Word Diet

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ScalesI’ve never had a weight problem so I’ve never thought much about counting calories. But I seem to recall reading or hearing that 2,000 calories a day would be about right, depending on your weight and level of activity.

While I don’t overeat, I do have a tendency to talk to much (and listen too little). I’m wondering if I could put myself on a “word diet.”

If I allot myself 2,000 words over a 16 hour day, it works out to 125 words an hour.

If you knew you had a meeting with your boss coming up, you could be silent for an hour or two and bank the words you would need.

And if you could come in under 2,000 for the day… save ’em up for some emergency (drinking with your pals or a fight with your spouse).

The problem, of course, is counting the words. You’d need some device that monitors your speech and displays the number of words, with a little beep to warn you when you have less than 25 words in an hour.

If I could do this, I think I’d sound (be perceived as?) smart as hell. Deep. Thoughtful. And who knows, if you had to ration your words, you might choose them more carefully.

When you hear someone talking about what a great president Bush has been or McCain will be… instead of blurting out “Bull shit!”… you’d save those words rather than waste them.

I can’t really count my words but I’m going to try a one day experiment and pretend that I can. I’m not going to say which day it is until after the fact. I’ll report here.

Blog posts and tweets do not count against daily allotment.

“If it’s relevant, I’ll read about it on Twitter”

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Chris Pirillo was –and remains– an early thought-leader for me. Blogging, RSS, video… Chris was always out there on the front edge. So, when he says Twitter has become one of his primary sources of information, I’m inclined to listen.

“Back in ‘the day’, we used to have to visit web pages to get our information. Those pages didn’t tell us when they updated, so we had to find out manually. Then, along came RSS. The idea was you could subscribe to something, and it would tell you when there was a new update. Now comes Twitter, with its flood of information that allows me to spot trends in general. Twitter has supplanted the information I used to receive in my news aggregator. I don’t follow many websites anymore, and don’t really ’subscribe’ to anything. For me, if something is going to be relevant, I’m going to read about it on Twitter. With Twitter, I’m able to follow people much easier. As disorganized as it is, it’s easier for me to learn about personalities. You can understand thoughts and feelings much easier than you could with a simple RSS feed.”

I’m not quite there yet, in part because I don’t “follow” as many people as Chris does. But I’m starting to see what he’s talking about.  A few of the folks I follow on Twitter are very plugged in and I can count on a line or two with a link when something in their area of interest breaks.

The Bush Years

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Gaspump

I started blogging on February 2, 2002 (I had been ranting a bit for a couple of years before that) and will soon reach 3,500 posts. George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, so I missed the opportunity to comment on the first year of his administration.

Between now and when he leaves office (assuming he DOES leave office), I’m going to go back and tag every post dealing with W and/or his henchmen with “Bush Years.” Mine will be just one of thousands of records of his time in office.

Rendition

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“After a terrorist bombing kills an American envoy in a foreign country. An investigation leads to an Egyptian who has been living in the United States for years and who is married to an American. He is apprehended when he’s on his way home. The U.S. sends him to the country where the incident occurs for interrogation which includes torture. An American CIA operative observes the interrogation and is at odds whether to keep it going or to stop it.”

Back in the day when people debated the death penalty, you’d sometimes hear the question:

Would it be preferable to execute 100 guilty men, knowing that one of them was innocent… or to let 100 innocent men go free, knowing that one of them was guilty?

In the movie Rendition, Meryl Streep’s character does a spin on that. Something along the lines of it would be worth torturing an innocent man if the use of torture produced intelligence that saved 7,000 lives (in London?).

 

CNN: Student Twitters way out of Egyptian jail

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“James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone. Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator Mohammed Maree were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word. “Arrested.”

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted he was being held.” [CNN]

 

Wanted: Chief Customer Experience Officer

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Steve Rubel describes three “emerging digital careers” to watch. You can read his description of each here, but “Chief Customer Experience Officer” seems like a must-have to me:

“Want to know if a company is a good witch or a bad witch? It’s easy. The web knows. Google, the media and online communities are littered with tales of companies that have exemplary products and customer service. However, it’s often easier to find those that have been vilified for the opposite. That’s the thesis of Pete Blackshaw’s forthcoming book – Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Here’s an experiment. For fun, enter any company into this special Google search engine I set up and let me know what you find. Brands are increasingly recognizing that customer experience is everything.” [Thanks, David]

The Senath Lions Quartet

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One of the best parts of having a blog is connecting with people. You could argue it’s the only part. One of the first sites I created was a tribute to KBOA, the radio station where my father worked for many years and where I spent a dozen years. The site is packed with great photos, most of which were taken by the late Johnny “Mack” Reeder.


I captioned one of those photos  “Unknown Hillbilly Band” because I had no idea who they were. Now I do, thanks to an email from one of the men in the photo, Charley Crawford:

“The name of the group is “The Senath Lions Quartet” and this was in 1951. We started the quarter in Senath High School. The members are left to right front, Charley Crawford, Jimmy Milligan, behind Jim, right to left are Charles “Tod” Horner, James Allan and David Adams at the piano.  We were on the radio every Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m., sponsored by the Senath Merchants.”

Charlie was also a member of The Foggy Mountain Boys Hillbilly Band in 1948.

CORRECTION: I assumed –incorrectly– Charlie was referring to The Foggy Mountain Boys featuring Flatt and Scruggs. Charlie and friends were in a local band of the same name.

The Foggy Mountain Boys was an influential bluegrass band that performed and recorded during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Spring flowers

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Tulip

Barb’s really too busy with work to spend as much time with her yard as she’d like but she still manages to plant some flowers. This year she planted about 300 tulips but the deer got a bunch of them and the moles probably got their share. But the ones that survived were very fetching in the late afternoon sunlight.

I’m no kind of serious photographer (that’s my man, Henry). But I’m not bashful about taking photos and sharing them with the world. I know some very good amateur photographers that never put their work online because they don’t think it’s good enough. At least that’s the reason they give and I tend to believe them.

I snapped these photos with my little Casio and they came out "good enough." Think of all the beautiful flowers that were never shared because someone thought the photos were not "good enough."