Once again, I’d wish I’d written this. I’ve thought about most of these, but wasn’t cogent enough to list them.

So Hat Tip to Dave Johnston who put this together.

1. If you don’t pay for your house, they take it back.
2. If you buy a house that you cannot afford, you will not be able to pay for it (See also: #1).
3. Everything is paid for, even free downloads. Or free healthcare.
4. You do not have an inalienable right to not be offended.
5. Smaller portions of crap is still crap. So is crap with whole grain.
6. The President has a lot less power than advertised. He or she cannot, for example, “cap outlandish interest rates,” or “expand flexible work arrangements,” regardless of how nice it sounds in the commercial.
7. Losing exists, no matter how many trophies are handed out.
8. Dandelions are flowers. Humans just have an attitude problem.
9. Nobody looks for the state-issued professional license when they get a haircut. Same goes for the florist, or the lobster seller, and most likely even your doctor.
10. You are a minority somewhere in the world. Rub some dirt on it.
11. Some humans are more productive than others. This concept is similar to inertia. It is not a judgment, it is physics.
    
12. In 1998 climate change was a chance of thunderstorms in the 5-Day Outlook.
13. You can spend 8 hours clicking a computer’s mouse and still not do anything.
14. Humans are hunter-gatherers. Omnivores. This means wild game. It’s just science, no hard feelings.
15. I don’t know what a robe is for either.
16. When an investment plan requires more and more new investors’ money to pay returns for the initial few, this is called a Ponzi Scheme. However, in the United States, this is called “Social Security.”
17. Women are different than men. Many women I’ve known love this fact.
18. A product or service - regardless of how amazing - that requires money to create or deliver, but does not produce actual revenue, is not a business. That is called a charity.
19. Everyone argues at the airport. The best bet is to get home and make up over wine.
20. When the industry you work in becomes obsolete, you frequently lose that job. This is not an outrage, it is evolution.
21. New people being born throughout the world (from the wombs of existing people, thereby producing additional people) creates more demand for goods and services. If the supply stays the same, prices go up. This is commonly called business.
22. The guy on the Bluetooth headset at Target is a douchebag. It’s not you.
23. Money and trade is simple. You’re the thing that’s complicated.
24. 94% of the United States is undeveloped land.
    
25. Grand Theft Auto IV has amazing, open-world realistic gameplay. Even more amazing? Actual reality.

According to the WSJ,

Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.

Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.

In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.” It’s easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn’t true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don’t have guns.

The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.

Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.

Not only are they willing and able to take care of themselves, they take care of others more it appears:

That response is not evidence that gun owners only care about themselves, however. In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn’t reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would “endure all things” for the one they loved (45% to 37%).

It amazes me how often politicians get the demographics wrong about the real America.  We are not bitter, and don’t have to cling to G_d, we do it because we want to, not a crutch.

Last round of elections they trashed NASCAR also, bad move there.

I’m happy, glad to be able to take care of myself, and if you want to see some of my guns, break into my house at night….I’ll give you a good view of the front end of one of them.

Play the age game to see.

One of the most famous lines ever said in a movie, “you need a bigger boat” (youtube here) by Roy Schneider, died yesterday at 75.

I didn’t see the Exorcist for personal/religious reasons, so Jaws was the first movie that scared me.  This was the first movie I’d seen where the entire audience screamed and reacted at once.

I grew up at the beach, and claimed prior to the movie that it wouldn’t change the way I felt about swimming in the ocean.  After this famous scene, I still think about it.

Don Shula used to say on the Shula Show, “Good football teams need to play the kind of football that good football teams play to win  football games”. Coach speak for get the job done.

When I started in the working world shortly after the dinosaur’s went extinct, they told me consistency was the mark of a professional. 17-0 is a perfect season, 18-1 is not, despite the fact that the ‘07 Pats are likely one of the best teams to play football, just 35 seconds short (not to mention of few film clips of the other teams signals).

I am relieved as a Dolfan that my team is still the only one that has finished the season with a perfect record. I know that some (Stephen O’Grady) don’t like the popping of the champagne when the final team loses each season, but I actually heard they haven’t done it this year. Nevertheless, once again it shows just how hard it is to win every game at the top level.

Back in 1985, da Bears were the greatest thing going, until they ran into the lightening release of Dan Marino on the highest rated Monday Night Football game of all time. Dan was made an honorary member of the ‘72 team who were on the sidelines. Da Bears also went 18-1.

I vote the NY Football Giants as an honorary member, or at least the newest 12th man.

I’m not going to step in to this pile of

as I’ve heard that politics, religion and sex on your blog can be divisive  (like that’s ever kept me up at night).   I will comment on religion whenever I want to….but I’ve learned to back off of politics.
So I leave you with the vote chooser.   It asks questions about your opinions, beliefs and matches them to the candidates and spits out who believes like you do.

Hat tip to Don Surber for this.

I won’t say who it picked for me, I will say that who I disagreed most with was John Edwards…ambulance chaser.

From Popsci.com.

I get the part about cigarettes cost you money, combining drugs and alcohol are bad for you…but get number 3 meeting heads!

3. Too Many Meetings Make You Grumpy

Why Bother? Employers take heed: Since beleaguered workers may perform poorly, be tardy, or quit, the authors suggest that “organizations be sensitive to the number of meetings employees are required to attend.” Managers could create “formal guidelines” for meeting necessity (presumably not drafted at a meeting).

Here’s another Mr. Obvious, dudes like good looking women?  Who’d have guessed it?

George Washington’s proclamation.

What Thanksgiving Really Means by WolfHowling

Kathy: No Thanksgiving Without Gratitude, No Gratitude Without Grace 

Even though I say things like “might outta” and “fixin to”, the accent quiz pegged me to where I’m from, Florida.

Trends come together for me. Today I was on a call about IBM’s work flexibility programs, Dow Jones has an article on Gen X vs. Gen Y workers (along with boomers) and the WSJ has an article about expanding the 24 hour workplace. All topics are about workplace conditions and dynamics. They do conflict with each other. You try to balance work/life, yet the ability to reach anyone instantly has conflicted with personal life.

I did an interview on blogging with Forrester recently which turned into an analyst report on the cultural changes and the people coming into the workplace. They are very different than the standard worker we have been used to. This is tough on boomers who have had to deal with the greatest change in (computer) technology of any generation, and this has lead to differences in worker attitudes. What became apparent is that the expectations and the ability of the new workers is far different than the existing workforce. They know more, are more transient and communicate in a different way than we are used to. To be competitive for these resources, your company has to be more nimble and embrace these social technologies and cultures.  Still, you have to accommodate the existing workforce and bring them into the fold (social computing) and deal with the fast pace of the new worker.

It used to be that you did your 8 hours, went home and did another 8, five days a week. Technology and the ability to communicate 24 hours a day, instantaneously has changed that. The problem with that is that you can be reached - and - with the expectation of an answer, immediately. The new generation has embraced this and are constantly at each other with the texting and other messaging technologies. This can be at odds with your work/life balance.  So while we are the most productive country, we aren’t enjoying it as much apparently.  It is at odds with generations also according to Dow Jones:

“Older people approach younger workers and younger workers approach the more mature workers sometimes with a bit of skepticism,” said Ron Glover, vice president of global work force diversity at IBM. “There are real differences in terms of language styles, in terms of the expectations we see across these generations. If you just ignore them, those may become the source of disconnects in the workplace.”  

What makes it tough as the WSJ reported was that globalization has given us the ability to work continuously and simultaneously. Mathematically you can’t expand the 24 hour day, but you can cram more into it by having teams around the world combine on a project. They quoted Henry Ford with setting up a 3 shift day - still 24 hours, but the workers built cars for 8 hours and went home. You never go home now, you just go to the place where they reach you for an answer. This ups productivity but once again, there is an intrusion into your work/life balance that has to be managed.

While this seems like complaining, I am stating the obvious here, it isn’t going to change. More than likely it is going to accelerate. One must find a comfort zone while adhering to the company’s need to be competitive and streamline.

Once again, I’m avoiding the crackberry syndrome and am quite reachable…25 hours a day.