THEN: Secretary of State (KY), 1996-2004; Candidate for Lieutenant Governor, 2007
NOW: JYB3 Group (Owner) -public affairs consulting firm; Miller Wells law firm (Of counsel)
Full Biography:link
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 30, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Father and teen daughter conversation.
Daughter: Dad, I’m going to visit a friend today I haven’t seen in a year and we are going to lunch and shopping at the mall for the afternoon. Could I please have some money….like….$20?
Father: $20?! For lunch–and some window shopping? Where are you planning on eating? You don’t really need to buy anything at the mall. How about, oh, $5.
Daughter: Dad…
Father: How about this. I’ll make it $10 because I’m an amazing dad. Deal?
Daughter: Make it $20 because I’m an amazing daughter. Deal?
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 29, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
One more reason I love technology.
In the old days when you committed you were going to start a new diet you had to join a gym, buy some new work out clothes, get a heart rate watch, subscribe to an exercise magazine, and perhaps even hire a personal trainer.
Before failing at the diet and exercise plan.
But not anymore!
Thanks to the internet and smartphones, we can save time and money by bragging to our friends—and they pretending to believe us—that we are “committed” to making some major changes in our dietary lifestyle without having to spend hundreds of dollars on all these old school props.
All we have to do is download an “app” for our smartphone called “Lose It”
And then fail at the diet and exercise plan.
Sure, we’re still overweight but look at the time, money and energy we save!
Thanks technology!! You really do deliver! Despite having to put up with us too human humans.
(Caveat: Some people really have succeeded using this app. They must have either really wanted to lose weight or simply lacked the ability to be able to fool themselves.)
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri May 25, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Human motivation and how to understand it.
We all do things or say things that perturb and puzzle others. That don’t make logical sense or seem appropriate for the situation.
Why do we do it? I have a 6- pronged approach to make sense of such situations and would like to share it with you.
1) Ask “What is the pay off for the behavior?” You will often discover there is a history or story behind seemingly silly behavior that helps explain otherwise unusual behavior. Under the right circumstances, many unusual behaviors can still have a “pay off” for people.
2) Dopamine spurt. It’s remarkable how many of our behaviors are unknowingly locked into dopamine “reward system.” Running, sports, anger fits, romance, good grades, and so on–including a number of less savory behaviors are reinforced daily by our desire to get a quick hit of the brain chemical dopamine.
3) Parents. This explanation is a time-honored standby for unpleasant behavior. Tracing it back to some parental deficiency that is still having an awkward impact today. This must be used sparingly to remain credible.
4) Birth order. Sibling birth order can explain some traits and temperaments and has a good deal of solid science to back it up.
5) Philosophical-spiritual. When someone behaves badly simply understand it as the person acting the way he or she needs to at the moment as part of a larger positive process. Statements like “He’s doing the best he can with the tools he has” are often heard to describe this assessment tool.
6) Not caring. This is fast becoming my favorite strategy when trying to understand another person’s inappropriate behavior. It’s more declarative than diagnostic but works very efficiently. When someone behaves badly instead of starting down a long mental path to understand the behavior, stop. Instead, simply say to yourself “That was a really inappropriate behavior and i don’t need to understand why he did that.”
Over time many who use this last technique are able to use the shorthand, “I can’t believe he did that. What an asshole.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 23, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Generational changes, concert-wise.
My first rock concert I was 14 and went to see the band Chicago with my mother and two younger sisters.
It was held at Freedom Hall. We didn’t pose for pictures beforehand. And I wasn’t sure why we even went.
I think my mom wanted to go because she Chicago was her favorite band at the time.
Fast forward 30+ years and my daughter, age 14, is attending her, like, third or fourth concert. At the new Yum Center.
Back when I went to my first concert mention of an “antebellum lady” conjured images of a Southern belle in a hoop dress.
Today talk of Lady Antebellum conjures a very different image. Still a Southern gal but without hoop dresses ….and who is more likely to give the vapors to others than get them herself.
And pictures are taken before the concert. And the 14 year olds don’t go because their parents make them go see the parents favorite group. I think all in all, that’s probably progress. Mostly.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 22, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Life “Superscores.”
With the SAT and ACT, no matter how often you take the tests, colleges only get your “Superscore” (the highest score obtained in each of the individual sections).
I’ve thought about this a lot lately.
Who am I to disagree with professional test writers at the College Board? They are much smarter than I am.
And so….I have decided to apply this Superscore philosophy to every area of my life–both going forward and recalculating old scores.
Suddenly, my life is looking a whole lot better in most every category. Ha!
And to think, the problem was I was simply scoring it wrong.
I can’t wait to explain to my beloved wife, Rebecca, later today that if we take my “high score” in every category over the past 20 years, I’m in, like, the 97th percentile among husbands (not just “satisfactory”).
She is going to be so excited!!! Can’t wait to see the expression on her face!
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon May 21, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
One isn’t the loneliest number that you’ve ever heard, after all. Sometimes it can mean a lot.
On my business page on Facebook which I recently updated…(click here for the page)…it’s off to a slow start and I don’t think there’s much more I can do with it.
Or even want to with it.
It’s one of those things I felt I needed to do because it looks bad if you don’t have one.
But it is depressing when I check it in the morning and it lists the number of “likes” and then always lists “People talking about this” And every morning it says the exact same number of people are talking it: “0.”
As in Zero. Or to translate verbally, nobody.
I understand and didn’t expect anyone to ever talk about it…but does Facebook really need to have than showing on the page? Can they make that optional?
Or better yet, is there a way I can add another “measurement” piece next to it that reads “Number of people thinking about this.” And have the number 1 next to that one.
I mean, heck, if I’m checking to make sure no one is talking about it, I should at least get credit for me “thinking” about the business. Right?
Last night, at the annual GOP Lincoln Day statewide dinner, Agriculture Commissioner James Comer — a rising star himself — welcomed Brown to the party from the dais, sparking a long and warm ovation.
And Sunday morning, Johnny appeared in the pages of the Courier Journal (Louisville) with the King himself — the longtime leader of Kentucky Republicans, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell.
Johnny’s father — and forgive us, we have already forgotten his name — was said to be kvelling, although he wasn’t sure what the Yiddish term meant.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri May 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
When I have dead time I sometimes bide time trying to figure out what acronyms stand for.
Today I decided to tackle MENSA, the high IQ society. After being unable to think of any series of words starting with M E N S and A that signified high intelligence, I finally conceded and looked it up.
It’s not even an acronym. It’s Latin for “table” or “round table.”
I figure Latin for “round table” for a group name must be something really smart and deliberately obscure. Or the founders of MENSA got really drunk the night they voted on a group name–and are too proud to admit it and change to a more fitting name.
I mean, come on folks! Do you really think only 2% of the population can qualify for a group about a furniture shape?
I have a better idea.
I am hereby creating an even more exclusive organization and calling it BAR MENSA.
That is English acronym and Latin for Bigger and Rounder MENSA (or “round table”).
We only accept applicants who believe they are in the top 1.9% of something—but that the right test to measure that ability hasn’t been devised yet. And people who have already actually qualified to be in the tip 2% of something by an actual test that already exists (MENSA members) are ineligible to join.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu May 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The mathematics of dieting (or the value of a rationalizing mind)
Apparently–and this is important if you didn’t learn this in school–addition and subtraction; multiplication and division all can have nuanced exceptions apply to their normal functions when calculating caloric intake.
For example, let’s say you buy a pastry at Starbucks that you know has 400 calories.
For dieting purposes that is potentially 300 calories you will need to record for yourself if you eat the entire pastry (because you aren’t really exactly sure it’s 400 calories and it’s a smaller than usual looking pastry–and you are just trying to be honest with yourself).
However, if you only eat half the pasty, that only counts as about 100 calories (not the usual 150 or even 200 you might assume would apply using “regular non-dieting math.”
Why?
You look at the pastry and feel you ate the “smaller half.”
But, if you come back to the pastry and decide to eat 3/4ths of it (and not just 1/2), you must add another 10 calories (because the math has gotten so complicated and hard to remember that it’s OK to use shorthand at this point). So, you eat another 1/4 of the pastry and duly note the additional 10 calories. (The fact that it is 1/4th of the “bigger half” isn’t necessary to factor in at this point because you really forgot about this small fact anyway.)
And if you decide a few minutes later, “Screw it , I’m eating the whole thing” and pop the last tiny morsel in your mouth (or final 1/4 of the pastry), you will have to make yet another adjustment. Since you will recall that you just added 10 calories from eating an additional quarter of the pastry a few minutes earlier–and since you have to remain mathematically consistent— you must add another 10 calories for the final quarter of the pastry.
At this point, all you can remember is that you just added 10 calories for eating the final quarter (1/4) of the punier than usual pastry–and can’t recall what the old total calories calculation was to add to.
But that’s the beauty of math. You don’t have to remember. There’s a shortcut. If you know that one quarter (1/4th) of the pastry is 10 calories, you can be sure that the entire pastry (4/4ths) is exactly 4 times that number–or 40 calories.
So, write down 40 calories for eating that entire Starbucks pastry that was really 400 calories.
This is why so many people fail at their diets.
It not only takes willpower to succeed dieting. But you have to be really good at math, too.
Father and teen daughter conversation.
Follow John Y: