Let’s Hear It May 17, 2010March 17, 2017 LET’S HEAR IT FOR LAURA BUSH From the Huffington Post: Former First Lady Laura Bush made a surprising tack away from two of the most definitive social issues of her husband’s presidency this week, telling CNN’s Larry King that she backs gay marriage and abortion rights. . . . ☞ Better late than never. LET’S HEAR THE ORAL ARGUMENTS You may recall that California passed civil marriage equality . . . some 18,000 couples wed . . . the Mormon chuch and the Catholic church and some others stepped in with a ballot initiative – Prop 8 – to make sure same-sex couples couldn’t have equal rights after all . . . and then Prop 8 was challenged in federal district court proceedings that the U.S. Supreme Court (with its six Catholics) ruled could not be televised. Well, now you can see those proceedings anyway. Sort of. Thanks in large part to funding from my old pal and Harvard Business School classmate, Michael Huffington, and the generosity of actors like Josh Lucas and Marisa Tomei, you can watch enactments. Me, I’m going to wait for the movie with Spencer Tracy (as Clarence Darrow), Frederic March (Matthew Harrison Brady) and Gene Kelly (the cynical reporter) – or the modern day equivalent thereof. Remember: we are only talking about civil marriage licenses, Social Security benefits, and the like. Any church that wants to discriminate against gay couples should always have the right to do so. It’s called separation of church and state. MEMORY STACK George Berger: ‘I use flashcarddb.com – very similar to Anki, but a little bit simpler (a little easier to use, but a little less powerful) and online (no need to download and install, available everywhere, but you might not want to save your credit card numbers on there). I’ve been using it to remember past ‘Spanish Word of the Day’ words, but I like Marc’s idea of using it to remember things like phone numbers and spouses’ names (er, colleagues’ spouses’ names). too.’ THE THIRD OF MARC’s 12 MOST USEFUL THINGS Last week, I gave you the first and second (well, Marc gave them to us). And at the end of this series, I’ll give you the link to all 12 of them. But for now . . . 3. Read minds. Read the three books below to learn about body language and you will forever see the world with different eyes (and the world will see you differently, too). It’s amazing how much people reveal, usually inadvertently, through their bodies; you can literally read their minds through their bodies. I’ve also become much more aware of my own body language, and use it to get better at communicating what I want to communicate. Being aware of your own body language also opens up new ways of influencing your own state of mind because it works both ways: what’s in our mind influences your body, and what your body does also influences our mind. Unlock your arms, and become more approachable; smile, and become happier. It works. You Say More Than You Think, by Janine Driver The Definitive Book of Body Language, by Allan and Barbara Pease What Every Body Is Saying, by Joe Navarro BOLD POLICY Chris Anderson: “Obama’s commencement speech as transcribed at the official site, reads: ‘It’s always been a little less gentile during times of great change.’ I assume this is a typo for ‘gentle’ or ‘genteel,’ not that he meant our nation is more Jewish. I note your site has ‘gentle’ and that many sentences are bold or in larger font size – you have to spend a lot of time emphasizing things this way. Is there a method, a key to what each different size/font means vs. another? Or is it just random types of emphasis to make certain phrases and ideas stand out equally?” ☞ Ah, “genteel” – even better! I bold things I hope might give the uber-busy reader the gist – and hook the slightly less busy reader into actually reading the whole thing. In my own case, I find long passages somewhat daunting (I am a slow reader). But if I see some things to hang onto along the way, I am more likely to dive in and start swimming. The variable font size, meanwhile, is just some awful Microsoft glitch. I don’t know what causes it. The html code I use has all excerpts in brown 11-point Verdana. Another mystery: refreshing the screen repeatedly will, in various browsers, change the fonts. Why is that?