The 10 Smartest TV Shows of All Time

From Foxnews.com, 19 Feb 2008:

The head of genius organization Mensa has picked the 10 Smartest TV Shows of All Time —sparking debate in the blogosphere, especially over the inclusion of the 1990s sitcom "Mad About You."
Jim Werdell, chairman of Mensa International, selected the shows after being posed the question by Fancast.com.
“They weren’t pure comedy, mystery or action,” Werdell said. “They tended to be shows that dealt with issues in the world, and from my perspective that’s considered smart. Some sitcoms reach a higher level of intellect than others, and you can say the same about some of the dramas. The stories may be cliché, but the characters and dialogue are smarter.”
Here's the list with Werdell's comments:

• 1. "M*A*S*H" – It had smart repartee and was so much more than a comedy.

• 2. "Cosmos" (with Carl Sagan) – Sagan was able to communicate something extremely complicated to the layman and do it well, and that’s unusual for a scientist at his level.
• 3. "CSI" — The way they use science to solve their programs is intriguing to viewers.
• 4. "House" – Again, it’s high level type of show; it’s the personality that makes it a winner, plus it deals with science.
• 5. "West Wing" – You had to pay attention to stay up with it. The repartee was fast and furious and you needed a fairly high level intelligence to keep up with it.
• 6. "Boston Legal" – It’s primarily because of the characters. The story lines are okay, but the characters are incredible and the writers give them great dialogue.
• 7. "All in the Family" – The show dealt with social issues before its time and was on the forefront of trying to show people’s feelings, beliefs and the complexities of personality, in both a serious and comedic way.
• 8. "Frasier" – The repartee was sensational; the main characters were very good. Even though they portrayed people who were likely of high intelligence, they also showed their weaknesses.
• 9. "Mad About You" – It’s a personal favorite, I loved the characters and the back and forth. It was very smart.
• 10. "Jeopardy" – It’s about the only game show that really tries to test people’s intelligence. There’s very little luck involved, and there are few game shows like that. I don’t watch it all that much honestly, but from what I’ve seen it tests more than knowledge, it tests intelligence too.

Fans have been responding on various blogs, arguing over the lack of recognition for "The Twilight Zone," "Gilmore Girls," "Battlestar Galactica," "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and others.

New pictogram for Marriage

Here is the newly developed symbol-pictogram for marriage:

Leadership Quotes

If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
- Admiral Grace Hopper

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
- Andre Maurois

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

The best example of leadership, is leadership by example.
- Jerry McClain of Seattle, WA

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
- John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. economist μThe Age of Uncertaintyξ

It's amazing how many cares disappear when you decide not to be something, but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.
- Lewis H. Lapham

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
- Bishop Desmond Tutu

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
- Margaret Wheatly Leadership and the New Science

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters.
- Albert Einstein

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
- Karen Kaiser Clark

The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.
- Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers Improving Leadership Effectiveness

Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.
- David Loyd George

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.
- Max DePree

When what you are doing isn't working, you tend to do more of the same and with greater intensity.
- Dr. Bill Maynard & Tom Champoux Heart, Soul and Spirit

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.
- Peter Drucker

A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: "Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain."
- Max DePree

Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them!
- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
- Winston Churchill

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.
- Warren Bennis

When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally.
- Lao Tse

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done - Peter Drucker

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity
- George Patton

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.
- Peter Drucker

Leadership is understanding people and involving them to help you do a job. That takes all of the good characteristics, like integrity, dedication of purpose, selflessness, knowledge, skill, implacability, as well as determination not to accept failure.
- Admiral Arleigh A. Burke

Lead and inspire people. Don't try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.
- Ross Perot

We must become the change we want to see.
- Mahatma Gandhi

A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.
- General of the Armies John J. Pershing

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

It is not a question of how well each process works, the question is how well they all work together.
- Lloyd Dobens and Clare Crawford-Mason Thinking About Quality

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
- Eric Hoffer

In war, three quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.
- Napoleon I

To manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.
- Russell L. Ackoff

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.
- Walter J. Lippmann

Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.
- Marian Anderson

You may have afresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
- Mary Pickford

People are more easily led than driven.
- David Harold Fink

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
- Jesse Jackson

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
- Andrew Carnegie

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
- Max DePree The Art of Leadership

Processes don't do work, people do.
- John Seely Brown

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.
- Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's

Remember that it is far better to follow well than to lead indifferently.
- John G. Vance

The only real training for leadership is leadership.
- Antony Jay

Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer.
- Phil Dixon

The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.
- S. L. A. Marshall Men Against Fire

In matters of style, swim with the current;
In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- T. Jefferson

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
- Winston Churchill

The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains

1. Learn what is the "It" in "Use It or Lose It". A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain's beauty as a living and constantly-developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.
2. Take care of your nutrition. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but consumes over 20% of the oxygen and nutrients we intake? As a general rule, you don't need expensive ultra-sophisticated nutritional supplements, just make sure you don't stuff yourself with the "bad stuff".
3. Remember that the brain is part of the body. Things that exercise your body can also help sharpen your brain: physical exercise enhances neurogenesis.
4. Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevent the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.
5. 5. Thrive on Learning and Mental Challenges. The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments. Once new neurons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they survive depends on how you use them. "Use It or Lose It" does not mean "do crossword puzzle number 1,234,567". It means, "challenge your brain often with fundamentally new activities".
6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organisms in this planet. Aim high. Once you graduate from college, keep learning. The brain keeps developing, no matter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.
7. Explore, travel. Adapting to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment. Make new decisions, use your brain.
8. Don't Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbour... Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbour's.
9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendships. We are "social animals", and need social interaction. Which, by the way, is why 'Baby Einstein' has been shown not to be the panacea for children development.
10. Laugh. Often. Especially to cognitively complex humor, full of twists and surprises. Better, try to become the next Jon Stewart (Note: I just corrected his name from "John"...which may call for a #11: Spellcheck!)

Santa vs. St. Nicholas

From the New York Times

St. Nick in the Big City

By JOHN ANTHONY McGUCKIN

Published: December 25, 2007

ST. NICHOLAS was a super-saint with an immense cult for most of the Christian past. There may be more icons surviving for Nicholas alone than for all the other saints of Christendom put together. So what happened to him? Where’s the fourth-century Anatolian bishop who presided over gift-giving to poor children? And how did we get the new icon of mass consumerism in his place?

Well, it’s a New York story.

In all innocence, the morphing began with the Dutch Christians of New Amsterdam, who remembered St. Nicholas from the old country and called him Sinte Klaas. They had kept alive an old memory — that a kindly old cleric brought little gifts to the poor in the weeks leading up to the Feast of the Nativity. While the gifts were important, they were never meant to overshadow the message of Jesus’s humble birth.

But today’s chubby Santa is not about giving to the poor. He has had his saintly garb stripped away. The filling out of the figure, the loss of the vestments, and his transformation into a beery fellow smoking a pipe combined to form a caricature of Dutch peasant culture. Eventually this Magic Santa (a suitable patron saint if there ever was one for the burgeoning capitalist machinery of the city) was of course popularized by the Manhattanite Clement Clarke Moore published in “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” in The Troy (New York) Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823.

The newly created deity Santa soon attracted a school of iconographers: notable among them were Thomas Nast, whose 1863 image of a red-suited giant in Harper’s Weekly set the tone, and Haddon Sundblom, who drew up the archetypal image we know today on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. This Santa was regularly accompanied by the flying reindeer: godlike in his majesty and presiding over the winter darkness like Odin the sky god returned.

The new Santa also acquired a host of Nordic elves to replace the small dark-skinned boy called Black Peter, who in Christian tradition so loved St. Nicholas that he traveled with him everywhere. But, some might say, wasn’t it better to lose this racially stereotyped relic? Actually, no, considering the real St. Nicholas first came into contact with Peter when he raided the slave market in his hometown and railed against the trade. The story tells us that when the slavers refused to take him seriously, he used the church’s funds to redeem Peter and gave the boy a job in the church.

And what of the throwing of the bags of gold down the chimney, where they landed in the stockings and little shoes that had been hung up to dry by the fireplace? Charming though it sounds, it reflected the deplorable custom, still prevalent in late Roman society when the Byzantine church was struggling to establish the supremacy of its values, of selling surplus daughters into bondage. This was a euphemism for sexual slavery — a trade that still blights our world.

As the tale goes, Nicholas had heard that a father in the town planned to sell his three daughters because his debts had been called in by pitiless creditors. As he did for Black Peter, Nicholas raided his church funds to secure the redemption of the girls. He dropped the gold down the chimney to save face for the impoverished father.

This tale was the origin of a whole subsequent series of efforts among the Christians who celebrated Nicholas to make some effort to redeem the lot of the poor — especially children, who always were, and still are, the world’s front-line victims. Such was the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends.

I like St. Nicholas. You can keep chubby Santa.

John Anthony McGuckin is a professor of religious history at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia.

7 stories you haven't heard about the Olympic games

7 Stories You Haven’t Heard About The Olympics

by Justin Feinstein

1. Perfect 10s All Around!

Scoring a perfect 10 is the dream of every Olympic gymnast. In 1924, 22 male gymnasts made this dream a reality in the same event. But this wasn’t due to some freak occurrence or heightened level of competition – the event was rope climbing, which has since been discontinued.

2. Basketball Gets Dragged Through the Mud

Basketball’s debut at the 1936 Olympics was nothing short of a disaster. Not only were the finals a low scoring affair (the United States snagged gold from Canada in a yawn-inducing 19-8 game), but the conditions were a mess. Part of the problem was Germany’s venue: the game was played outdoors. On a dirt court. In the pouring rain! Playing on mud made dribbling and bounce-passes impossible. Things weren’t much easier for the fans. A lack of seating forced all (approximately 1,000) spectators to stand and watch in the rain.

3. Paris takes Games to a New Low

As bad as Germany’s basketball planning was, the event barely holds a candle to the 1900 Paris Olympics, which were held in conjunction with the World’s Fair and spread out over five months. Take the marathon, for instance, which was rife with logistical nightmares. The event was run through the city’s active streets, complete with pedestrians and bicyclists. Worse still, several competitors got lost because the course was so poorly marked. Of course, the long race was just one of the many memorable events, including several that would never be seen again. The 1900 Olympics were the only Games to feature such time-wasters as pigeon shooting and swimming through an obstacle course – which included swimming under boats.

4. John Boland wins an Audience Participation Award

The first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896 and yielded perhaps the most unlikely champion in Olympic history. A student at Oxford, John Boland traveled to Greece as a spectator to take in the excitement. But a friend on the Olympic Committee had signed him up for the tennis competition. Despite a lack of proper attire, the plucky Boland decided to go ahead and play (in his dress shoes, no less) and actually won.

5. Golfer Brings Home Gold (without ever knowing it?!)

Margaret Ives Abbott was the first American woman to win a gold medal. Unfortunately, she lived her entire life without ever knowing what she had accomplished. Since the aforementioned 1900 Paris events were spread out informally over several months, de-emphasizing their Olympic status, she simply thought she had won a nine-hole golf tournament in Paris.

6. The Only Case where “Slow and Steady” Actually Worked

The 1904 Olympic Marathon in St. Louis was perhaps the most brutal event in Olympic history. On a sweltering hot summer day, marathon runners took off on an unpaved dusty course, following pace cars and inhaling exhaust. Many runners had to withdraw to receive medical attention, and even the winner, American Thomas Hicks, needed repeated medical care both during and after the race. And by “medical care,” we mean strychnine and brandy. Of course, our favorite tale from the Games is that of Felix Carvajal, a Cuban who took “The Tortoise” approach to running the race. Despite stopping to chat with spectators and breaking to pick and eat fruit from an orchard (which made him sick), Carvajal still managed to finish in fourth place.

7. And just a word on the Games’ (harsh) origins

The ancient Olympic Games served as the basis for our modern Olympics, and fortunately the whole “competing in the nude” thing wasn’t the only custom left to history. Athletes that arrived late to compete were fined, with the only acceptable excuses being shipwreck, weather or pirates. Athletes that were caught cheating were also fined, but were allowed to keep their winnings. But married women caught watching the Games got it the worst: they were executed. Of course, that probably had something to do with the whole competing in the nude thing.

And let’s not forget three of our favorite Olympic athletes. Swede Oscar Swahn won a silver medal in a deer-shooting event at the 1920 Olympics at the age of 72! In 1904, American gymnast George Eyser won six medals (three gold) despite having a wooden left leg, which is even more amazing. But Hungarian pistol shooter Karoly Takacs taught himself how to shoot left-handed after his right (shooting) hand was shattered by a grenade, and then went on to win the rapid-fire shooting event at the 1948 Olympics. He gets our gold.

Life lessons from Noah's Ark

this was sent to me by email. I don't know its origin:

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark

1. Don't miss the boat.
2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
4. Stay fit . When you're 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
5. Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
6. Build your future on high ground.
7. For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
8. Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs
9. When you're stressed, float a while.
10. Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
11. No matter the storm, there's always a rainbow waiting...

Proof of Global warming

Why we have sex

A Post by Stephen Shankland from CNET blog

No doubt we all oversimplify the world a bit, but University of Texas-Austin researchers have found that there are way more reasons people have sex than one might expect.

Specifically, 237 reasons!

Helpfully, the researchers did boil the list down to four major factors--physical, goal-based, emotional and insecurity-based--and 13 minor ones, the university said Tuesday. Researchers David Buss and Cindy Meston described the motivations in the August issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

"Why people have sex is extremely important, but rarely studied. Surprisingly, many scientists assume the answer is obvious, but people have different reasons for having sex, some of which are rather complex," Buss said in a statement.


The top reason both men and women gave was that "I was attracted to the person," but some motivations were ranked very differently by the two sexes. The study authors found an "astonishing" 123 of the 237 motivations were cited more frequently by one sex or the other. Topping the list was "The person wore revealing clothes," which as social stereotypes might lead one to expect was cited by men more often than women.


More specifically, men had lots of reasons for sex that women didn't rate as highly.


"Men showed significantly greater endorsement of having sex due to physical reasons...and simply because the opportunity presented itself. Men more than women reported having sex as a way to improve their social status. Finally, men exceeded women on endorsing a variety of utilitarian reasons for sex," the study said.


In contrast, "Women exceeded men on only three of the 237 reasons: "I wanted to feel feminine"; "I wanted to express my love for the person"; "I realized that I was in love."

Among the reasons that subjects gave researchers for two studies on the matter:

• I wanted to feel closer to God.
• I wanted to get a promotion.
• I wanted to feel connected.
• I wanted to keep my partner from straying.
• I wanted to have a baby.
• I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.
• I wanted the attention.
• I wanted to break up a rival's relationship.
• It seemed like good exercise.
• I wanted to defy my parents.
• I wanted to change the topic of conversation
• The person was famous and I wanted to be able to say I had sex with him/her.
• I wanted to end the relationship.
• I wanted to communicate at a "deeper" level.
• My partner kept insisting.
• I was bored.

What we should learn in school (by G.Kawasaki)

Compare your answers to what you learned after a few years in the workforce. It seems to me that schools often teach the opposite of what's necessary for the real world. Perhaps in school people have plenty of time and no money, so long papers, emails, and presentations are not a problem. However, people in the real world have plenty of money (or at least more money) and no time. This is a list of what I wished I learned in school before I graduated.

1. How to talk to your boss. In college, you’re supposed to bring problems to your teachers during office hours, and you share the experience of coming up with a solution. In the real world, you’re supposed to bring solutions to your boss in an email, in the hall, or in a five-minute conversation. Typically, your boss either already knows about the problem or doesn’t want to know about it. Your role is to provide answers, not questions. Believe it or not, but in the real world, those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, share with others who can’t do.

2. How to survive a meeting that’s poorly run. Unfortunately, it could be a while before you run meetings. Until then, you’ll be a hapless victim of them, so adopt these three practices to survive. First, assume that most of what you’ll hear is pure, petty, ass-covering bull shiitake, and it’s part of the game. This will prevent you from going crazy. Second, focus on what you want to accomplish in the meeting and ignore everything else. Once you get what you want, take yourself “out of your body,” sit back, and enjoy the show. Third, vow to yourself that someday you’ll start a company, and your meetings won’t work like this.

3. How to run a meeting. Hopefully, you’ll be running meetings soon. Then you need to understand that the primary purpose of a business meeting is to make a decision. It is not to share experiences or feel warm and fuzzy. With that in mind, here are five key points to learn about running a meeting: (1) Start on time even if everyone isn’t there because they will be next time; (2) Invite the fewest people possible to the meeting; (3) Set an agenda for exactly what’s going to happen at the meeting; (4) End on time so that everyone focuses on the pertinent issues; (5) Send an email to all participants that confirms decisions reviews action items. There are more power tips for running good meetings, but if you do these five, you’re ahead of 90% of the world.

4. How to figure out anything on your own. Armed with Google, PDFs of manuals, and self-reliance, force yourself to learn how to figure out just about anything on your own. There are no office hours, no teaching assistants, and study groups in the real world. Actually, the real world is one long, often lonely independent study, so get with it. Here’s a question to test your research prowess. How do you update the calendar in a Motorola Q phone with appointments stored in Now-Up-To-Date?

5. How to negotiate. Don’t believe what you see in reality television shows about negotiation and teamwork. They’re all bull shiitake. The only method that works in the real world involves five steps: (1) Prepare for the negotiation by knowing your facts; (2) Figure out what you really want; (3) Figure out what you don’t care about; (4) Figure out what the other party really wants (per Kai); and (5) Create a win-win outcome to ensure that everyone is happy. You’ll be a negotiating maven if you do this.

6. How to have a conversation. Generally, “Whassup?” doesn’t work in the real world. Generally, “What do you do?” unleashes a response that leads to a good conversation (hence the recommendation below). Generally, if you listen more than you talk, you will (ironically) be considered not only a good conversationalist but also smart. Yes, life is mysterious sometimes.

7. How to explain something in thirty seconds. Unfortunately, many schools don’t have elevators or else students would know how to explain things in a thirty-second elevator pitch. Think mantra (three words), not mission statements (sixty words). Think time, not money, is the most important commodity. Think ahead, not on your feet. At the end of your thirty-second spiel, there should be an obvious answer to the question, “ So what?” If you can’t explain enough in thirty seconds to incite interest, you’re going to have a long, boring career.

8. How to write a one-page report. I remember struggling to meet the minimum page requirements of reports in college. Double spacing and 14 point Selectric typewriter balls saved me. Then I went out into the real world, and encountered bosses who wanted a one-page report. What the heck??? The best reports in the real world are one page or less. (The same thing is true of resumes, but that’s another, more controversial topic for unemployed people who want to list all the .Net classes that they took.)

9. How to write a five-sentence email. Young people have an advantage over older people in this area because older people (like me) were taught to write letters that were printed on paper, signed, stuck in an envelope, and mailed. Writing a short email was a new experience for them. Young people, by contrast are used to IMing and chatting. If anything, they’re too skilled on brevity, but it’s easier to teach someone how to write a long message than a short one. Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

10. How to get along with co-workers. Success in school is mostly determined by individual accomplishments: grades, test scores, projects, whatever. Few activities are group efforts. Then you go out in the real world the higher you rise in an organization, the less important your individual accomplishments are. What becomes more and more important is the ability to work with/through/besides and sometimes around others. The most important lesson to learn: Share the credit with others because a rising tide floats all boats.


What about freeloaders? (Those scum of the earth that don’t do anything for the group.) In school you can let them know how you truly feel. You can’t in the real world because bozos have a way of rising to the top of many organizations, and bozos seek revenge. The best solution is to bite your tongue, tolerate them, and try to never have them on the team again, but there’s little upside in criticizing them.

11. How to use PowerPoint. I’ve seen the PowerPoint slides of professors—it’s no wonder that most people can’t use PowerPoint to sell hybrid cars when gas is $10/gallon. Maybe professors are thinking: “This is a one-hour class, I can cover one slide per minute, so I need sixty slides. Oh, and I’ve written all this text already in my textbook, so I’ll just copy and paste my twelve-point manuscript into the presentation.” Perhaps the tenure system causes this kind of problem. In the real world, this is no tenure so you need to limit yourself to ten slides, twenty minutes, and a thirty-point font—assuming that you want to get what you want.

12. How to leave a voicemail. Very few people of any age leave good voicemails. The purpose of a voicemail is to make progress towards along a continuum whose end is getting what you want. A long voicemail isn’t going to zip you along to the end point of this decision. A good model is to think of a voicemail as an oral version of a compelling five-sentence email; the optimal length of a voicemail is fifteen seconds.

Two power tips: First, slowly say your telephone number once at the beginning of your message and again at the end. You don’t want to make people playback your message to get your phone number, and if either of you are using Cingular, you may not hear all the digits. Second (and this applies to email too), always make progress. Never leave a voicemail or send an email that says, “Call me back, and I’ll tell you what time we can meet.” Just say, “Tuesday, 10:00 am, at your office.”

One last thing: the purpose of going to school is not to prepare for working but to prepare for living. Working is a part of living, and it requires these kinds of skills no matter what career you pursue. However, there is much more to life than work, so study what you love.