I Could Never Sell

I giggled every time that word was thrown at me in divorce court. How grand is that, eh?

Backer Has Checkered Background

How hungry would you have to be, before someone could sell you your own foot to gnaw on?

Why so many good novels and movies about lawyers and trials? [Robinson] now lives in The Hague and is a legal advisor to ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Robinson is so enthusiastic about his work that he has written [...]

You lose. She doesn’t seem to be listening to your stories. Why should she? She knows where all your stories end…

Something in my mind went into reverse after the first day without input, and began to pull things from memory that I had not thought of in years.

And the story begins when someone remembers your words because they know you will too…

We see war coming from far away. Genocide comes out of hiding nearby, as near as the next street and the next day.

…dolphins are said to have names. Though whether it’s a name (a whistle that other dolphins use to address a given individual) or a personal theme tune (something the animal whistles to announce itself) is not clear. Says Olivia Judson in the New York Times today. Names like “Joe” and “Sue” she means, not names [...]

A story of you, it goes without saying.

Aren’t the two parents candidates for heading the family and caring for the children, with campaign managers, plans, promises, and position papers?

The resumes accumulate like snowfall, inches per hour.

Too obvious to mention, maybe… But then so is the air we breathe… You can’t sell to someone who has no money. Say a business lives by selling a solution to a problem.  Any problem, big or small, short or long, imagined or not… What one problem can you not sell a solution to?  The [...]

Why we like soccer.  Or basketball.  Or tennis.  Or [insert your own favorite here]. And why we look down on people who like soccer, or basketball, or tennis, or your favorite. When we lose at soccer, we lose because we are not so good at soccer (unless maybe we lack the fighting spirit inside, as [...]

Any talk of typhoid itself would be difficult and unproductive here, a last recourse if all else failed.

I was sending my Google calendar to my new Android phone and the events arrived but the tasks didn’t.  So, I thought, I need something for tasks. What exactly is that?  How is a task different from an event? Well, an event happens with or without you (the Yankees game today).  A task won’t (Fix [...]

And because we are song, you and me both, you know just what comes next:

Take away improvement and self, and what’s left of self-improvement?

A friend urgently needs business advice.  I don’t know what to tell her. She’s a talented graphic artist with a great new idea.  She takes a picture of you and shows you, ten minutes later, just how you will look in five years. It’s astonishing.  People are just stunned.   I was.  I could only [...]

Slate has an article on Famous Movie Scenes of Women Giving Birth. The short version, if you’re pressed for time: Movies change, birth does not. The comments from readers are interesting.  As Taleb (The Black Swan) might say, they make everything mean too much.  For example: The thing I find astonishing is that the author [...]

How often have we complained that TV news, all news, prefers the story it can point a camera at? An old warehouse burns down in the night. Great footage! The cameramen love the haze in the air and the shine of oily water on pavement. They throw light so wildly against the black of night, [...]

An update to The Web Trap, a popular article here for many months: T’aint so. David Brooks in the New York Times: [Cass] Sunstein’s fear was that the Internet might lead to a more ghettoized, polarized and insular electorate. Those fears were supported by some other studies, and they certainly matched my own experience. Every [...]

There are no accidents. There are no accidents?  What would Taleb (The Black Swan) say to this?  My guess:  Chase down your own failings with that view, but not the success of others. TANA, let us call her.  There Are No Accidents.  Ask Tana about your failings.  Don’t ask her about the success of others. [...]

If  T-Shirts are to believed, Jung said Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. In the absence of the original German, may I suggest: What irritates me in others is not in them but in me, and opens a way into me, where I can find what is [...]

An aunt of mine (and one of her three daughters) could carry a grudge across decades, like Lawrence and his camels, crossing the anvil of the Nefud to Aqaba.  If you did not make the crossing with her, carry the grudge, fall upon the sleepers in a fury and slay them, then she had a [...]

This could be a tough sell. Whatever you’re selling, winners are easier to sell. Winners expect they can make your proposal a winner no matter what, if it comes to that. They probably can. They have a history of that.

When I was eight my father brought home a movie.  My sister and I flattened ourselves against the nearest wall as he came through the house carrying a stack of metals cans, four or five cans shaped like dinner plates but larger, a feast for giants.  Then he wrestled a heavy projector through the halls.  [...]

That was one of Oglivy’s great innovations in advertising, the editorial ad, with lots of words and facts, like a report.

An easy one first. Freakonomics goes round and round with the question When Are High Wine Prices Justified? Do wine prices rise because of production costs?  Because the cost of making the wine rises?  In pricing them (to sell or to buy) do we start with their cost of production and mark them up? I [...]

Where you find hate, find love, as fire before smoke, or light before shadow. Where could Hate stage a pageant, if the sun had not chosen Something in place of Nothing?  Not for any good reason, either, when there was Nothing.  Just for Something. How could Hate light its pageant if the sun had not [...]