An amusing quote in the wonderful historical novel on the life of Cicero by author Robert Harris – Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome

“He had never written a speech for anyone else before, and it was a peculiar experience. Nowadays, of course, most senators employ a slave or two to turn out their speeches; I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the text is placed in front of them; how those fellows call themselves statesmen defeats me.”

Ut in preteritus sic hodie.

Mental Floss

You don’t have to be conventionally religious to be curious about the afterlife. Anyone reading this blog must know they will wake up dead one day. Then what? All religions have their stories about what believers should expect. And many people are comforted by such beliefs.

But for others, open to conjecture, the possibilities of the afterlife are limited only by our imagination.

David Eagleman has written a wonderfully imaginative and quirky collection of vignettes describing possible afterlives. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives is a whirlwind tour of possibilities for all kinds of life after death which I found to be a wonderfully stimulating read.

There’s an afterlife where you find yourself in a world exclusively populated by people you’d known while alive:

“The missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose while you were alive.”

There’s a free-market afterlife of “fast cars and charisma and drinking and lovemaking” which stands in contrast to the Heaven where “the harp music is maddeningly slow”. There’s a wide range of Sci-Fi afterlives where human beings are data gathering machines created by a race of subterranean beings to roam freely and map the world; or one where a race of dumb creatures who engineered us as smart machines to discover the answer to ultimate questions de-brief us by repetitively asking “Do you have answer?”.

Each chapter teases, provokes and, implicitly, pokes gentle fun at the binary options often presented by the fundamentalist afterlives of mainstream religions.

I read it, entranced, in one sitting. The one caution is that you should be prepared for acute mental whiplash as each of the 40 chapters challenges us to imagine an alternative future.

If you’d like to think outside of the box and come up with alternatives to commonly held beliefs, read a chapter or two of Sum. Then apply the same creativity to the topic of a business presentation or Toastmasters speech.

Sociological Images reports that, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data rating the best jobs in America, an I.T. industry Systems Engineer (SE) comes out in first place!

(Click to enlarge)

Who woulda thunk.

I spent six years as an SE with Sun Microsystems from 1992 – 1998 working in Pleasanton, CA and Minneapolis, MN. While the work was varied and a great apprenticeship in the technology industry I was unaware at the time of my good fortune in having the best job in America.

In fact, compared to the account managers I supported I always felt underpaid and overworked. But that was in the dot-com boom years. Things must have changed since then. Pity the poor securities traders, sales directors and physician’s who work in less highly ranked jobs.

Speechwriters are nowhere on the list. Too insignificant to measure.

Here’s a speech I gave at the Speakers Forum – an advanced Toastmasters Club that meets on the 4th Saturday of each month at the Concord Police Station, Concord, California.

In this 5-7 minute presentation I discuss the differences in pronunciation and meaning between English and American uses of the same language.

Thanks to Sociological Images for an eye-opening display of vintage ads for cocaine and opium products.

This is normal today

That was normal back then

They note that what is considered socially “acceptable” changes over time:

..it’s no secret that products with cocaine, marijuana, opium, and other now-banned substances were at one time sold openly, often as medicines. The changes in attitudes toward these products, from entirely acceptable and even beneficial to inherently harmful and addicting, is a great example of social construction. While certainly opium and cocaine have negative effects on some people, so do other substances that remained legal (or were re-legalized, in the case of alcohol).

I found one of the most enjoyable things about watching Mad Men was seeing the outrageous behavior of “normal” people in the early 1960′s – women who were 7 months pregnant sipping martini’s and smoking to “calm their nerves”; driving without seat belts; the treatment of women and minorities in the workplace.

What will our grandchildren find shocking about everyday aspects of our world, when they look back 100 years from now?

Will they be wondering why we drove private automobiles that ran on fossil fuels and killed 1.2 million a year worldwide in traffic accidents; or ate meat which sucks up plant food that could feed five times the number of people; or tolerated a world where the richest 1% of the globe own 40% of all wealth; or watched TV for an average of 151 hours a month; or allowed commercial TV stations to show 3 hours of advertising for every 10 hours of programming; or lived in a world with a stockpile over 23,000 nuclear weapons.

I wonder what, apart from all of that, will our grandchildren find surprising or shocking about the way we live now?

What do you think?

“I think heckling is something the people of Britain can well be proud of…” – Joseph Strick, documentary film maker, 1966

A BBC documentary film caught priceless moments in the 1966 British election. Politicians mixed it up with vocal members of the electorate who have no compunction about joining in the debate from the audience in the time honored tradition of “heckling”.

There’s a marked contrast with the recent “Tea Party” interruptions in the US. Back in 1966 Britain, the dialog, however robust and vocal, involves a shared understanding of the rules of the game between the speaker, the heckler and the audience. Save for the anarchists, the protesters often relish engaging in dialog. Even when it becomes violent the policemen have smiles on their faces and let the protesters finish their cigarettes before bundling them into the police car. In the US it was mere confrontation, with none of the repartee displayed by heckler and speaker in some of the scenes in this fascinating documentary.

Combining the wit of a stand-up comedian with the vocal variety of a fairground barker, these British politicians show how effective public speakers can deal with interruptions by working the bond with the audience and appealing to their supporters, who intervene on behalf of the speaker to silence dissent.

It’s a long-gone world of duffel coats and briar pipes, when everyone seemed to be having a bad hair day.

Read the BBC blog and watch the fascinating 40 minute video.

Here’s a nice way to celebrate the end of one year and the start of another. This awe-inspiring video of the known, material, universe deserves 5 minutes of your time to watch in HD and full-screen mode (click on the second box from the right in the menu bar below.)

The Known Universe video takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. This new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Happy New Year!

Visiting my home town in the UK last week, I experienced a new perspective on some of the cultural oddities of these United States. For instance, people in England, as elsewhere across the planet, hang their washing to dry outside on clear days. This obvious solution to the final stage of the laundry cycle – drying clothes en plein air – is anathema to most Americans, who see clotheslines as a symbol of poverty and despair.

Matthew Engel writes in the Weekend Financial Times about one woman’s fight to air her dirty laundry, highlighting key aspects of the oddly American prohibition on hanging washing outside. Neighbors are quick to complain that “trailer trash” inhabit a home where the clothes dry outside. Like Victorians who insisted on demure skirting around piano legs, they object to seeing the neighbor’s knickers. In many upscale communities there are strictly enforced laws banning outside clotheslines. The gas or electric tumble dryer is fired up even on the warmest of days.

Engel identifies the historical origins of the uniquely American obsession with burning carbon fuels in order to dry laundry in tumble driers, come rain or shine:

This one is just a very strange and very American prejudice, which is at odds with some of the country’s other priorities: far greater piety than is now normal in Europe (surely sun and wind are part of God’s benison?) and the right to do what the hell you want on your own property. As Ms Froehlich said: “If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry.”

This seems, however, to clash with two other American traits: the puritan tradition, lingering from the 17th century, and an unshakeable faith in technology, lingering from the 1950s. So now battle is joined between the anti-hangers and environmentalists who accuse driers of being responsible for 6 per cent of domestic US electricity consumption.

An increasing number of environmentally aware citizens are pointing out the ecological advantages of the humble clothesline. Project Laundry List is a pressure group attempting to communicate the common-sense values and benefits to the planet of hanging laundry outside. I would encourage anyone interested in a sensible alternative to the foolish use of tumble dryers on warm and sunny days to join. My own family clothes are hung out on the Hills Hoist we purchased from the Australian supplier over ten years ago. And yes, those are my underpants (above) hanging out in the California sunshine.

Dentists and Social Media

I recently attended a full day seminar on social media presented by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, the author of Webify Your Business who I profiled on this blog back in July.

After the event, I caught up with Sheila Dobee, DDS who is based in Fremont, CA and asked her how dentists might use Social Media like Facebook and blogs.

To hear what Dr. Dobee told me, click on the podcast icon below.

Can you believe Woodstock took place 40 years ago this weekend! To commemorate LIFE teamed up with the MagCloud team to release a Special Edition print on demand Magazine….check it out!

Order your copy for just $9.60 plus shipping.

Great photos of those long-gone daze.