To the left - Rihanna introduces VEVO to YouTube

I was taking a look at Introducing VEVO: A New Music Video Destination Powered by YouTube. 

There's a YouTube vid clip there with a girl (pictured, right) talking - "Rihanna introduces VEVO to YouTube".

Rihanna has a crick in her neck?

I think I have heard of her - I think she must be an American pop singer anyway, as she referred to "lyrics" and herself as "...artists like me".

Her appearance was distracting. Her face seemed to be covered in makeup, mascara and false eyelashes and she had a silly obscuring hat and these weird puffed-up shoulder pads on her jacket that made her look deformed. (Why do people do this to themselves?) Despite how she looks in the vid clip, I reckoned that she was probably quite attractive underneath it all and had normal shaped shoulders and nice hair under that hat. I have no idea what her singing voice might be like, but her speaking voice was clear and she enunciated her words clearly in English with an American accent.

I watched the clip twice without really listening too much to what she was saying, because there seemed to be something wrong with her, and my attention was distracted, focussed on watching her upper body movements.

Tough love versus spanking - a good example

Some countries (e.g., New Zealand) have now legislated to make it illegal to physically punish a child (e.g., spanking, slapping). Even without such legislation, parents are increasingly coming to terms with the very real possibility that it is not proper - that, indeed it may be harmful - to smack children. So, I have tried other methods to control my kids when they have one of "those moments" which can oftentime drive a parent to feel like giving the brat a belt around the earhole. Tough love is the answer. One method that I have found particularly effective is for me to just take the child out for a car ride.

Amazing as it may sound, this never fails. Whether it's the fact that it takes the child away from the disturbed environment where some upset has occurred, and gives them time to reflect, or whether it's the vibration from the car, or the time away from any distractions such as TV, video games, computer, IPod, etc., I don't know, but it always works. My kids usually calm down and stop misbehaving after our car ride together. Eye to eye contact helps a lot too.

I've included a photo below of one of my sessions with my son, in case you would like to use the same technique.

Happy days.

A Corporate Prayer

This is for amusement. I recovered this "prayer" when I was clearing out some old files. I think the prayer was published in a business and management magazine in the 1980s. The magazine name, date and author references have been lost. (It might have been the Harvard Business Review, but I am not sure.)

A corporate prayer.
Bless us Lord, and help us live,
Like every good executive,
A life more selflessly inclined
To what is in our GM's mind;
And may it be Thy wish, and his,
To tell us what his thinking is,
The way it was when we began,
Before we had the Corporate Plan.

Help thy servants on the Board
Understand his words, O Lord,
Since he changed his erstwhile manners,
And joined the Long Range Corporate Planners;
And if he needs must bore the pants off
All of us with Igor Ansoff,
Help us understand the charts -
Even the synergetic parts.

Help us share his new perspectives,
That Strategies are not Objectives;
And, through Thy goodness, cross the ditch,
To know more clearly which is which;
And, by Thy mercy which begat us,
Show us why it really matters,
In the name of Him who knows
All about Scenarios.

Grant us, Father, if you please,
Purer methodologies;
And tempt us not towards decisions
Without a further few revisions,
At interminable lengths,
Of our Weaknesses and Strengths.
Let need for action not deflect us
From codifying all our Vectors.

Grant, in answer to our prayers,
Thicker Strategies than theirs,
Who, in their blind unwisdom chase
Profits in the market place,
Without a contemplative look
At what is in the Corporate Book.
Let their successes not distract us
From listing our External Factors.

Help us keep our Corporate eyes on
Some appropriate horizon,
Far from all the symptomatic
Signs of anything pragmatic;
Defend us, always, through our prayers,
From acting like entrepreneurs,
And from the uninformed who said
That, in the longer-term we're dead.