Links for 2011-01-28

“So, is Sport Science good for science? Is it even science? What about MythBusters? You know it and I know it – I am biased. However, let me pretend that I am not and compare Sport Science and MythBusters in terms of scienceyness.”

“I do encourage you to become a millionaire, if that’s something that interests you. If it’s billions you’re after, I’m a bit suspicious but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Aspiring to trillions, though, is the domain of the wicked alone and we won’t be able to be friends any more.

The big money isn’t in creating products, it’s in creating customers. A single, lifelong customer who lives his life spending the way you want him to is worth six or seven figures. A single one. Creating millions of these is the only way to make trillions.

You can make millions by selling a great product to people who need it, but you make billions and trillions by conditioning an entire nation of people to react to every inconvenience, every whim, and every passing desire or fear by buying something.”

“Upon realizing there was no way we were going to get any kind of consensus — and remembering that Dw. never asked us to rank sketches in the first place — I suggested that those who wanted to participate write a paragraph or two about a favorite sketch (short films and commercial parodies were considered fair game under this umbrella term) and provide a clip from Hulu.com or another online source. That’s when Matt Wardlaw asked if Bruce Springsteen’s appearance as SNL’s musical guest in 1992 counts as a sketch, at which point I pulled out my Matt Wardlaw voodoo doll and went to town.

Without further ado, here are 15 of our favorites, in chronological order, from the past 35 years of NBC’s long-running late-night hit.”

“While most everyone has horror stories about meetings, there also are far too many examples of meetings that, while not awful, are far from effective. One of the reasons for these less-than-stellar experiences is that meetings aren’t often a place where decisions are made effectively – or even made at all.

Meetings, of course, aren’t the only place where decisions can and should be made, but in the context of meetings is one way to talk about how decisions can be made.

That discussion must start with the leader. The leader must consciously (better) or unconsciously (far too often) determine how a decision for any specific situation will be reached.”