By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 25, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Some guys are into souped up, pimped out cars. Others are into collecting sophisticated or rare guns. Me? I’m into bad a** tooth brushes.
I just picket up a new tooth brush with—get this (forgive me for geeking out)
Sonic technology, slimmer than Sonicare Essence. It creates Sonic vibrations and a dynamic bristle cleaning action that removes more plaque than a regular manual toothbrushes.
Two Brushing Modes and two Oral-B replacement heads (Pulsonic and Precision Tip) meet my unique teeth cleaning needs. And will leave me with a radiant smile.
I asked the store clerk if this was essentially the AK-47 of toothbrushes. She wasn’t sure what I was talking about. But I clarified that I didn’t want to hear about another –even more powerful toothbrush being available—if I bought this. She assured me that would not happen.
I asked her if any of the toothbrushes were Taser-capable.
She again acted confused.
But I think she was secretly very impressed and was merely trying to conceal it.
If I pull up to a Ferrari I’ll look over as if to say to the driver “Nice car” while holding up my toothbrush for the driver to see and reciprocate with a look back of “Nice toothbrush.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 24, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
I heard the most inspirational and insightful quotation the other day and have been trying to recall it specifically. It’s called “Our Deepest Fear” and goes something like this.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate or will fail.
We may fail, we may be inadequate, or even a loser.
But that’s not the important point. Not by a long shot.
Something else–another point that is eluding me at the moment–is an even more important point. And it’s very inspirational too.
Oh yeah, it says we’ll succeed even if we fail.
Why?
Because to simply believe in yourself is …. while not technically “success” per se…. it is something we can all do that is positive and makes success more likely over time.
We should do this daily. And if we want to tell others, that’s probably OK too. But tell ourselves for sure. In the mirror each morning.
Most of all don’t fear failure because….it’s just wrong to. It’s wrong. Don’t even think about it. OK?
It’s not even important to know why you shouldn’t fear failure. Just know that you shouldn’t –and I remember that part of the message in the quote very clearly.
(If you have to know, email me and I’ll try to find out the answer. But for now please just go with it. This is the best I can do and I’m on sort of a roll now…and I do remember the last part verbatim.”
Main point: Don’t fail–or fear failure –because you are really afraid of success. That’s the absolute worst. Just terrible. Don’t do it.
And one last thing: The capacity we have for fearing failure because of fearing success even more—which is really true for a lot of people. really. I’m serious. Well, that fear is a powerful force beyond all measure.
I mean we have the ability to overcome that fear because of a powerful force beyond all measure. That’s inside of us or something.
OK, I didn’t remember the last part verbatim.
But you get the general idea, right?
Isn’t it great? Just what I needed this morning. And if you’ve read this far, probably what you needed too.
Don’t thank me. Just “pay it forward.” Share this with a friend. That’s thanks enough for me.
By Jason Atkinson, on Tue Apr 24, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
Contributing RP Jason Atkinson was recently featured in an article in the Portland Mercury entitled “Bikepartisan Politics.” Enjoy this excerpt:
HERE ARE FIVE simple reasons why Jason Atkinson is more badass than you liberal dweebs: He’s an Oregon state senator. He’s a Republican. He’s a bike racer. He shaves his legs, which shows a profound sense of masculine confidence. And he once got shot by a gun while repairing a friend’s bike (there was a loaded gun in the saddlebag).
Now he’s (tentatively) back on two wheels after that 2008 accident—but even when he’s been kept off the roads, the Southern Oregon legislator has never quailed from a fight for bike rights statewide.
Senator Atkinson jumped into the absurd 2007 debate over requiring extra brakes on fixed gears and, more recently, tried to boost bike funding from its measly one percent of the state transportation budget.
MERCURY: How does bike advocacy jibe with your Republican ideals?
JASON ATKINSON: I fell in love with bicycles when I was a kid, long before I knew what Republicans or Democrats were. I was lucky in that I had a modest amount of talent in racing bikes, which took me all over the world to race. When I got into politics, I didn’t see bikes as a partisan thing at all. I’ve been very supportive of everything from velodromes for economic development to jumping into the middle of the fixie debate a few years ago. I think people don’t really understand what bicycle culture is.
What do your colleagues get wrong about bike culture?
Well, like, when we got around to doing the fixie bill, no one knew what a fixie was. I don’t think a lot of folks have a full grasp of the health benefits of biking. I’m not going to pick on my fellow politicians on either side of the aisle. If you ride a bike, you get it. If you don’t, you usually don’t.
By Krystal Ball, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
There is a caterpillar native to the Americas from the Silkworm moth genus Lonomia.
The caterpillar doesn’t look dangerous, but if you attempt to harm it, it secretes a venomous anticoagulant that causes renal failure, hemorrhaging, and death. Perhaps this is what Reince Priebus meant by the GOP “War on Women” being like a “War on Caterpillars.”
Although any given incremental erosion of women’s reproductive rights from a GOP sponsored bill at the state level seems harmless enough to the future of the GOP, taken in the aggregate they are likely to cause the party severe electoral distress.
Caterpillars aside, the GOP “War on Women” is real and it has real-world consequences for the millions of women whose lives can and will be impacted by legislation that erodes more than a century’s worth of progress on women’s reproductive rights.
There were over 1100 antichoice provisions introduced in 2011 and 900 antichoice provisions introduced so far in 2012. Legislators in 13 states have introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion.
Of these, seven states are pursuing the state-rape vaginal probe variety. In addition, legislators in 13 states have sponsored right-wing “Personhood” type bills, too extreme even for the electorate of Mississippi, that could make both abortion and reproductive choices highly restricted.
Lest we think that the rhetoric around these bills might contain the damage to the GOP’s standing amongst women, please note how Georgia state legislator Rep. Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even inviable fetuses to term and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
Read the rest of… Krystal Ball: The GOP War on Women is Real
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Impenetrable Packaging: There’s got to be a better way.
A few years back the “He Man” serving was all the marketing rage. Restaurants would offer up 20% more food than people could eat and charge 40% more and get away with it because of the “perceived value.”
Today the problem is with packages that cannot be opened by mere mortals. If you are a bodybuilder or keep a chain saw in your car, no need to keep reading. This doesn’t apply to you.
For the rest of us, though, I don’t get this need of putting items we purchase in packages we can’t open.
Is it to create a “perceived value add” bc we have to work so hard to open our new product that we are supposed to feel even more excited than we would have been to start using it?
It can’t be to prevent store theft. If so, only easily lifted store items would be encased in a impenetrable packaging –not everything in retail stores.
Yesterday, after wrestling for nearly 10 minutes with an ear bud package, I finally successfully tore it open. I looked around to see if others were watching. I felt like Arthur successfully withdrawing the embedded Excalibur sword from the giant stone.
I felt I should be knighted or at least applauded.
And I didn’t feel a “value add.”
I did feel several abrasions on my hands and fingers. Which I hope I’m not being charged extra for. And I didn’t bother trying to buy band-aids. That would be another battle to open that package.
By Krystal Ball, on Fri Apr 6, 2012 at 11:30 AM ET
Yesterday, in my appearance on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show, Bashir Live (See Clip below), I lost it a bit over Reince Priebus’ comparison of the War on Women to a War on Caterpillars. In my spluttering rant, I listed evidence of the many ways in which the War on Women is very much real and very much a product of the GOP working with shadow organizations like Americans United for Life (AUL). Below are a SMALL and not nearly comprehensive sample of the provisions being introduced nationwide which are designed to shame women and dictate to them what they can and can’t do. Please email additional examples to me at kmb.uva@gmail.com.
900 anti-choice provisions introduced so far in 2012
War on Planned Parenthood
***Please note that only 97% of what Planned Parenthood does is preventative health care or providing birth control and other contraception which DECREASES the need for abortions. One in five American women have relied on Planned Parenthood for services.
In 2011 – 7 states passed bills defunding or limiting funding to Planned Parenthood (IN, KS, NC, NH, WI, TN, TX)
In 2012 – 8 states are considering legislation to defund or limit funding to Planned Parenthood (AZ, IA, MI, NE, NH, OH, OK, PA)
Congressional Republicans nearly shut down the government last year trying to defund Planned Parenthood
Congressional Republicans launched a bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood last summer based on equally bogus Americans United for Life “research” and gave Susan G. Komen for the Cure an excuse to discontinue their partnership with the organization
In Texas, Governor Perry decided he would rather low-income women go without preventative health care than have them receive it from Planned Parenthood.
Transvaginal Probes
Legislators in 13 stateshave introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion. Of these, 7 states are pursuing the staterape vaginal probe variety.
Insurance Coverage
Legislators in 11 states(AL, IN, KS, MI, NE, OK, OR, SC, TX, UT and WV) have introduced 18 measures that would restrict abortion coverage under all private health insurance plans.
Legislators in 23 states(AL, AR, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MT, NE, NJ, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TX, UT, VA and WV) introduced 49 measures that apply to exchange coverage.
Georgia legislator Rep Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even unviable fetuses to term.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
At the risk of reading tea leaves from two justices, the ever pivotal Anthony Kennedy and the magisterial but cautious John Roberts, the game seems up on the health insurance mandate.
In casual parlance, they seemed to get it—the “it” being that a government with the power to compel a consumer to enter a market is as omnipotent economically as it wants to be. That government is not only theoretically free to pursue a range of things it won’t do, from making Prius purchasing, Iphone carrying, broccoli eaters of all of us—but, as Kennedy especially seemed to intuit, its also capable of doing something more realistic and more substantial, which is collapsing the zone of economic autonomy to almost nothing, in the name of making the economy look the way government thinks it should.
David Brooks, in his latest column in the NY Times, puts the mandate in the familiar context of the Obama Administration’s penchant for centralized bureaucracies, and he is certainly right about that. Given its druthers, and more votes in Congress, the president would have almost certainly followed that trend into a full scale public option that would have arguably refashioned healthcare delivery along the lines of the fraying, cost-exploding model that is Medicare. For good measure, this White House would have done the same with cap-and-trade and the market for carbon emissions, and they have certainly run the same play in the context of the Dodd-Frank reform by carving out an aggressive new regulator for consumer financial products.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Mandate’s Very Bad Day
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Could dentists learn anything from Valvoline?
A lot of people hate going to the dentist, even for just a regular teeth cleaning every six months.
It’s that time again for me this week and although it’s a hassle, it’s important, and I can’t say I dread going–but admit that it could be a more upbeat experience. I think it’s because dentists, as a group, aren’t great sales people. And could learn a thing or two from Valvoline.
I’m also getting my oil changed this week at Valvoline. And what a contrast to my dental visits. I’ve never seen so much enthusiasm and activity over something so trivial.
When you pull into Valvoline for an oil change, you feel like you are about to get some sort of transformative car treatment –possibly one that could improve your overall quality of life.
You feel that somethng important and mysterious is taking place in the bowels of the service station where oil is being changed out for newer, clearner oil. There is clapping and shouting that is part military protocal and part circus troupe act.
I do love the enthusiasm and theatrics. And it’s good sales strategy. But I think Valvoline over does it. And I wish they’d just charge, say, $2 for the show rather than to fold in the performance price by trying to convince me every visit I need a new air filter.
My dentist, by contrast, is an uneventful visit. The dental hygenists don’t clap or bark orders back and forth in rapid fire style. It makes me wonder sometimes if they received as good training as the people at Valvoline. And they don’t create the sense that something urgent and profound is happening to me.
Mostly I just feel like I’m getting my teeth cleaned. And that’s it. And now that I’m adult, I don’t even get a free toothbrush when I leave.
Sometimes I wish my dentist were more of a showman and I felt like getting my teeth cleaned was going to be as memorable and as inspiring an experience as, say, getting an oil change.
And if it were I may not even mind having to buy an unneeded air filter at the end of my appointment
When I was in my early 20s a friend and priest told me that I had a tendancy to over-analyze thing.
