more distinctive, comfortable, stylish, modern, and colorful and as less conventional and ordinary, in comparison with conservatives' offices, Jost said.

The researchers also sent snoopers into the living spaces of 76 undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, arriving at similar results.

"Conservative rooms tended to be cleaner, more brightly lit, better organized, less cluttered, and also more conventional and ordinary in terms of decoration," Jost said during a panel discussion on "The Neuroscience of Elections and Human Decision-Making" at NYU, adding: "Conservatives' rooms were rated by independent raters as better organized and tidier in general."

Specifically, individuals who reported a more conservative ideology also had bedrooms that contained more organizational and cleaning supplies, including calendars, postage stamps, ironing boards and laundry baskets.

Liberals' rooms on the other hand were marked by more clutter, including more CDs, a greater variety of CDs, a greater variety of books and more color in the room in general.

Political personalities

The findings agreed with a link found by Jost's team between two personality traits and political ideology. In personality tests of thousands of college students, Jost found that liberals tended to score higher than conservatives on one key measure called openness to experiences, which includes holding wide interests, and being imaginative and insightful.

Conservatives showed higher scores for conscientiousness, which measures a person's need for order, discipline, achievement striving and rule following.

"I think it's a truly fascinating possibility that the left-right distinction, which emerged over 200 years ago in response to the French Revolution and continues to be the single best way of understanding ideological differences today, may be rooted in fundamental human needs for stability vs. change, order vs. complexity, familiarity vs. novelty, conformity vs. creativity, and loyalty vs. rebellion," Jost told LiveScience.

(The terms of left-right political leanings was originally based on the seating arrangement of those in the French parliament during the time of the French Revolution.)

He added, "It may be that conflicting tendencies in human nature play themselves out in the political sphere as the struggle between right and left."

But for a self-proclaimed conservative or liberal whose office conditions do not match these findings, say a conservative living in a cluttered room, Jost said, that's to be expected.

"What we have observed are just differences on average between liberals and conservatives, and the variability around these averages is considerable," he said, giving the example that while on average men are taller than women, plenty of tall women and short men are walking around.

He added, "But I do wonder whether conservatives with messy rooms feel worse about the mess than do liberals with messy rooms, again, on average. For conservatives, it may be more likely that they are failing to live up to their own norms with regard to conscientiousness."

Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
LiveScience.com Thu Sep 25, 8:46 AM ET

Scary

A list of things you hope to not find when you pull your fridge away from the wall:

1. A scorpion

2. Two Tom & Jerry style mouse holes in the baseboard

3. Damp, rotting floorboards

4. Mold growing on the damp, rotting floorboards

5. Termites living in the moldy, damp, rotting floorboards

That is a pretty good start of thing you probably don’t want to find when you move your fridge.

You’ll never guess what I found when I moved my fridge yesterday…

A lucky penny

I figure it takes one second to stoop down and pick up a penny on the ground. If you do the math, that is equivalent to earning $36.00 per hour ($0.01 x 60 secs x 60 mins = 3600).

Therefore, from a purely econimic benefit point of view, here is what it is worth on an hourly basis to pick up the following coins:

1 penny = $36.00 per hour

1 nickel = $180.00 per hour

1 dime = $360.00 per hour

1 quarter = $900.00 per hour

Think about that next time you see something silver on the ground.

Invention wish list

·Autopilot for cars

·An efficiency mode for cruise control. Rather than maintaining a certain speed, you would enter minimum & maximum speeds and the car would figure out how to get you to your destination within those ranges – factoring in the terrain – most efficiently. This would be especially nice if coupled with autopilot.

·“Smart” keys integrated with your cell phone. Your phone is your car key.

·Credit card functionality built into a smart phone. Pay with your phone. I think they already do this in Japan.

·A “smart” credit card that combined all your accounts into one card: you pick at time of payment which card to charge

Summer Vacation: the cold, hard facts

Summer vacation…by the numbers

1999 Honda Odyssey

July 11, 2008 – Aug 10, 2008

AZ - NV - UT - ID - MT - Canada - MT - ID - UT - ID - UT - AZ

Total Distance: 4,917

Total Fuel Cost: $819

Ave Fuel cost: $4.28

Fuel Cost/Mile: $0.165

Avg MPG: 25.69

Oasian

My favorite local Asian restaurant, Oasian, has apparently gone out of business.

They made the best chicken curry in the world. I was in the neighborhood last night and decided to stop in for a bite…only to discover the “Available” real estate sign on the building.

:-(

All was not entirely lost for the evening, though. I hit Yoko Fast Food on the way home and picked up some yummy yakisoba.

You can turn off the oven, I'm done now.

This summer marks the 34th consecutive year I have hated AZ summers.

Why do humans live here?

122 Degrees

June 26, 1990

This week marked the 18th anniversary of the day I spent 10 hours working with my dad outside on the hottest day in AZ history.

We knew that it was obscenely hot (you couldn't touch metal objects without getting burned), but it wasn't until later that night that we heard the news about just how hot it was -- 122 degrees. Insanely hot. Uninhabitably hot. Satan's fireplace hot.

If my memory serves me correctly, as we were pulling in to our street at the end of the day, I saw Randy out for an afternoon run.

My car needs new tires

I checked Sears, Discount Tire, Costco, and the Tire Rack. Walmart.com (with free shipping to the store of your choice) came out the clear winner.

Five minute intervals

Brigham Young once said, "I do not recollect that I have seen five minutes since I was baptized that I have not been ready to preach a funeral sermon, lay hands on the sick, or to pray in private or public." And then he added, "I will tell you the secret of this. . . . If you commit an overt act, repent of that immediately, and call upon God to deliver you from evil and give you the light of His spirit" (JD 12:102–3)

I came across this quote several years ago and have thought of it often since that time. It came to mind again this morning when our scheduled EQ instructor called this morning with the news that he would be out sick today. You never know when you will be called, unexpectedly, to preach a sermon…

Gas Mileage & Car Shopping

Take this very short quiz (only one question):

http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/news/mpg/mpg.html

Zathura

Sam watched Zathura at my parent’s cabin about a week ago. Since then, his night time prayers have included the plea that we not be visited by Zorgons or Robots and that our house not drift off into space.

Signs of the Apocalypse

I live in the Phoenix metro area. It is one of the hottest metropolitan places on Earth (add Riyadh, Saudi Arabia & Baghdad, Iraq to get the top three).

On Monday, it was 105 degrees on my commute home. Yesterday, at the same time, it was 57 degrees.

Ladies and gentlemen, hell has frozen over.

Hypermiling

A guy drives from Chicago to NYC -- 800 miles -- on one tank of gas:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/19/earlyshow/main4107075.shtml?source=mostpop_story

Watch both videos at the bottom of the page.  The first one teaches you the basic techniques for hypermiling.

Follow Dad’s advice: “Drive as if your car didn’t have brakes.”

Seatbelts

68% of drivers and passengers between the ages of 16 and 20 who were killed in car crashes at night in 2006 were unbuckled.

During daytime, 57% percent of the young motorists and passengers who were killed were not wearing seat belts.

The locked cupboard

An email I wrote to my siblings yesterday…

 

Do you remember how we had a locking cupboard in our old, pre-fire kitchen?  Do you feel like having inaccessible Oreos in our house growing up affected you negatively in any way?

We have a problem in our house with kids spoiling their appetites by eating “special” food items, like granola bars, at unauthorized times (supposed to be for school lunches only).  Potato chips, chocolate chips, and marshmallows are also a problem.  Frankly, I have caught my kids eating regular sugar, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar, and hot chocolate mix -- all straight out of the container with a spoon.

Becky is afraid that a locking cabinet might somehow mess up our kids psychologically.  I’m tired of walking into the pantry to find my children stuffing their faces with chocolate chips and then throwing their uneaten dinner in the trash every night.

What do you think?

An Open Letter to Shandon, Clint, & Jeff

When are we going to go on a crazy adventure that challenges both our physical endurance and our sanity?

Havasu Pei?

Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim?

The Narrows?

BTW – The Payson Spring triathlon is June 14^th.  Let’s do it!

Rainforest Cafe

Mediocre, overpriced food. 

Deafeningly load dining area.  Is it really necessary to blare hip-hop music over the already load jungle noises? 

Horrible service.  The place was not busy on a Wednesday night, but it took an inordinately long time to get our food.  The waiter never came back to check on us.  We had to go find our own condiments.  Our drinks were never refilled.  It took 25 minutes to get our check…after we told the waiter we were in a hurry to leave.

I don’t plan on ever going back.

Once || Swell Season

Went to see The Swell Season (Oscar award winners Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová from the movie Once) with Andrew, Reachel, Natalie, Patrick, and Becky last night at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Phoenix.

Calexico opened and The Frames served as support. It was a great show at a great venue...with delightful company to top it all off. We dined in style at Cibo beforehand.



If you haven't already seen it, rent Once. It's a good flick. One f-bomb that ClearPlay took care of.

Here is a link to a very similar live show recorded last year.

Recent Readings

I've been plowing through books recently. Here's what I've covered so far this year, in chronological order:

Joseph Smith’s Relationship with God -- Some interesting points. I liked it.

The 8th Habit -- Covey probably should have stopped at 7.

Made to Stick -- Very good. I will "reread" this one.

Great Speeches of the 20th Century -- Funny how the political speeches all pretty much sound like they could still be given today.

The Tipping Point -- My third time through this book. I'm a big Gladwell fan. He is a fascinating storyteller. See Blink below for more...

Principle Centered Leadership -- Very good stuff.

Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon -- Like chiasms, there are unknown gems in the text.

The Wisdom of Crowds -- My second read of this one. I recommend it.

Blink -- Probably my third time through this one. Very good. For a taste of the unusual author, watch this...

Words that Work -- Some will find the author's approach and background unsavory. He has some very good points, though.

25 Things to Say to the Interviewer to Get the Job You Want -- Pretty hoacky

Analyzing Financial Statements -- A snoozer

Freakonomics -- My second time through. I disagreed quite strongly with most of his conclusions the first time through. This time it was less offensive. I still think he is wrong on many topics. Despite having said that , I recommend it.

Rich Dad's Guide to Becoming Rich -- Robert Kiyosaki has become an industry unto himself, but he has some very good advice.

How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less -- Pretty weak. I lost interest about 1/3 of the way through it.

Super Crunchers -- Very closely related to Freakonomics & The Wisdom of Crowds. I recommend it.

The Birth of Plenty -- Similar academic tone as Collapse. I liked it. More on one particular finding of this book in a future post.

Woman in White -- Becky recently read this in her book club. She was so excited about it that I decided to read it as well. A good read. I recommend it.

A Perfect Mess -- A few good points. I think the authors wanted very badly to find evidence for a position they supported.

Crashes, Booms, & Panics + Government Regulations -- Decent info and history of the markets

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing -- My second listen to this book. Most of the examples seem quite anecdotal. I would like to see examples backed by stronger evidence.

Joseph Smith's Presidential Platform

The post is quite long, but check out Joseph Smith's 1844 presidential platform here. It will take you 10 or 15 minutes to read, but it contains some fascinating tidbits. Some of his complaints about partisan politics are still valid today.

Wal-Mart

Over the past week, I have had occasion to shop at both CVS and Walgreens. I was amazed/annoyed at how loooong the printed receipts were -- 12 to 18 inches -- even though I had only purchased one or two items. In both cases, this was due to the customer satisfaction surveys they both wanted me participate in.

I just got a receipt from the world’s most exasperating place to shop, Wal-Mart, and was pleasantly surprise by the fact that they have begun double-sided printing on their receipts. Despite numerous items purchases, the receipt was only 6 inches long.

Saves paper, reduces trash, and takes up less space in my wallet. Bravo.

Next on my wish list for Wal-Mart:

1. Turn off the accursed public announcement system (take note, most Wal-Marts are near deafeningly loud)

2. Staff more checkout lines (today’s Super Wal-Mart had two lanes staffed by humans open)

3. Hire employees with an IQ above 75

4. Offer an affordable dental insurance plan so your employees can fix their visibly rotting teeth

Buy Generic

I remember my undergraduate Marketing professor mentioning that the odds of a shopper buying a store brand drug (ex., Wal-Mart acetaminophen versus Tylenol acetaminophen) increased with education level.

I was reminded of that fact when I was at Costco over my lunch break today. I was just about to pick up a box of Claritin when I noticed a Kirkland brand equivalent right next to it (it wasn’t immediately obvious to me because the Claritin was in blue packaging and the Kirkland was in red).

As many store frequently do, Costco posted the “cost per 100” data for both products. The Claritin was $45 per 100. The Kirkland product was $3 per 100. That is a 15x difference! Unbelievable. I was expecting 2x to 3x…not 15x.

I wonder what percentage of shoppers walk away carrying the Claritin…

Falling Star

How did the phrase “meteorite rise” gain widespread acceptance?

From our perspective here on Earth, wouldn't "meteorite fall" be more accurate?

Long Lost Friends mega post

I was going through our iPhoto library and I found a bunch of "long lost friends" photos. So here is a mega post with some friends I have run into over the past couple of years. They are in chronological order of when I originally met the person (i.e., I met Jon Shill in elementary school):

Jon Shill is flying Predator drones in Iraq via remote control from his base in Las Vegas. That is the way to fight in a war. Picture take in Jon's boyhood home (now Shandon's home).

Russel Trapnell is a glutton for punshiment. After finishing his MBA he went to dental school. Now he is the fifth of five sons in his family to enter Orthodontic school. He'll exit with great teeth and a license to print money.

Mark Truman, Me, Nate Woolf, and Nigel Miller freshmen year at the Morris Center getting scones on a Saturday morning.

Twelve years later, Mark (dentist), Me, and Nigel (engineer) at Nate's long overdue wedding reception:

Aaron Desmond. My longest and favorite missionary companion. I think we lived and served together for a total of 10 months. After an illustrious career in the jewelry business, he now remodels temples around the world:


Stephenie Meyer (of Twilight fame). OK, I'm cheating here, Stephenie is really Becky's long lost friend. I'm friends with Stephanie's husband Pancho. I need to find and scan an old picture of when Stephenie took Becky out for her birthday and dressed her up like Cinderella.

Before moving to Charlotte, NC my old MBA racquetball nemesis, Jonathan Francom was a frequent visitor in our home:

MBA buddies, Jared Sorenson & Jeremiah Grant at my house.

Old Spice

Check out the commercials my brother Jason made with Will Ferrell for Old Spice.

Houston we have a toothbrush problem...

Observations on family life:

With a one-year-old toothpaste eater in the house, I thought it was time to revisit the dental hygiene issue in our home...

Seven people live in my house. Six of whom brush their teeth with some degree of regularity. I counted 12 tubes of toothpaste and over 30 toothbrushes.