Since leaving England in the mid-1970’s I’ve often wondered what my life would’ve been like if that University in Medford, MA had not come up with the last minute offer of a full scholarship. I turned down a place at Bath University to come over and do postgraduate studies in the States.

But what if? What if I had not received that offer? I imagine my counter-factual English alter-ego in a Cotswold village penning learned articles and supping cider. Driving on the left side of the road. Raising children who speak with English accents. Enjoying afternoon teas in the faculty lounge and cricket on the television.

But I never really considered if my health and wellbeing would have been different. If anything, a routine of pints in the pub and chips with everything might not have sustained me as well as my current abstemious love of green tea and year-round California salads.

How wrong I am.

A study that appeared in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association was the basis for a fascinating article (subscription required) in Friday’s edition of the Financial Times.

The study presents damning evidence that Americans in the 55-64 age group are sicker than English people. Although the study echoes previous research in showing that, in both countries, rates of disease increase as socio-economic status declines, the national differences were so great that those at the top of the income and education scale in the US suffered diabetes and heart disease at a similar rate to those at the bottom of the scale in England. Stated plainly: the Harvard-educated elite were as unhealthy as the chip-butty munching navvies in the backstreets of Salford.

This despite the well-known statistic that Americans pay double the British for healthcare.

One of the study’s authors notes “We have to go beyond first-order explanations such as obesity, smoking and drinking to something more profound.”

A competitive culture must play a part, write FT columnists Christopher Bowe and Clive Cookson, highlighting the intense competition, economic insecurity and high levels of stress that run through American society. This, more than lifestyle factors – particularly the fact that Americans are fatter on average than the English and take less exercise – is statistically significant. The FT notes that stress is a BAD THING:

The body reacts to stress by increasing blood pressure and heart rate to transfer energy to muscles, and by enhancing immune defences, cognition and sensory functions. At the same time, it defers longer-term processes not needed for immediate survival, such as growth, tissue repair and reproduction. Chronic stress can cause disease… If energy is constantly mobilised and not stored, it can bring an increased risk of insulin-resistant diabetes. Persistent hypertension can damage blood vessels and, if combined with metabolic stress responses, lead to clogged arteries.

Maybe tending the roses around the doorway of my Cotswold cottages would have been a better option in the long run. Sigh.

Thanks to Joel for altering me a great source of useful videos (no, it’s not YouTube). My favorite corporate pranksters, The Yes Men, are featured on a number of clips. In addition to spoofing audiences as bogus representatives of the WTO, they have taken to the streets urging Americans to sign a petition in support of Global Warming.

Since there will probably be a backlash to this week’s historic legislation in California designed to limit greenhouse gasses, you should take a moment to see the response of the Joe Six-pack to some very improbable claims that the Yes Men make when asking people to support climate change. They don’t go as far as claiming carbon dioxide actually is good for you. I mean, no-one would ever think of funding a national advertising campaign making such a ridiculous claim, would they?

Watch:

Just finished a great book: Rome, Inc: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation by Stanley Bing.

Fortune columnist Bing condenses the 1,200-year history of Rome into a slim, wildly entertaining satire written for modern executives. The book renders the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in corporate-speak. Starting out in 753 BC as a “Mom and Pop operation” through the era of the Bureaucratic Republic; the company peaks from 18 BC to 180 AD as a Caesar-centric organization.

For anyone who works, like Bing, in a large corporation, there’s an eerie familiarity in deeds of ancient Roman tribunes (middle managers) patrician senators (the executive committee or board members) and megalomaniac consuls (CEO’s).

Rome is the corporate center (always being lavishly remodeled in marble); outposts in Africa or Gaul are field offices; conquests are unfriendly acquisitions.

The core attribute of the truly great Romans — Caius Marius, Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, Augustus — was an egomaniac sense of destiny, an utter belief in themselves.

Bing makes it absolutely apparent that there are corporate titans around today not all that different from those who ruled two thousand years ago. Denis Kozlowski’s famous birthday party with an ice statue spraying vodka from its penis; the tragedy of Kenneth Lay; Al Dunlap; Dick Grasso’s grasping excess — all the outsized compensation packages and overweening pride before a fall that was there in 20 BC is still around in 2000 AD:

In a sane society, such people are dealt with rationally, as sick individuals whose egos need amelioration, either upward or downward in size. In a crazy culture, these pathological titans are promoted, invested with power and respect. Eventually, they destroy themselves, both individually and as a group, giving way to new forms of executives.

Bing’s analysis of the forces that drove the ancient Romans is distant mirror in which to see our own careers. Working for large companies might demand we tolerate bread and circuses, but it’s better than life as a Visigoth or Hun.

If you’d like a quick read this summer, check out Rome, Inc.

The foiled plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights between the US and UK has led to some understandable restrictions on cabin luggage. Seems we’ll need to adjust long-term to traveling without carry-on items – including books and magazines, let alone laptops or iPods. We’re still removing our shoes five years after the Shoe Bomber’s escapades.

While not wishing to trivialize the seriousness of the threat to International travel, there is a potential bright side to flying this offers.

Not since the 15th Century and Caxton’s invention of the printing press have the educated public had to undertake long journeys without so much as a book to distract, educate and entertain.

This is an incredible opportunity to enjoy the storytellers art.

In olden days people would gather together and pass the long winter nights around the fire, safe from the icy wind and rain, and listen to epics such as The Odyssey and Beowulf being told and re-told by bards and storytellers. Fairy tales, legends, parables — pre-literate tribes enjoyed a well-told tale.

Of course, in the modern world, no tribe or group of people has the time to sit for four, five or more hours free to distraction, able to give their undivided attention to a masterful storyteller weave the magic of the spoken word. Until now.

What better amenity for the more creative of the long-haul carriers departing Heathrow or JFK to offer than an on-board bard?

The bard would occupy a business-class seat (natch) and offer the tribe of frequent fliers in the immediate vicinity the first-hand experience of seeing and hearing an epic recited. Other passengers could listen via headset. With microphone in hand the bard would wander the aisles in the rear of the plane involving the hoi-polloi in the unfolding tale.

This is an incredible untapped market opportunity for those of us who make our living with the spoken word to expand our captive audiences.

Modern epics created to entertain at 36,000 feet would be recited. Memorized tales of adventures in travel; corporate life; loves won and lost; victories and defeats. It’s all in Homer and those fellows. We just need updated versions to entertain and educate passengers traveling high above the wine-dark seas.

…might be an appropriate subtitle for the hilarious movie Little Miss Sunshine which I caught in Berkeley last night.

It’s a touching and wacky portrayal of a dysfunctional family, complete with surly adolescent son who has taken a vow of silence, a heroin-snorting Grandpa and a Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman style Mom.

However, it’s the Dad that anyone looking to make their fortune as a motivational speaker should observe closely. Here’s a guy who is trying in all the wrong ways to make it as a professional speaker. He has masses of misplaced self-confidence, almost no platform speaking skills, and an unfortunate choice of publicity agent to book his engagements and push a book contract. There’s more than a touch of pathos in his inability to grasp that he’s in the wrong line of work – especially as the family lives on the bread-line and is forced to drive from New Mexico to Los Angeles in a yellow VW Bus that is as mechanically unsound as the “motivational” techniques he applies to his family life.

The film is a wonderful satire of the weirder aspects of contemporary American life – from pre-pubescent beauty pageants to the way the health care system deals with death. Not to mention one of the more unusual motorcycle policemen you’ll ever see conduct a traffic stop.

If you’ve any interest in the professional speaking business, and enjoy mad-cap humor, this is a movie to go see.

It’s a characteristic of CEO’s who are also founders of companies to speak more frankly than appointed heirs. Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems and CEO for over 20 years, was an iconoclast who spoke fearlessly of things as he saw them.

Last Saturday’s interview with Infosys founder and CEO Nandan Nilekani in the Financial Times (subscription required) is an example of CEO who is a company founder speaking candidly on a global scale.

Nilekani is famous for inspiring Thomas Friedman to write The World is Flat.

His views on the changing world economic landscape and the outsourcing of jobs from the west to India and China are uncompromisingly rooted in history:

Two hundred years back, India and China were 50 per cent of global GDP, but both, for different reasons, opted out of the race. In China, they turned inwards and in India we had the empire. The next century is an opportunity to redeem some of that: the flat world has created a unique confluence of circumstances which will have a huge impact on all our lives.

He challenges the inherent right of Westerners to a high standard of living:

I don’t think that a high standard of living is an entitlement. I don’t think the world can live with everyone driving an SUV. Somethings got to give. It’s just become more competitive. If Indians and Chinese can work 80- 100 hours a week and they are part of a global, fungible labor market, it’s going to have an impact on living standards in the west.”

While acknowledging infrastructure problems in Bangalore (a dysfunctional city) and the narrow base of Indian IT, Nilekani believes “the tide has turned” with the west.

It’s encouraging to hear such plain spoken CEO.

Which American or European executives would dare to disagree?

And what would they say that wouldn’t disturb the fragile relationship with their own employees (skittish about losing jobs to Banagalore and South China) and their overseas partners who man the call centers and manufacture most of what they sell? Hardly “You’re right. We’re busy driving down standards of living among our employees and doing our bit to hasten the decline of the West.”

A hall of mirrors concept kept me awake last night. I’m attending a Convention where Professional Speakers are speaking about speaking – they give presentations on ways to present.

This reminded me of my days as a rebellious sociology student in the early 1970’s when, with a sense of wicked delight, I discovered there was a branch of sociology (the scientific study of human societies) that studied other sociologists – it was, naturally, called the sociology of sociology, or reflexive sociology. Amazing! I could torment my professors by analyzing them with the same tools they were teaching me. The bible of this movement in 1972 was Sociology as a Skin Trade which I bought on the strength of the title alone and read with delight. Reflexive sociologists claimed that

sociologists are like goldfish swimming in a bowl, confidently analyzing other goldfish, without having ever stopped to recognize the bowl and the water they have in common with the fish they study

I never attended a convention of reflexive sociologists, but the meeting rooms at the NSA Orlando Convention are filled with many fish who swim in the same waters as the presenters on stage before them.

Perhaps there are other meetings where I could experience this sense of infinite reflection? Where there are moments of expertise in a profession being used to assist the development of members of that profession:

• When the call goes out for a doctor in the house to administer to the presenter who just suffered a heart attack during his talk on myocardial infarctions at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology
• When Hotel Maintenance closes the mens room to unblock the drains at the American Society of Plumbing Engineers Convention.
• When the towtruck arrives to jumpstart the car of the guy who accidentally left his lights on all night in the parking lot of the Society of Automotive Engineers Meeting.
• And what sort of pressure does the hotel kitchen staff feel when they prepare conference lunches at the National Association for Catering and Events?

Who polices the policemen and spies on the spies? Who stares at the ceiling at 3am considering these questions but a speechwriter at the NSA Orlando Convention?

Wonderful letter in the Financial Times that highlights the dilemma presented by illegal aliens (such as Superman and me) who land on American shores and become productive members of society. Here, in its entirety, is what Mr. Branko Terzic writes:

From Mr Branko Terzic.

Sir, It dawned on me during the opening scenes of the new Superman movie that Superman, the arch-typical American hero, is the ultimate undocumented illegal alien.

Think about it. He arrives in the US in a unregistered aircraft. He crosses the border and enters the US without any documentation, visa or passport. It is also likely that his adoptive parents, the Kents, falsified information for a birth certificate leading to his illegal acquisition of a US Social Security number and card.

Publicly exposed, and in spite of all his good works fighting crime, Superman would not be able to get a legal green card, and would be expelled to his country (or in this case planet) of origin. Sure, Congress could pass a special law legalising Superman’s status. But what would be the precedent? Good works? Crime fighting? Economic benefits created by the Superman movie franchise?

It’s a dilemma. The timing of the movie is perfect. It comes during the US great debate on immigration policy. How many other illegal aliens are there out there whose work and lives in the US have been such as to merit a legal path to citizenship? If we have created a system where not even Superman merits consideration, well, maybe we should reconsider the whole question?

Branko Terzic,

Vienna, VA 22182, US

One, Two, Three, Four.

Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro.

Numbers are such absolutes, the bedrock of what we know, of how we think. We count the ways of loving and measure out our lives in numbers. So it’s only common sense that these must appeal on a similar level (of pure reason) in each and every listener worldwide – no matter if the audience is in St. Louis or Shanghai. Right?

Not so, reports the Chinese People’s Daily Online. Significant cultural differences exist in the way we process numbers.

Despite using the same numerals in computing, English and Chinese speakers displayed different brain activities in processing them, according to a new study conducted by a China-US research team. For example, the participants might have been shown symbols of an erect scythe and a cleaver and asked to figure out the visual orientation of a tilted knife in relation to the first two.

Right there, the dispassionate focus of the researcher betrays a deep cultural bias. While mental images of erect scythes, cleavers and a tilted knives would draw a blank in most westerners (with the possible exception of those of us who live in San Francisco and are habitues of the Power Exchange ) for the Chinese this is a valid area of research where numbers are represented by pictograms.

Since Chinese characters are more visual that Arabic numbers the brain activity required to process these vastly different written codes are significant.

This is yet another reason to eschew text and numbers in your Powerpoint when presenting at home or abroad. Stick to photographs and images that have more universal appeal. The audience will understand you better. You can count on it.

In a fascinating survey out this week, the Pew Research Center reports that anti-Americanism is on the rise across the planet.
The big issue is the war in Iraq:

The survey shows that the Iraq war continues to exact a toll on America’s overall image and on support for the struggle against terrorism. Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say that the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, America’s most important ally in Iraq, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, while just half that number (30%) feel it has made the world safer.

No surprise in this finding — neither supporters or opponents of the war should be shocked.

What did surprise me was the low level of concern, even ignorance, about the issue of Global Warming in the two countries that are responsible for the greatest output of CO2:

There also is a substantial gap in concern over global warming – roughly two-thirds of Japanese (66%) and Indians (65%) say they personally worry a great deal about global warming. Roughly half of the populations of Spain (51%) and France (46%) also express great concern over global warming, based on those who have heard about the issue. But there is no evidence of alarm over global warming in either the United States or China – the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. Just 19% of Americans and 20% of the Chinese who have heard of the issue say they worry a lot about global warming – the lowest percentages in the 15 countries surveyed.

The Chinese have an excuse, they live in a society where the free flow of information choked off. America claims to be the land of the free. Perhaps it’s just another word for nothin’ that don’t mean nothin’.

This “What, me worry?” attitude is indicated by many Americans reacting with disdain or hostility to Al Gore’s movie. President Bush famously says he ‘doubts’ he’ll see it — exhibiting a classic case of argument from a position of ignorance (“I can’t believe this is possible, so it can’t be true”). The American public continues in it’s tradition of being less aware of major issues the rest of the world:

For the most part, Americans are significantly less aware of events and issues than are the publics in Germany and other major industrialized countries.

There’s a lesson in this for communications professionals and speakers who find themselves addressing American audiences. Dumb it down. Then make it even dumber. Don’t assume your audience knows Jack about the major topics of the day. That includes the ‘educated’ professionals in business attire.

The good news is that a presentation which makes the audience aware of previously unknown facts and does so in an entertaining and engaging manner, will reduce by a small fraction the sum total of this great wall of ignorance. And that’s a good feelin’ — good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.