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This is not an argument, it's abuse!

Mr. Creosote: Monty Python clip

Matches I'd rather see replayed: Italy v South Korea WC2002, Milan v Liverpool CL2003, Greece v Germany MP1972.

Marx was right: Socrates was clearly offsides.

When (Rebel) Dinosaurs Rule The Earth

Yes! Finally, someone has the courage to state the obvious– that a massive army of highly intelligent, pan-dimensional dinosaurs is preparing to invade your world through a wormhole about to be opened by the Large Hadron Collider.

As for the Blancmange assimilation timeline fleetingly mentioned in the article, that reality did interphase with your own– four of your Earth decades ago, when it appeared as a comedy sketch in Season 1 Episode 7 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In that timeline, an invasion of gigantic, sentient blancmange custards is thwarted by an unassuming humanoid couple, who turn out to be from the Blancmange homeworld. So that’s all taken care of. Nothing to worry about there.

Now . . . when my thundering legions of pan-dimensional lizardgods burst forth from the icy bowels of the LHC, would you prefer to be addressed as “people of Earth” or “foolish mortals”?

John Cleese vs Extremism

everything I know about birth

I learned from Monty Python.

el fin.

Learning to Love Negotiation - Having Fun with Haggling

I would equate the process of negotiation to that of public speaking: A small percentage of the population appear to both love it and engage successfully in it, while the vast majority fear and avoid it as they would a dangerous psychotic.  My view is that the good negotiation is one of the most misunderstood elements of business and life.  Everyone wants a fair deal.  In Shiller and Akerlof's acclaimed book, "Animal Spirits", they proposed that basic Fairness is actually a foundational element to good markets.  Studies have shown that even monkeys know when they have been treated unfairly.

If this is true, shouldn't negotiating a fair deal come naturally?  Shouldn't we enjoy this process?

Perhaps our idea of negotiation is all screwed up.  Bijan Sabet wrote a great blog post this morning about the fallacy of "winner takes all" thinking.  For whatever reason, I think "winner takes all" has insidiously permeated the paradigm of negotiation.  Getting a fair deal has been replaced with getting a great deal at the expense of the other party.  Of course, the other party is probably thinking the same thing!  No wonder no one is having any fun. 

The International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM) recently released a list of the top 100 companies in negotiating based on a worldwide survey they conducted.  One of the most striking results of the survey, based on an assessment by Procurment Insights, is the observation:

that effective negotiation is not viewed as an adversarial battle of wills where one party triumphs (re get’s their way) over the other in the form of an uneven and non-sustainable contract.

I think the take-away from this study and the message of Shiller & Akerlof is that reputation and fair dealing matters.  It's the long view, Prop Joe knew it, we should know it too.

AccountingWeb recently ran a blog asserting that a full one-third of our time is spent in negotiation.  Debatable, but it raises an important point.  We negotiate all the time without even realizing it.  Waking up to the fact just requires a bit of active thinking.  The article also points out that successful negotiation is about the long term:

Great negotiators are those people that can arrive at fair deals for both parties and when those deals are analyzed five years later, the deal still seems to be fair.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you how to negotiate.  Throw a rock, and you'll probably find someone to do that.  I would just suggest having some fun and thinking about the fair deal.

Enjoy!

Monty Python interview: "And they say comedy is dead" ...

Monty Python gets into it with Jimmy Fallon.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

The naughty bits

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