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Outnumbered: Incredible Stories of History’s Most Surprising Battlefield Upsets is awesomely illustrated with photographs, drawings, colorful maps, and reproductions of famous paintings (often highly romanticized) depicting fateful battles.

Love this passage from the author Cormac O’Brien:

“Those Frenchmen may well have smelled the English coming long before they saw them. Even as they were wracked by dysentery and deprived of proper food, Henry’s men had been ordered to remain in a state of readiness on the march for fear of imminent battle. This meant that men-at-arms accustomed to riding with their kit in tow now rode fully armored in the saddle for days – weeks – at a stretch, trapping their suffering bodies in a kind of prison. Under the rain, corrosion began to appear where normal care had become impossible, allowing rusty water to creep into clothes and over flesh that had grown mephitic from neglect. The stench must have been insufferable.”

I highly recommend the book and it’s well worth picking up and reading from cover to cover.

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Just read this book by Robert Jordan called How They Did It:




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War is hell and so was getting this interview with General George S. Patton. I’ve wanted to sit down with one of the most brilliant generals the world has created for a while now…

Scott: First, General Patton thank you for allowing me this interview. You are arguably one the greatest generals of the last 100 years–but beyond that you are also one of the most successful leaders of the last 100 years. There is tons of talk these days of creating movements, of leading people, and making this a better place. What is your thoughts on this?

Patton:  A man must know his destiny. if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder. if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.

Me: Wow… so how does one find his destiny?

Patton:  Live for something rather than die for nothing… By perseverance, study, and eternal desire, any man can become great. You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

Me: I see that, many times it is the ones around us that inject fear and insecurity, how does one overcome the fears to go out there and make it happen?

Patton:  The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

Me: But many don’t take that first step… almost as if they are locked in fear.

Patton: Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Me: You were a great tactician any advice on tactics and planning?

Patton: Make your plans to fit the circumstances. Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

Me: I see…

Patton: A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. In case of doubt, attack.

Me: Okay. On leadership, you were a tremendous leader, do you have any leadership advice?

Patton: No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Me: Okay calm down… so to lead you have to step out from the office, from behind the computer screen…

Patton: Do everything you ask of those you command. Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

Me: When you think of success what are a couple key elements to attaining ones goals?

Patton: The test of success is not what you do when you’re on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Me: You had an uncanny ability to turn a dire situation into a victory. When it comes to preserving what is the key?

Patton: Pressure makes diamonds. If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do… the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. You’re never beaten until you admit it– Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

Me: Great advice, do you have any closing thoughts?

Patton: If a man does his best, what else is there?

*all quotes are sources to Patton and might be combined.

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Sir Winston Churchill

By the power of the new Google Phone and some advance features and scheduling using Tungle.me I’ve sat down with Winston Churchill to discuss his thoughts on new media…

Me:  First, I’d like to say it was great for you to give me the opportunity to sit down with you today, how have things been of late?

W. Churchill: Strolling, painting, and glad to see Operation Unthinkable was not required.

Me: Ah yes, the Russia collapsed sort of on its own… I’m glad to see you are following current events. My first question is about personal branding, is the concept of personal branding something you suggest someone should focus on?

Churchill: No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye. The first quality that is needed is audacity.

Me: That makes sense… but one thing I hear time and time again is that people are concerned at putting themselves out there… standing for something, what are your thoughts on this?

Churchill: You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

ME: What advice do you have for someone that screws up or has a PR flap they have to deal with?

Churchill:  A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

ME: I see, so the truth is the key…anything else to add?

Churchill:  “No comment” is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again. In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

ME: There is tons of talk about social media and how it is changing the landscape of marketing, advertising, and reaching your target market–what are your thoughts on this?

Churchill: However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

ME: So focus on results and listen…

Churchill: If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.

ME: Oh, okay calm down I get it. Now on success, is there a formula that one should follow?

Churchill: Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. I never worry about action, but only inaction.

ME: I see, so move forward, with effort and vigor…

Churchill: Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

ME: Throughout your life you have seldom if ever ran away from danger from Pretoria, The Western front, to your time as Prime Minister, what advice can you give someone who is looking to draw upon their own strength?

Churchill: One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never! Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. If you are going through hell, keep going.

ME: That rings true…

Churchill: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

ME: well our connection is getting kind of bad here is there anything else you would like to add?

Churchill: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning… The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.

*some quotes from Churchill have been combined.

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Twitter is it mainstream?

Is Twitter a complete waste of time and effort? Sure it has 145 million users worldwide and the tech/journalistic community is obsessed with it. But for marketing or awareness is it a waste of time?

Yes and No. Twitter has become a very focused network of tech savvy individuals. Although there is a subset of users here and there that use it for strictly communication and entertainment purposes– it still is the home of the techies. Business Insider makes three great points about this:

• Stories that appeal to the tech community go bananas on Twitter–and barely register on Facebook
• Stories that appeal to the mass market do much better on Facebook than they do on Twitter.
• Stories aimed at our Wall Street and finance readers have enormous readership–but much lower Twitter referrals than our tech stories do.

In the story they go on to make three more points on why Twitter is not mainstream. It takes time, it needs products that appear to the mainstream, and Twitter requires set up and customization.

While those are valid points I think it goes a little deeper.

• Noise. There is tons of noise on Twitter. There is noise from day one when you sign up. Noise that you don’t necessarily care about. It’s not like Facebook or Myspace where the noise is there but ultimately you care about it.
• Text. The basis of interaction on Twitter is text based. We are visual creatures and we like shiny things. The growth of Facebook comes from the ease of share-ability of different types of media. From pictures, videos, to web stories. It’s a centralized hub of interaction and visual pleasure. Twitter doesn’t even come close.
• Relevance. Let’s say you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet. Today you create an account. Over the next 2 weeks you will be surprised time and time again as you are reunited with a old friend or a family member. These interactions are highly relevant to you. They have pre-existing meaning. This also tends to happen time and time again on Facebook. In my experience your first 2 weeks on Twitter is like watching a series of television channels and every couple of hours you take a break to watch an old family movie. There just isn’t enough personal payoff.

But What About Marketing?

The first step in a marketing campaign is awareness. I do believe Twitter plays a role in awareness and thus should be used for business in marketing efforts. Beyond that it’s important to look at the role it plays in your overall marketing. Who is your target market, do they use this channel, and can you effectively reach them?

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Facebook using your likeness (image by Global X)

Have you seen this latest legal case… Two Los Angeles-area parents are suing Facebook over the Like button that appears in the social site’s ads.

A prepared statement by the plaintiff’s attorney John Torjesen read: “When a teenager sees that their Facebook friends ‘Like’ an ad, it piques their curiosity, making them more likely to click the ad or visit the page. We believe it is a clear case of exploitation of children for the sake of profits.”

Co-counsel in the lawsuit Antony Stuart added: “The consent of the minor for this commercial use of his or her name and likeness is not obtained by Facebook. Under California law, the minor’s consent cannot be obtained without the consent of the parent or guardian. Facebook makes no effort to obtain parental consent.”

Some quick thoughts that come to mind…

On the face of it I guess this lawsuit has some merit. We do go through pains to protect children and children really can’t enter into legal binding agreements.

What About Your Likeness

I guess I haven’t thought deeply about this but when Facebook suggests to  your friends and contacts that you ‘like’ (or Fan) something they are inherently taking your likeness. They also have permission to use your likeness throughout the site and ads. While this isn’t what you might call a huge privacy issue it is another interesting take on what this connected world has brought us.

Take it a Step Further

Imagine that 10 years from now your at the mall. You walk into a store and suddenly the display above (in 3D) lights up and tells you that 3 of your friends like the Gap. In fact, 2 of them checked in here the last week. You walk around the store and you are notified of the reviews of products and the product that your friends like. That is just the beginning.

If you’ve done any back to school shopping I’m sure you’ve seen the technology kiosks, the try an outfit cameras, the capture your friends poses and picture displays. Digital media is slowly making the inroads into the storefront. Is it right that companies or brands can use your likeness to sell their wares?

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Women in social media (image by armigeress)

Women are huge on social media says the latest study from Lightspeed Research for Oxygen Media Group. Almost half of women ages 18 to 34 consider themselves “Facebook addicts” and 15 percent of moms check Twitter “every waking moment,” according to new research. According to the study 57 percent say they talk to people more often online than they do face to face.

Another study by Lucid Marketing which surveyed moms who describe themselves as “hooked on Twitter” and found that 54 percent of Twitter-using moms check their feeds 10 or more times per day

Not only are they hooked but they use Twitter to connect to brands. Top reasons for this are:

• A desire to find out about the company’s products or services (67%)
• To get good deals (60%).
• To follow businesses on Twitter because they’re already customers. (67%)
• To follow up on a retweet (41%)
• Famous person doing the tweeting for a business carries little clout with moms (6%).

The key here… if your in business and want to foster word of mouth with women it might be smart to be in Facebook and Twitter.

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Should Google (and ducks for that matter) be regulated? (image by Yodel Anecdotal)

I recently read an editorial in “The New York Times” called “The Google Algorithm.” This is about whether or not there should be regulation on Google for their search results. Granted Google gets 90 plus percent of searches and they have these offshoot services such as YouTube and Maps and other things.

Another less than brilliant idea although I am a little concerned about Google’s increasingly close ties to government and Washington.

One of the things that was mentioned in this story or this editorial was the flight information software firm, ITA, is on the purchasing block by Google for $700 million. So they’re looking to enter the online travel search market. Obviously, other players in this market are Expedia, Orbitz, Bing. My huge problem I have with this is no one’s forcing anybody to use Google. Now, they have their algorithm, similar to the way that Coke has their own special formula.

Regulators Mount Up

I don’t see how . . . there’s no government agency trying to regulate, well, actually that’s not true. There’s government agencies right now looking to tax Coke, looking to tax soft drinks. So I don’t think that’s a direct tax, but there’s no government agency out there that’s looking to explore the editorial policy of how Google tweaks its search algorithm.

One of the things mentioned in this story are early suggestions to Google such as some level of detail on the editorial policy that guides its tweaks. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks. I hate that considerably.More government bureaucrats who can barely run the government trying to oversee a highly technical thing such as search.

One thing I’ve learned from studying history is that power always tends to get larger and after a while power tends to also corrupt. And this is the same as far as large corporations, multinational corporations, especially governments. If I had to vote I would vote on the side of Google mainly because there is tons of other resources out there. The bottom line is you use Google because they’re the best. I guess I would argue that, if you use Google, you use them because they’re the best.

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We have deep seated reasons for not being wrong... wait I'm I right there? (image by KungPaoCajun)

A new and great book has been written by Kathryn Schulz titled Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

Schulz starts with one underlying question: Why do we love being right? Is it for sport or some other deep seated need, she writes, “unlike many of life’s other delights — chocolate, surfing, kissing — it does not enjoy any mainline access to our biochemistry: to our appetites, our adrenal glands, our limbic systems, our swoony hearts.” but that’s not quite the case she continues, “we can’t enjoy kissing just anyone, but we can relish being right about almost anything,” including that which we’d rather be wrong about, like “the downturn in the stock market, say, or the demise of a friend’s relationship or the fact that at our spouse’s insistence, we just spent 15 minutes schlepping our suitcase in exactly the opposite direction from our hotel.”

There is a deep rooted prejudice against being wrong and on a psychological level we go to great lengths to avoid being wrong. We even go to extremes when facts and the whole world ally’s against us. One of my favorite quotes comes from John Maynard Keynes and his reply to a criticism during the Great Depression on why he changed his position on monetary policy:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

I use this quote as a reminder as a constant check on critical thinking. It’s great to see a book that delves into the psychology of our ‘wrongness’ avoidance. While there are a few elements of the book that do not quite complete the point I highly suggest it as a great read. For more formal reviews check out this one at the NyTimes and this article from Kathryn Schulz titled ‘Being Wrong: Chapter 1: Wrongology“

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Is the old media dead yet? (photo by ShironekoEuro)

This old media is not dead—it’s undead. It’s still walking around terrorizing the local townspeople. That latest viral video, do you know how it became viral? First it appeared on YouTube. Then it was highlighted by a blogger who is followed by a few in the know within the old media print media. The story was ran in a few local large markets and then picked up by some more bloggers.

Next it hit the morning TV shows then the afternoon shows. After all this then it hit it’s stride. It went from under a million views to multi-million. The key here is that the driver for the viral effect was the reach and credibility of old media. Old media is also being led by new media.

What’s That Over There?

There is a big elephant in this room. Old media still doesn’t get it. I recently watched a movie titled Down Fall. This movie was about the final days of the Nazi regime focusing on primarily the leadership and the final acts within the bunker in Berlin. This is a great movie, well acted and engaging.

I learned about this movie because of YouTube. Someone took a scene in this movie (which was in german) and essentially created close caption tracks. These ranged from the launch of Apple’s iPad to who on major awards. After a while the YouTube was forced to pull all of these parodies. I’m sure for some copyright infringement.

I among other people were exposed to this movie because of this. I searched out this movie that I knew nothing about to watch it. If this was just a single example we might not be able to gleam anything from it. But it isn’t–this is the new norm of discovery.

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