The Amateur - Edward Kline

In 2012, Edward Klein wrote a book describing the Obama White House.  The book's intent was to persuade the public that Barak Obama did not approach the job of President in a professional manner.  The author highlights problems with the administrations handling of US Jewish relations, the Fast and Furious gun scandal and the Solyndra Solar company (Washington Post) loans.

Vallerie Jarret comes out looking the worst in this authors account.  She acts as a gatekeeper to the President and limits the range of views that he receives from other people.  Her advice is often wrong.  She suggested that Obama visit Solyndra against the advice of the President's economic advisors as they correctly determined that the company did not appear to have the ability to repay their loan.  She and Rahm Emmanuel reportedly did not get along.  Rahm is described as a profane but pragmatic political advisor fitting in better with the Clinton Administration.

Michelle Obama is portrayed as a style conscious materialist person who pushes Obama to be successful. Her marriage to Barak has had its rocky points in the past and she keeps close tabs on Barak making sure he does not stray like JFK. She appears to have a tin ear with respect to public opinion when it comes to choosing to indulge in expensive vacation trips to Spain while the economy is in recession. She also has expensive and specific tastes in jewelry.  According to the author she returned a $5000 piece of jewelry given to her as a birthday present by her husband for jewelry costing over $10,000.  She also worked with Vallerie Jarret for the University of Chicago Hospital on a patient dumping scheme.

The book describes a falling out between Carolyn Kennedy and Barak Obama.  It also notes a falling out between Oprah and Barak Obama.  They have apparently patched things up as witnessed by events after the book was published - Carolyn's appointment as Japanese ambassador and Michelle's vacation at Oprah's Hawaiian estate.

The author talks to people that Obama has forgotten on the way to the top and faults him for not expressing gratitude or giving credit to them for his success.  Jessie Jackson was very helpful to him letting him speak frequently at his Rainbow Push gatherings.  This helped Mr. Obama to develop his skills as an orator. 

The President's cabinet meetings are described as more of a one way conversation with the president giving a lecture and little give an take.  Mr. Obama is presented as a confident, even tempered man who knows himself very well but does not have the same curiosity about the world as say Teddy Roosevelt. In the author's opinion Mr. Obama's governing style is most similar to Woodrow Wilson.

The foreign policy appears to be shaped by a focus on preventing genocide.  In practice, this is a bit difficult to implement because one group will always end up on the losing end of a conflict. 

In the end, people seem to approach life in one of two ways according to Bob Merritt in his book, When Life's Not Working.  It's either easy hard or hard easy.  Barak Obama worked very hard to develop his speaking style with considerable success.  He appears to have put less effort into the mechanics of governing as evidenced by the rocky roll out of the Affordable Care Act.

The Billings Gazette now (7/3/2014) has retracted their 2008 endorsement of Mr. Obama.  In the newspaper opinion piece they refer to Mr. Obama as "another in a line of presidents long on rhetoric and hopelessly short on action."

In conclusion: the book was a bit too partisan for me although it did offer helpful information about President Obama's approach to governing..

  Edward Klein 2012 13 minutes

It's Good to be the King (Mel Brooks biography) by James Robert Parish

 

I've admired Mel Brook's approach to comedy for many years.  James Robert Parish provides a thoroughly researched biography describing the roots of Mel's comic gifts and his long career starting as a Catskill's comic through his work as a successful film director and Broadway producer.

 

Although not mentioned by the author, Mel's approach to life appears to be "Ready Go Set"  The same approach employed by Katie Goodman in her book Improvisation for the Spirit.  Mel directed the movie the Producers although he had never done it before and he learned it on the job.  He was thrust in the role of Catskill comic when the regular comedian was not able to perform.  He failed on many attempts to write scripts for earlier Broadway productions.  This helped him learn that he needed to find a partner.

 

Mel works best as part of a team.  As evidenced by partnerships with Carl Reiner - The 2000 Year Old Man, Buck Henry on Get Smart, with Gene Wilder on Young Frankenstein, Thomas Meehan on the Broadway production of The Producers.  On his own he lacks the organizational skill to crank out the material on a regular basis.  He only wrote for three episodes of Get Smart after the pilot.  His fertile mind comes up with a large number of comedic ideas during script development.  Many of them don't work out but a few are inspired bits of genius.  His persistent efforts to secure work as a writer on the Show of Shows with Cyd Ceasar illustrate his grit. He was not able to deal with the worry that as he was paid more for his work that he would be exposed as someone who didn't deserve this success. 

 

His marriage to Anne Bancroft, the second for both of them was a very good fit even though at first glance the tall elegant Catholic woman contrasts sharply with Mel Brooks short stature and Jewish background. It was love at first sight for Mel who was relentless in his pursuit of Anne.  At the time he met her he was close to being broke and was not able to spend money taking her to expensive restaurants.  Ann appreciated Mel's sense of humor and grew to love him.

 

The Critic - Oscar winning short with Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks on Conan - Blazing Saddles Commentary

 

What's So Funny (My Hilarous Life) by Tim Conway

Tim Conway and Jane Scovell provide a generally warm hearted look at the life of Tim Conway from his beginning as Tom Conway through his life on television, video and touring the country with Harvey Korman.

He has great affection for costars Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman and Don Knotts.  He noted that when you work on a Disney film you get to meet your fellow actors and that usually includes an animal costar. 

Tim explains how he came up with the Dorf concept.  His best experience was spending a day shooting scenes with golf legend Sam Snead.  He kept failing to make a trick shot and Sam was able to do it in one take.

Tim had great respect for Earnest Borgnine.  Earnest was making a significant amount of money on McHale's Navy but was upset his costars weren't given proper respect on the set.  Joe Flynn and Tim Conway got along great on the set and even worked briefly together on the short lived Tim Conway show.

Tim Conway on McHale's Navy 4 min.

 Tim Conway Show 1970





Imagine by Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer offers an epidemiologist view of creativity starting from the neurons in the brain and ending with strong praise for the creativity produced from high density interactions with a wide variety of people and places.  He credits the compulsory military service of the Israeli army with the recent high tech boom in that country.  The high density of the population in the country provides for the rapid exchange of ideas.  The mixing in the military allows for collaboration between people of different backgrounds. This can be achieved at an office by having single central locations for restrooms and cafeterias.

The central theme of the book is that creativity is hard work.  It requires different parts of the brain for different segments of the creative process.   We need to hit the wall and experience the frustration of a seemly unsolvable problem.  At this point we can back off and let the right hemisphere do its work. The right hemisphere provides the flash of incite when we are calm relaxed almost day dreaming.  The left hemisphere and portions of the prefrontal cortex are needed to provide the critique and the grit needed to perfect and complete the creation.

He offers a well referenced criticism of the inadequacies of brainstorming.  People's brains shut down when they can not criticize or evaluate the contribution of another person.  The process works much better if each individual person contributes separately and others critique the idea often producing a "yes and" solution found in the discipline of improv comedy.  We recently used this tactic when doing a job hazard analysis for cooling tower workers at the U of MN.  Each person  at the table contributed one idea and people were encouraged to discuss and build off of the contribution. This process is used by Pixar animation when they review the previous day's work.

Successful projects work best when there is some degree of familiarity between the people on the project and there are a few new contributors brought into keep the collaboration fresh.  He illustrates this with an extensive analysis of successful vs. unsuccessful Broadway productions.  I've found this works by having different age  groups and people with different levels of experience working on a problem. 

Jonah mentions InnoCentive as an excellent website that rewards creative problem solvers.  Most creative solutions arrive from people working at the edge of their expertise.  The individuals know enough about the problem to be able to help but aren't locked into the orthodoxy of the discipline which prevents them from coming up with a creative solution.

Designing cities, workplaces, immigration policies and research grants with the expressed purpose of maximizing creativity is part of the designing an environment where creativity flourishes.  He advocates developing a support structure for creativity similar to the support structure for athletics in the United States.  He advocates HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute)  grants over NIH grants because they produce more fundamental breakthroughs.  The HHMI grants also produce more failures and we need to accept that risk.

Creation is maximized when there if a free flow and mixing of ideas.  Non-compete clauses in corporations kill innovation and allow the corporations engaging in it to become insular and die slow deaths.  He compares the closed East Coast corporate culture of Wang Computers and similar companies to the more open corporate cultures of Silicon Valley California. 

Summary of the book from Collectivenext -  http://collectivenext.com/blog/transcribe-live-lab-1

How Creativity Works -Jonah Leher -1 min.

Teach Like a Pirate - David Burgess

David Burgess offers Teach Like a Pirate to educators wanting to up their game and make attending class a memorable experience.  He encourages experimentation and a willingness to fail in an attempt to make class entertaining and informative. 

He rejects the notion that classes have to be rigorous in the strict definition of the term.  These classes make learning hard, inflexible and painful.  He prefers offering challenging learning experiences that engage students.  He does not  sacrifice content for entertainment but encourages educators to go for it and make their classes memorable and unforgettable.

This took me back to an experience in practical math during a high school vocational agricultural class.  Our teacher Mr. Larson asked us to measure the height of a light pole in the parking lot.  The seniors measured it by climbing up the pole.  He asked us if there was a different way.  I asked him if the sun was shining.  He said it was.  We measured the length of a the poles shadow and the length of the shadow of a shorter object of known length and used it to calculate the height of the pole.  It helps negate the effect of situational dependent learning and allowed us to take mathematics into the real world. 

I recently worked with our local 6th graders at JA BizTown.  Each of the students in the class had to do various tasks in the  town from running a corporation, a rental agency, a bank, a newspaper or radio station.  Each company needed to make a profit, pay taxes, do billing, collect payments and budget for expenses.  I was impressed with several of the students ability to pick up the skills, following up on unpaid bills and cleaning up the balance sheet.

40 minute discussion with the author

Roughing It - Mark Twain

Mark Twain's Roughing It read by Grover Gardner offers up Mark Twain's observations of the American West during the 1860's.  I highly recommend the audio version of this book as a few of the passages are full of archaic slang.  Reading the text silently does not provide as rich an experience as listening to entertaining work of Grover Gardner.

Mark Twain deftly illustrates the development of slang in the mining community made up of people from around the world. A miner makes a simple slang filled request for a local parson to conduct a funeral for a friend. The two of them enter into a mighty struggle in an attempt to comprehend what the other person is saying. The parson in particular grasping, dodging and weaving through the slang filled thicket of words attempting to understand the miner. The miner in turn can not comprehend the parson's studied choice of words. The parson searches for a way to offer words the miner can comprehend.

At the beginning of the book a young Mark Twain sets out to the Carson City Nevada on a stage coach from Missouri. He provides a great description of ride, the passengers and the employees of the stage company. The mail bags on the coach provided make shift beds for passengers on the coach.  Twain does not shy away from describing the brutal violence of the west and young readers may wish to bypass these sections.

While they stay over for several nights in Salt Lake City, Mark describes the Mormon Culture and offers a less than flattering critique of the Book of Mormon. He equates reading the text to taking a dose of chloroform. He also offers a second hand account of a discussion with Brigham Young on the downside of polygamy. In particular, he lays out the hazards of a guest giving only one child a penny whistle. The multiple wives request equal treatment of their offspring and the misery ends only when the newness of the musical instrument has worn off for the more than 60 children. 

Twain's less than successful attempts at being a silver/gold prospector are laid out in detail. He also works briefly in a gold and silver ore processing plant. Mark lasted a week but accurately described the use of mercury to extract the gold and silver metals out of the raw ore. The mercury was saved by heating, vaporizing and then condensing the metal for reuse.

He also ventures over to San Francisco and offers an eyewitness account of the great earthquake of 1865. 

His trip to the Sandwich Islands (modern day Oahu, Hawaii) as a news reporter provides a look at the Islands in the 1860's.  He describes the island being overrun by cats of all kinds.  This matches my observations over a hundred years later on my two trips to the islands.  He also describes walking on trails and noting a vast graveyard of human bones with no certain description of how they got there.  He describes the Saturday festivals where native men and women would ride horses down the street dressed in festive attire.  At the time of his arrival the government was clamping down on this practice along with restrictions on hula dancing.

This is a great piece of writing providing a glimpse into the origin of Twain's growth as an author with his excellent historical description of the American West.  I found it entertaining and informative.

Google Earth Tour of the book - 52 minutes

Part one of the full audio book  8 hours and 14 minutes

Part two of the full audio book 8 hours and 50 minutes

Extraordinary Ordinary People - Condolezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice's Extraordinary Ordinary People provides a view inside the life of the former Secretary of State's parents and the journey they took together.  Condoleezza was the daughter of a Presbyterian Minister and a school teacher. She spent her early childhood in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.  She was taught by her school teachers that they had to be twice as good as the next person to get ahead.  Her parents solid middle class values viewed education as the pathway to success and invested considerable resources in to assure their daughter's success.

There were problems with the Klan in Alabama and her father would take his turn with the shotgun on the porch as part of the neighborhood watch program as the police department were either part of the Klan or would not respond to acts of violence in their neighborhood.  This influenced her perception of gun rights as the government was not there to protect her family from armed members of the Klan.

She describes the subtle class distinctions made between dark skinned and fair skinned black people in the south.  Her fair skinned mother was only asked to name the first President of the United States when registering to vote.  Her darker skinned father was asked to give the exact number of marbles in a jar.  The father later was told of the lone Republican registrar who would take anyone as they were trying to increase the number of registered voters.  That event cemented his party affiliation along with his daughters. 

The family left Alabama a year after the church bombings that killed one of Condoleezza's friends at a church not far from her father's.  She also describes the difficulty for a black family to travel in the south as they could not stay in hotels or find a place to eat when travelling so they had to get a very early start in the morning and pack their own food. 

Her parents pushed her along in school and by the time she entered college at Colorado State she had moved up two grades.  Her parents supported her love of piano and figure skating.  She dated Rick Upchurch, the U of Minnesota receiver for the Denver Broncos and became a member of the football wives/girlfriends club of the Denver Broncos.  She shared a passion for professional football with her father.  I am sure she would jump at the chance to become NFL commissioner.

She also describes her time at the NSC during the first Bush administration, her time as provost at Stanford and the time she spent campaigning for George W. Bush in 2000.  Her background in Russian studies was put to good use as the administration worked to handle the collapse of the Soviet Union.  She was a strong administrator at Stanford helping cleaning up a fiscal mess because of Stanford's higher overhead cost for government grants. 

The health problems of her parents and her own health scares are described in detail.  The book's final chapter deals with events leading to her father's death on Christmas Eve of 2000. 

 

Brief section of her book read by the author - 7 minutes

 

Discussion about her book - 54 minutes