The most famous Biblical line from the story of the Exodus is God saying, "Let my people go." It is regularly recounted as a statement about freedom. However, a closer inspection showed me that it's not about freedom at all.
In Hebrew, the phrase is: "shalach et ami vaya-avduni." The translation of "shalach et ami" could be rendered "let my people go," but the sentence is not complete. In all eight instances (with minor variations), the rest of the sentence is "vaya-avduni" which may be rendered as "to serve me."
Implicit in this sentence is the concept that God is not moving the Jews towards freedom (at least in its conventional sense), but is moving them towards a closer relationship with Him. This is consistent with the spirituality of twelve-step programs where freedom from the slavery of addiction is conditioned on moving to a God-centered rather than to a self-centered life.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Baumeister Study in Self-Control
Ever since a close friend told me, "the key is not will power, but surrender," I have pondered this counterintuitive wisdom. When moving through challenges, I have found his advice works and have wondered why. I came across some research that helps explain it.
Baumeister created an experiment to analyze self-control. Participants avoided eating for three hours before the experiment and when they arrived they were put into one of three groups.
The first group was taken into a room where chocolate chip cookies had recently been baked. This room also contained two trays: one laid out with the freshly baked cookies and other chocolate delights, and another full of radishes. This group was told they could eat as many radishes as they wanted in the next five minutes, but they weren't allowed to touch the chocolates or cookies. A second group was taken to a similar room with the same two trays, but told they could eat the cookies and/or the radishes. The third group was taken to an empty room.
The food was then removed and the individuals were given problems to solve. These problems took the form of tracing geometric shapes without re-tracing lines or lifting the pen from the paper. The problems were, sadly, unsolvable. However, the amount of time before participants gave up and the number of attempts made before they gave up were both recorded.
The results were dramatic. The group which could only eat the radishes (and had expended self control in resisting the cookies) gave up in less than half the time than the other two groups. (The no food at all group had the most long-lived persistence.) The first group also made half as many attempts at solving the problems as the other two groups before giving up. (The chocolate eaters were the group with the highest level of attempts.)
From this study, it appears that actively exercising will power is a depleting process. By surrendering and taking a decision out of the "will power" or self-control zone, it appears that more energy is retained for other decisions.
Baumeister created an experiment to analyze self-control. Participants avoided eating for three hours before the experiment and when they arrived they were put into one of three groups.
The first group was taken into a room where chocolate chip cookies had recently been baked. This room also contained two trays: one laid out with the freshly baked cookies and other chocolate delights, and another full of radishes. This group was told they could eat as many radishes as they wanted in the next five minutes, but they weren't allowed to touch the chocolates or cookies. A second group was taken to a similar room with the same two trays, but told they could eat the cookies and/or the radishes. The third group was taken to an empty room.
The food was then removed and the individuals were given problems to solve. These problems took the form of tracing geometric shapes without re-tracing lines or lifting the pen from the paper. The problems were, sadly, unsolvable. However, the amount of time before participants gave up and the number of attempts made before they gave up were both recorded.
The results were dramatic. The group which could only eat the radishes (and had expended self control in resisting the cookies) gave up in less than half the time than the other two groups. (The no food at all group had the most long-lived persistence.) The first group also made half as many attempts at solving the problems as the other two groups before giving up. (The chocolate eaters were the group with the highest level of attempts.)
From this study, it appears that actively exercising will power is a depleting process. By surrendering and taking a decision out of the "will power" or self-control zone, it appears that more energy is retained for other decisions.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Media Disintermediation
Warren Buffett has long held media properties as part of that profitable "food chain" called branding. To be profitable, investments must slow the process of competing to zero profits that occurs with commodities. Brands help. Brands can encourage consumers to "pay up." But to create brands, media properties are necessary.
But media properties have been having investment problems of the same type. As I have blogged recently, newspapers, (as well as radios and televisions) are part of a disintermediation process driven by the Internet. As a result, media properties are losing their "tollway" characteristics. But a friend of mine argued that the "tollway" still exists because people need to trust their news source.
However, disintermediation is addressing the issue of trust in a novel way. Unlike the historical use of a gatekeeping media property separating companies from consumers, the Internet now allows direct linkage of company and conumer: whether through company website, or pdf file, or search engine or RSS feed. If interpretations are important, blogs can provide significant online and on-time commentary.
This thesis, persuasively made by David Meerman Scott in a complimentary ebook called "The new rules of PR," (and available at his excellent web log www.webinknow), appears financially confirmed: Buffett has purchased the company Business Wire for an estimated (by me) $500 million. Media disintermediation is at the core of Business Wire's growth. Formerly, Business Wire helped businesses disseminate information to the old "tollways" of the media world. Now, Business Wire helps businesses manage press releases in order to grow customer reach and direct branding. Further, new legal requirements for accuracy and timeliness on business releases help all involved. Business Wire gets more business because of heavier requirements and the businesses have releases which are considered more trustworthy - addressing some of my friends concerns.
As a financial aside, Business Wire appears to be already highly profitable. Business Wire charges $225 for each release. The top line of Business Wire is $125 million (yes, over a 1,000 releases per day!). The margins appear high, as the releases are already written. Business Wire has had a bottom line strong enough to allow former owner Lorry I. Lokey to donate $160 million over the past 10 years (mostly to schools: his alma mater Stanford and Leo Baeck Academy, a school in Haifa, Israel). At a contribution rate averaging $16 million per year, the business probably threw off at least $32 million of after-tax profit (most people don't donate over 50% of their income for tax reasons), leaving a pre-tax operating margin of nearly 50%. For financial types, I would estimate that Buffett paid about 8-9 times operating profit and comment that their largest competitor is London-based PR Newswire, a subsidiary of United Business Media, PLC.
But media properties have been having investment problems of the same type. As I have blogged recently, newspapers, (as well as radios and televisions) are part of a disintermediation process driven by the Internet. As a result, media properties are losing their "tollway" characteristics. But a friend of mine argued that the "tollway" still exists because people need to trust their news source.
However, disintermediation is addressing the issue of trust in a novel way. Unlike the historical use of a gatekeeping media property separating companies from consumers, the Internet now allows direct linkage of company and conumer: whether through company website, or pdf file, or search engine or RSS feed. If interpretations are important, blogs can provide significant online and on-time commentary.
This thesis, persuasively made by David Meerman Scott in a complimentary ebook called "The new rules of PR," (and available at his excellent web log www.webinknow), appears financially confirmed: Buffett has purchased the company Business Wire for an estimated (by me) $500 million. Media disintermediation is at the core of Business Wire's growth. Formerly, Business Wire helped businesses disseminate information to the old "tollways" of the media world. Now, Business Wire helps businesses manage press releases in order to grow customer reach and direct branding. Further, new legal requirements for accuracy and timeliness on business releases help all involved. Business Wire gets more business because of heavier requirements and the businesses have releases which are considered more trustworthy - addressing some of my friends concerns.
As a financial aside, Business Wire appears to be already highly profitable. Business Wire charges $225 for each release. The top line of Business Wire is $125 million (yes, over a 1,000 releases per day!). The margins appear high, as the releases are already written. Business Wire has had a bottom line strong enough to allow former owner Lorry I. Lokey to donate $160 million over the past 10 years (mostly to schools: his alma mater Stanford and Leo Baeck Academy, a school in Haifa, Israel). At a contribution rate averaging $16 million per year, the business probably threw off at least $32 million of after-tax profit (most people don't donate over 50% of their income for tax reasons), leaving a pre-tax operating margin of nearly 50%. For financial types, I would estimate that Buffett paid about 8-9 times operating profit and comment that their largest competitor is London-based PR Newswire, a subsidiary of United Business Media, PLC.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
T-shirt Spotted
I did some research today at the University of Texas at Dallas. I had been hearing what a "geek" school it was. I saw a t-shirt that confirmed it. It read: "There are only 10 types of people: those who understand binary and those who don't."
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