Today is Valentine Day and I sincerely hope that you have better things planned than reading blogs—even mine.

Do you believe in love at first sight? I think that if one is going to be honest the looks exchanged by strangers across a crowded room are more likely to be lust, than love at first glance.

Thousands of years ago Buddha said, “Of all the worldly passions, lust is the most intense. All other worldly passions seem to follow in its train;” whereas Elizabeth Hurley puts a far more modern spin on it, “A bit of lusting after someone does wonders for you and is good for your skin.”

Lust can rest in one’s mind and never be acted upon, but, if action is preferred, it is wise to first ponder the words of John Barrymore, “Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.”

If that doesn’t dampen desire, then—man or woman—heed Shakespeare’s warning in Macbeth: “Alcohol provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”

The thing about lust and sex is that they are both short-lived, although a lot of fun while they’re happening.

But, as Joanne Woodward points out, “Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat.”

And that brings us to love—about which millions of words have been spoken, not to mention written.

Love is quirky and difficult to define, but Roy Croft offers a bit of wisdom that makes a great deal of sense, “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”

Anon has a bit of wisdom to offer up that would improve life on all levels is we would just follow it, “Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.”

But what of intimacy?

Barbara Cartland, who certainly knows all about these topics (do you think she does her own research?) says, “Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women, intimacy sometimes results in sex.”

However, true as that is, it is Thomas More who really understands the road to real intimacy, “Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.”

Have a wonderful day. Spread love lavishly throughout your world and it will come back to you as a tsunami.

Image credit: jmjvicente on sxc.hu

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I love mondegreens and had the same reaction when I read an article about palindromes.

A palindrome is a word or phrase that is a mirror image of itself.

Numbers and dates, when they are written month-date-year, can do the same thing and that’s where it gets really interesting.

Saturday was a palindrome, 01/02/2010; the previous one occurred 10/02/2001 and before that?

“The amazing thing is, the one before that was Aug. 31, 1380 or 08-31-1380,” said Aziz Inan, a math puzzle enthusiast. “That was 620 years ago.”

(Here’s a link to Inan’s original article.)

Palindromes are far less frequent than the blue moon that occurred this New Year’s eve.

How infrequent?

“We have 12 palindrome dates this century; the rest of the world has 29,” he said. “Our 12 all will occur on the second day of the month. Theirs all occur in February.”

The U of Portland prof doesn’t limit this sort of thing to numbers. Take his name…
Print AZIZ in all capital letters; turn each Z on its side, and then swap the vowels. The result? His last name, INAN.

Now I have a suggestion for you. Share the articles with your kids in an age appropriate way, not just numbers, but words. Then play together with family birth dates, names, etc.—not as a lesson, but as fun.

As Inan says, it’s a great way to get kids interested in math and words.

Image credit: Aziz Inan

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As you can see I’ve renamed the Saturday article fest. It was Saturday Odd Bits Roundup here and Seize Your Leadership Day at Leadership Turn, now it’s Expand Your Mind, because that is what I hope these eclectic collections will do.

Old and new media spends several days around this time analyzing the past and predicting the future, so why should I be any different? But I did try and find some uncommon ones to share.

Newsweek has several slideshows worth checking out. I used their review of the decade Wednesday, but my other favorites are Worst Predictions and Tech Predictions for 2010.

Not a day goes by without mention of some part of the US auto industry, so how could I not do the same? Business Week offers up two great retrospectives covering a longer period of time, the ugliest cars of the last half century and a comprehensive look at all the brands that have gone kaput.

Of all the annual awards, the Darwin Awards tops my list of favorites—“Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.”—check out this year’s winners.

Finally, from the New York Times, a prediction on the returning popularity of “old-fashioned tighty whiteys” seems almost as unlikely as Microsoft dumping Steve Ballmer (Newsweek’s tech prediction #9).

Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr

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It’s the last day of the year and I have two retrospectives for you.

The first is Many Happier Returns from Business Week’s Marc Miller.

2009? No valentine—
The landscape looks like District 9,
Though corporate corpses line the lawns
Instead of otherworldly prawns.
Among the living, those once strong
Now huff and puff and wheeze along,
Unless, of course, they got a gift
When stimulus gave them a lift.
So many deemed too big to fail
And so few deemed too big to bail,
The situation gives one pause—
Who made Tim Geithner Santa Claus?
With federal spending out of sight,
Paul Krugman says it’s still too slight.
The controversy’s fierce, but wait,
There’s still the health-care-bill debate.
The public option’s blown a fuse,
The Senate bill will lose, win, lose,
They’ll never make Olympia Snowe see
Eye to eye with Ms. Pelosi,
Lieberman says no, yes, no,
While Harry Reid—oh, let it go.
A back-and-forth on cap-and-trade
Means going green’s again delayed,
And how can joy be unalloyed
With double-digit unemployed
And upward-sailing federal debt…
Did I say Merry Christmas yet?

Well, Merry Christmas anyhow,
And first of all, the deepest bow
To those whose companies survived,
And in some cases even thrived:
At Goldman Sachs, somehow Lloyd Blankfein
Kept the profits of his bank fine;
Richard Anderson impressed
With Delta’s merger with Northwest,
While Citi’s Pandit spread some cheer
By working for a buck a year,
As did the chief of Oracle—
What, Ellison? Historical!
Bob Iger helped make Disney shine
By snapping up the Marvel line
And also made his stock price spark
Announcing that new Shanghai park,
While Microsoft made big noise revvin’
Up to market Windows 7.
Signs of life were found, they say,
By analysts of M&A,
And Jeffrey Bewkes at last was able
To unwind Time Warner’s cable.
Wal-Mart bravely soldiered on
In price wars vs. Amazon,
But happiest of all, perhaps,
Was anyone who markets apps,
From recipes for turkey scraps
To farts to Chinese take-out maps.
Such downloads, though they may be pap, ‘ll
Surely warm the hearts at Apple.

Season’s greetings, too, to those
Whose bottom lines hit thudding lows,
Or who are never coming back:
An R.I.P. for Pontiac,
And even Saturn fell to earth
(I liked the Vue, for what it’s worth),
Though GM, in a bid to cope, ‘ll
Sell, keep, sell, keep, sell, keep Opel.
Massive debt at AMR,
Six Flags and Saks are under par,
And for the umpty-umth year, Boeing
Can’t get its Dreamliner going.
NBC is finding ten o’
Clock is not prime time for Leno.
(Will its programs be more trendy
Once it’s cut off from Vivendi?)
Intel’s having not much fun
In being sued by everyone,
While Rupert Murdoch feels the sting
Of Google (his solution: Bing).
The woe extends to Donald Trump,
Who’s suffering from a gambling slump,
And layoffs even ruled the day
(And this is rare) at J&J.
Some not-too-prudent marketing
Meant sales were down at Burger King,
And though their image is aglitter,
Are they in the black at Twitter?
Little changed at CIT:
It’s barely out of bankruptcy,
While profits were a constant lack
At Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Oh, one more thing that made us freak:
When Bloomberg purchased BusinessWeek.

So for next year, here’s what I’m thinking:
Let the trade gap go on shrinking,
Let each market force allow
A solidly five-digit Dow.
In fact, let every market fly—
The DAX, the Nikkei, heck, Dubai.
Let the feds still run GM,
But once it’s healthy, fire them.
More electric cars, and please,
More cost-efficient batteries.
Let the media brass divine
A way to make a buck online,
And let that buck not plunge so low
The U.S. ends up with no dough.
Let a sluggish SEC
Resolve its Madoff misery,
And let the BLS report
Statistics of a happier sort,
With millions of well-paid new jobs,
For everyone, not just Lou Dobbs.
Let the housing market soar
Right back to where it was before,
And let consumer spending rise,
But don’t let debt metastasize.
Peace on earth, good will toward men,
And see you in 2010.

Next is an artful review of the year from the serious souls at JibJab—who never crack a smile because they’re too busy laughing.

Image credit: Business Week and JibJab

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December** 31 is a difficult night for many people.

It’s often the night when the mental filing cabinets and cupboards in which we stash all the woulda/coulda/shoulda, unhappy and plain old bad stuff of our lives pop open at the same time and we find ourselves buried.

And that means we often start the New Year depressed.

To avoid this people attend frantic parties and/or drink too much—anything to avoid having their mind start down the slippery slope.

Others hole up and just cope, counting the hours until New Year’s is gone for another year.

Knowing this first hand I thought I’d share how I’ve handled my New Year’s Eve for the last few years.

I found the first thing is to understand that you won’t be hit with a thunderbolt if you go to bed before midnight. That may sound funny, but most of us are brainwashed from an early age that we must stay up and “see the New Year in.”

I was amazed how much easier my life got when I finally rid myself of that attitude; doing so lifted a great weight and gave me a feeling of freedom that’s very difficult to describe.

Here’s what I did that year and do now.

1. Plan a very indulgent dinner by treating yourself to something you don’t normally have—prime rib, lobster, filet—it doesn’t matter as long as it isn’t your normal fare.
2. Think about what you want to drink, if anything. Champagne is an automatic choice that owes itself more to marketing and brainwashing than personal preference, so think about what really turns you on, what you like to sip and savor—a special cocktail, single malt, designer beer (yes, beer).
3. Increase the indulgence with a dessert you love, but never allow yourself to have.
4. Tell your good friends where you’ll be and that they are free to stop by, call, IM, tweet, whatever. Don’t tell anyone who doesn’t have their act together and chooses to go the drunk and/or depressed route. It’s a lot easier to be dragged down than it is to lift up someone who chooses to go the other way—you know the difference.
5. There are many way to spend your evening
   1. deep in a book you’ve been dying to read, but didn’t have time;
   2. soak in a hot bath until you’re well-done and wrinkled;
   3. rent a movie that you’ve been promising yourself or a long time favorite—better yet, rent two;
   4. catch up on your sleep, seriously If you are exhausted, really tired, have your dinner, soak in a hot tub or take a hot shower and go to bed. Think about it. How many times over the years have you found your eyes closing and forcing yourself to stay awake until midnight?
6. Be kind, to yourself and to those who move through or live in your world; doing so is the best way to be kind to yourself, too.
7. Even if ‘d’ above doesn’t apply skip the propaganda and go to sleep at your normal time.

This advice doesn’t just apply to singles, it works equally well for couples (amazing what taking a hot shower together can lead to:), especially if it’s been a year as tough as 2009.

Finally, if you are very bored and want to chat, you can reach me New Year’s Eve at 866.265.7267 or use the chat box at the right. I’m always up for good conversation.

Have a wonderful New Year’s and remember, it will be over before you know it.

**A hat tip and my thanks to David Dougherty for catching my typo of “January 31″ and notifying me.

Image credit: insouciance on flickr

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Christmas comes just once a year

Good thing, too, ’cause money is dear.

Enjoy the day, it’ll soon be past

Turn off the computer, the time won’t last!

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Be sure to take a look at these 3 fishy Santas

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When was it lost?

We choose whom to hire/follow/marry/date/befriend—or not.

Some of those choices work out and some don’t, but it’s when we choose someone who’s flawed, who just isn’t nice, that bothers us the most—think Bernie Madoff.

How could we have missed it—it always seems so obvious after the fact—and we end up wondering why our social judgment is so faulty.

A couple of years ago I read an article about research that shows infants do just as good a job discerning the difference between naughty and nice as Santa does.

Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday’s journal Nature…the Yale team has other preliminary research that shows similar responses even in 3-month-olds.

Ouch.

So what happens between 6 months and the future? Why do we hire/follow /marry/date/befriend the oh-so-obviously wrong people?

Why do we make so many poor choices?

Image credit: greyman on flickr

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Now see how you can help drive global change

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Did you know Thanksgiving is an F day?

There are five Fs that come immediately to mind, they are fun, family, friends, food and football.

Of those five only one comes close to being guaranteed good and that’s food, but even food isn’t a given. There was the year that my host’s two Siamese cats stole the turkey—dragged it off the platter, dropped it to the floor, dragged it across an Aubusson carpet and were on the way out one door when I entered another.

Football often depends on whether your team wins, although a good game, as opposed to a romp, can make the difference.

Friends are often a better bet than family since you can pick and choose, but that only works if you’re the host. One friend always invited two people he knew would ignite—one year it was an Arab and an Israeli just after the Six Day War. Talk about fireworks, more like bombs.

Then, of course, there is family. Family is family and blood may be thicker than water, but that doesn’t mean putting the family together in one room will always generate sweetness and light—too often there is a large dose of vinegar and sour grapes. It’s said that leopards don’t change their spots and neither do family members. If they are difficult or you can’t stand them 364 days of the years, they won’t change for the 365^th day.

Fun depends either on the first four or your ability to take a step back and laugh—at the food, the game, your friends, your family and, most of all, yourself.

Laughter is the balm that soothes a holiday rash; apply liberally and often.

Image credit: auntjojo on flickr

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