kids say the darndest things.

my four-year old cousin, bianca, the future princess of scottsdale, arizona, was inquiring about my mom's bling:

bianca: i like your ring.
mom: oh really?
bianca: can i have it?
mom: well, i'm going to give it to ate tin-tin (that's me) when she gets married.
bianca (to me): oh, that's going to be a long, long time.

ipod vs. zune

i know i'm a little behind, since all the commentary has probably been posted about microsoft coming out with the zune (it launched today, i believe) but it's just now resonating with me because i'm taking a strategy class and i think this is great example of an company that is not being innovative. i mean, okay, yes, its wireless and there's some sort of "social component" because you can share files or whatnot. but honestly, it's really just the ipod with more bells and whistles and not something truly different. and for the same price? and it's bigger and heavier? sounds like a winner to me...

the thing with apple is they've been so good about capturing the low-end market (with the shuffle), the mid-market (with the nano), and the high-end market (with the video ipod). one strategy microsoft could have pursued is to create a market that apple hasn't already tapped into, and capture a share of new users. instead, microsoft has decided to go head to head at the high-end of the market with a company that sells not only a product, but an entertainment package (ipod, itunes, itunes store, podcasts). to be even remotely competitive, zune has to be better than the ipod, and interface just as well with the rest of apple's services. or, microsoft has to provide their own system, which i guess is what their doing. sigh.

i hate to be the one to say it. but it'll be a bust.

a rebuttal.

so a certain someone dampened my spirits a couple of weekends ago when he pronounced: "if it hasn't happened yet, it's probably not going to happen." well, i have a rebuttal for you mister... i was riding home on the train with my friend, jenny, last night, and she told me this true story. it's a story about a 37-year-old woman who proclaimed a few years back that she loved her job, she loved her friends and family, she owned her apartment... and if she just wasn't destined to find a certain someone and be hitched, well, doggoneit... life was still good. why fixate on one thing when everything else is all sorts of wonderful?

then one weekend she has a friend stay over... and that friend brings a guest who is visiting from san francisco. and that guest and her hit it off, but she thinks: "well, he's from cali and i'm in new york... what could ever really come out of this?" he leaves to go back west, then gives her a call that week to tell her that he'd be back in new york that weekend for business... could they get together? well, sure! now, it's three years later and they are married! after one weekend and one fateful plane ride.

here's the clincher: he made the whole business trip up! he just woke up on a wednesday, booked a flight, and flew across the country to go on a date with a woman he just met. friends, romance is not dead...

this story has two morals: the first is that i'm 25 and i shouldn't even begin to despair. i was talking to jenny about being 25, and she, in the wisdom of her years, recalled that 25 was a no man's land. i concur... people at 25 are either already married, engaged, or in a relationship they've been in for years... or they're bruised from their last relationship and they're bitter/healing... or they're enjoying being single and have commitment-phobia. especially in new york, the fountain of youth... where 30-year old men with ph.d's and solid jobs still live with roommates and go to the bar every night of the week. in the world outside of manhattan, these men would be settling down and paying a mortgage.

the second moral of the story: what the hell have i been doing giving men the benefit of the doubt? and meeting them halfway? and taking the initiative? i come up with too many excuses for sorry men: "oh, he's busy/tired/stresssed." or "it's complicated/challenging/blah blah blah." i put myself in men's shoes and think: women are scary... relationships are risky... we just need to get to know each other better. well, i'm telling you now... it's a whole crock o' shite. the bottom line is that there are men out there who will fly across the country to see if something works out. and, i think i'm the kind of woman who is worth the frequent flier miles.

d.o.m.

in the parlance of our times, d.o.m. stands for dirty old man. you know the kind that are on medicare and go after the kind of women who are still on their parents' insurance? ugh. i think i was just the victim of a d.o.w.: a dirty old womanizer... i was out and about, trying to find a place to settle down and read my book "serious play," a riveting piece on using prototypes as a means of strategy development. starbucks in barnes and nobles was packed, so i asked politely to share a table with two older gentlemen. little did i know i would spend the next hour having my hand held by one of them, literally, and end up giving him my number and email address. ugh. i'm too nice.

here's the thing. my heart goes out to older people. they tug at my heart strings. in my mind, i quietly idolize older people for the wisdom and experience, particularly people who are really really old... like, they lived in the days of fdr and wore watch fobs and stuff. i am sucker for an older person who wants to sit down and just have a conversation, because, they must have pretty amazing stories to tell. and i have it on good authority that they probably feel lonely and like no one listens to them anymore. like they've become obsolete. that's a terrible feeling. since i live in the geriatric ward of manhattan, i encounter a lot of older folk and have a lot of great conversations. and, sometimes, if they want to hold my hand, i let them because sometimes its just nice to feel that human connection. maybe i'm too nice and too naive... but i think its safe to assume that i'm not going to worry about safety around an old person.

so old people always say i'm a "dear." and that i'm "nice" and "sweet," which is really because i listen and i'm attentive and laugh at their jokes. i enjoy myself with older people right up until the point when the older person in question starts making comments like: "if you want to go to israel, stick with me, and you'll go." um. it starts to raise serious eyebrows, especially if the d.o.m. is winking at you and talking about being alone. ugh. and if he asks if you're married, the alarm bells go off and the red flags start flying. this is no longer an innocuous conversation. this has crossed the line into disgusting. suddenly i'm looking across the room at the old man with no teeth and wondering why i didn't sit next to him instead. the clincher is when you try to escape, the d.o.m. asks: "how can i connect with you? leave me the answer on a piece of paper." and you do just so you can get out there.

i feel dirty. this is why i don't leave my apartment to study anymore.

the nature of leadership

i thought i might do a little public relations for one of the ph.d. students in my program whose book "the nature of leadership" came out this past week. the study of leadership is one of the hallmarks of the social-organizational psychology program at the teachers college and yaron prywes wrote a book about a particular theory of leadership with none other than b. joseph white, former dean of the michigan business school (i had the great pleasure of lunching with him one afternoon after class). to make the book even more exciting, the foreward is written by c.k. prahalad, author of "the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid." needless to say, the book is really exciting!

yaron and white's theory of leadership is that there are four categories of leadership traits that comprise good leadership. there are foundational traits which all good leadership should have: the desire to be in charge, ability, strength, and character. then there are great leader requirements: innovativeness, risk taking, appetite for talent, helicopter (high-level) view, and the sparkle factor. then, lastly, the crux of the theory is that good leaders balance two different approaches to leadership: the reptilian approach and the mammalian approach, both of which are necessary for being a successful leader. the reptilian side, is disciplined, has good economic sense, financial management, attention to detail, and is cool, detached, analytic--the task oriented side of leaderhsip. the mammalian side is nurturing, has people sense and communication ability, fosters trust, delegates, empowers, is engaged, pays attention to context, and is developmental. in other words... the people oriented side of leadership. rather than be one or the other, yaron and white argue that good leaders incorporate both "cold-blooded" and "warm-blooded" traits, because both are necessary in being effective.

on the book's website, there is actually a self-assessment tool you can take to help you better understand your leadership style and take steps to improve the way you lead.

run, don't walk, to amazon.com and order your copy!

superhero-ing.

i have a new found respect for my brother, mark, who tutors inner-city youth on tuesdays and thursdays in phoenix, az. in fact, i have a great respect for all the superhero tutors, teachers, and educators out there. this was my first week tutoring at 826nyc, the youth literacy center in brooklyn (part of dave eggar's national literacy nonprofit), and, let me tell you, it is not easy nurturing the future of america. mind you, my tutoring is nowhere near as challenging as mark's tutoring... for the most part, my kids have pretty stable backgrounds, conscientious parents, and decent schools. none of them are really troublemakers, and most of them seem pretty engaged in the work that they have to do.

but, it's still hard hard hard work... there's nothing easy about teaching kids. its like holding an egg in your hands... you don't want to hold it too tight and crush it... but you don't to hold it too loosely and drop it. there needs to be boundaries to guide them, but freedom to move as well. its a delicate balance, and i didn't really comprehend how delicate until i spent an afternoon tutoring. you have to frame your questions and your interactions carefully so that you foster a sense of wonder and curiosity, but also acknowledge that, in some cases, there is an answer to arrive at. boy, was i really humbled!

making learning, and homework, fun is the challenge... a lot of time was spent just asking questions. and, if i remember correctly from my converation with mark, that's a big piece of these afterschool tutoring programs, just having a conversation with these kids. one of my kids, fabian, had an essay assignment in which he had to take three statements about his reading style and support each one with three reasons to come up with a paragraph. we talked about his favorite book, socks, by beverly cleary (boy was i so excited that kids still read beverly cleary!) and why he liked it. all the while, through the assignment i just asked him questions. why did you like the friendship between the baby and the cat? what does it remind you of? oh, you have a cat at home? why do you like beverly cleary? when he finished his assignment, he stayed with me an extra few minutes to draw me a picture of a dragon hatching out of an egg... it really is the little things like that that make you all warm and fuzzy inside.

my other kid, whose name escapes me, actually ended up teaching me a few tricks in math. first he taught me about the multiplying 9s. you write the numbers 0 to 9 down in a column, then reverse the column and write 9 to 0 along side to get the numbers for multiples of 9:

09
18
27
36
45
54
63
72
81
90


after that, he taught me about multiplication lattices, which are really, incredibly cool! that one i'll have to show you in person. i could not contain my excitement, and we worked through several multiplication lattices together. and it was completely genuine that he was teaching me, and i was, in fact, learning something from him... which really debunked the idea i had that i would be doing the tutoring. in fact, it reinforced this notion i have of learning being a two-way street, and that people have just as much to gain from tutoring as they have to give. service learning, as it is sometimes called, is really a valuable experiential component of education, and should be instituted far more frequently in far more schools.

it's thumping, that's for sure...

i am far removed from the world of politics these days, but i came down from the ivory tower this week to rejoice the democrats' victories in congress. or rather, to point and laugh at the republican party as they slunk off with their tails between their legs. so much for "political capital," right, dubya? you can't wantonly spend it with impunity. booyakahsa.

seriously, though, i got to watch a little bit of the press conference on wednesday. then i read the transcript in the new york times. which, by the way, is a little too flattering of the president, but i guess when he is all over the place, stuttering and floundering, you gotta transcribe his nonsense in some logical manner. if this was a race won and lost on the issue of integrity, you can see exactly the root of the problem during the q&a session, which should really be called "round and round we go... where we stop... nobody knows..." the problem with bush is that not only is he a liar... he's a bad one at that... really really really bad. he can't keep his stories straight. did you know or not know last week that rummy was going to resign. if you didn't know, why would you speak to his replacement about replacing him? oh, you were just trying to avoid the question and move on to the next? do you do that a lot? are you doing it now? the poor man lacks some sense of chronologic order and logic... i almost feel bad for him. almost.

talk about flip-flopping. if the man can get one thing straight, please please please let it be his policy on the war in iraq. is he staying the course? or is he adjusting? or wait, he's doing both, he just needs to do a better job of explaining it, is all. and as for heeding the voice of the people dubya had this response:

BUSH: I'd like our troops to come home too, but I want them to come home with victory. And that is a country that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.I mean, I can understand Americans saying, Come home. But I don't know if they said: Come home and leave behind an Iraq that could end up being a safe haven for Al Qaida. I don't believe they said that.And so I'm committed to victory. I'm committed to helping this country so that we can come home.

forget the shameless/senseless/immature propaganda and war on terrah campaign which he inserts into any question he doesn't really want to answer. yes, he's right that americans didn't say to leave behind a safe haven for al queda. they also didn't say: "stay the course for this long, protracted, expensive, bullshit war for as long as you damn well please. if it takes 5, 10, 15 years, go ahead." this was the first question out off the bullpen and i was already pissed off. "a safe haven for al queda?" the world is a big place... and with all the money and focus on iraq, i wouldn't be surprised if al queda's safe haven was in the backyard of the white house (that would make a really great political cartoon, no?) so, yes, mr. president, the american people did not, in so many words, ask you to make iraq into al queda's next hideout. but i think they resoundingly said: "you suck. and since we're stuck with you for two more years, we're going to make sure you suck as little as possible."

a preponderance of posting...

coming your way... in the words of gov. howard dean: "booya."