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Figure out why someone believes what they believe. The best way to do this is simply to ask, “Why do you believe that?” and then listen. Don’t tell them why they’re wrong or “parallel talk” and explain what you believe. Figure out their reasons for their belief by asking questions.
Good advice, I think, from Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, authors of the forthcoming book How to Have Impossible Conversations.
Can you spot when you’re being phished? Give this quiz a try. I got all but the last one correct. However, on the last one I erred on the side of caution, so I feel encouraged.
Source: Jigsaw | Phishing Quiz
Interesting to read this interview by British journalist.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/04/nathan-phillips-his-story-hate-division-covington
Board members equate fundraising with asking. So redefine the term for them, so they can see that it involves much more, and that they can support your organization’s fundraising in ways that don’t involve asking.
Brief, excellent article by Andy Robinson.
Source: Work Wonders by Redefining the Word “Fundraising” for Your Board
My wife spent some time last week cleaning out our garage. She identified a number of boxes of stuff that were “mine.” She asked me to look at them and decide what I still wanted to keep and what we could discard. I did.
Some of the stuff was books I’d saved from when I was an elementary schoolteacher and later an elementary school principal. Some of it came from jobs I had later, including memorabilia from my years at Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and TICAL, at Santa Cruz County Office of Education. There were copies of articles I’d had published in various educational journals. There were copies of contracts with organizations as varied as SRI International and the Federal Communications Commission. All of it was from the past.
What do you do with stuff like this at 70 years of age? Unless you are so important or famous that the world might care—and someone, hopefully your heirs, might profit from having access to it—you dump it in the trash. Save your kids from having to deal with it when you’re gone. Not being important or famous, and not wanting anyone to have to deal with this stuff in my absence, that’s what I did. Into the dumpster it went.
That said, it was not much fun. It made me think of the song, “Is that all there is?” Forgive me if I break out the booze.
Today I read an article in The Scotsman with the headline, “Donald Trump’s Turnberry firm paid £50,000 by US Government for weekend visit.” It quoted a certain George Sorial, executive vice president and chief compliance counsel for the Trump Organization, as saying, “For United States government patronage, our hotels charge room rates only at cost and we do not profit from these stays.”
That perplexed me. How do you calculate the “cost” of a hotel room? I understand that a retailer who decides to sell you a watch for the price that retailer paid a wholesaler is selling you a watch “at cost.” As for a hotel room, I don’t get it.
I’m sure one could devise a formula that would take in all sorts of things: the cost of building the hotel, the cost of running the hotel (although you’d have to determine a definition of just what that means), and then somehow distribute that cost over all hotel rooms over, what? The supposed life of the hotel?
I was sharing my thoughts with my wife and she said, “It’s the rack rate that you see on the back of the door, which is always more than anyone ever seems to pay.” As always, she’s got a point.
I also thought of the concept of “sunk costs.” You’ve got that hotel room and if you can get any amount of money for it, that’s better than having it sit empty, which is what, I believe, often happens to the most expensive rooms and suites in a hotel (I know on occasion I’ve been upgraded to an “executive suite” for the cost of my “superior” room). From what I understand from the article, this particular golf resort has been operating in the red, so I would assume it has not been full all the time—at least not with people paying rates that support the operation.
So just what does it mean when someone says, “We only charge those rooms ‘at cost’?”
I was just listening to the news and heard a report of yet another “shooter” gunning down people at an event. Why do we call such people shooters?
Basketball players shoot hoops. You can shoot in pool, golf, craps, and rapids. If you are a model or photographer, you can go to a shoot and make money there. Some people, like me, shoot their mouths off.
The answer? I assume it’s a gender thing. We used to use the term gunman. That limits the “shooter” to males—or, today, perhaps cis-males. Calling someone a “gunwoman” seems awkward—plus, only 2 or 3 out of 100 mass shootings have been committed by women. “Gunner” might seem an option, but that connotes military and hunters, so we can’t go there. So I guess shooter it is. Sad that I even have to think about it.
You know you are old when none of the three Jeopardy contestants recognize a young Robert Redford in a Twilight Zone episode.
Heck, you know you’re old when you watch Jeopardy.
What’s Jeopardy, you say?
I was updating some of my files to show the 2018 IRS standard mileage deduction rates for business, medical, and charity driving and I noticed that while the business and medical rates have changed almost every year—sometimes up, sometimes down— the charity rate has not changed in at least 17 years; it remains 14 cents per mile. I wondered why.
A bit of googling yielded this article, which confirmed what I suspected. The charity rate is fixed in legislation; the other rates are not.
via Forty Cent Difference Between 2016 Business and Charity Mileage Deductions – NoloNolo
It might be time for Congress to do something about that. And who would complain? Who could be against it?
Consider:
Of course, this may all be moot if, with our new tax laws, no one is itemizing deductions anyway.
According to The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, “For the ninth consecutive year, Americans say ‘whatever’ is the most annoying word or phrase used in casual conversation.”
I say, “Add “slam” to the list—especially when it is journalists using the word, as in
If you love the English language, and believe there is a relationship between the clarity of what we say and what we think, check out Jason Kehe’s article from a 2009 Daily Trojan.
via 12/18: “Whatever” Loses Ground but Retains Annoying Word Title |ome of the Marist Poll
Simkins Says 