In the Tonight Show time slot just after the late-night news, the competition is this: David Letterman (CBS) and Nightline (ABC).  All the shows at that hour are basically budget shows airing 5 nights a week.

Shifting to the primetime slot, 5 nights a week, just before the late-night news, and the competition is: CSI Miami, Castle,  The Good Wife, The Forgotten, CSI: NY, Ugly Betty, The Mentalist, Private Practice, NUMB3RS, and 20/20.

Basically, by airing Jay Leno 5 nights a week at primetime, NBC mistakenly thought that they could create a low budget show every day that could compete with higher budget shows which longer production cycles.

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Tree Meeting

I’ve been in a lot of meetings that have failed. I’m not sure sure how to make meeting work, but I’m beginning to understand why they fail.

Forget the time cost of meetings. Take the number of people in your meeting and multiply by the time of the meeting. 12 people in a short 20 minute meeting costs the same as a half a day by one person. To make your meeting fail, never consider this calculation; always have the most people in the longest meeting possible.

Have meetings just because. Yesterday’s meeting failed, so there needs to be another meeting today. Have another meeting tomorrow to keep the trend going.  We all know that meetings are essential for work, so make sure you have as many as possible.

Communicate 1-0n-1 in large group meetings. If you have a lot of people to talk to, tracking them down and talking to them individually would make too much sense.  Instead, gather everyone you need into one large meeting.  During that meeting, go around the room and have a one-on-one discussion with each person.  Everyone else will surely be bored to death while they listen in on your discussion with someone else.

Darken the room so everyone can’t see you. You prepared two whole slides to use during your hour long presentation–you better turn off the lights for your whole 30-minute presentation so people can see your slides and not you.  You want to make sure you place undue importance on that slide containing inspirational quotes that probably could be skipped all together.  Making people squint to see you in the dark will help your meeting fail.  Lowering the lights will also have the added bonus of helping people feel sleepy during the meeting.

Avoid assignments. If you want your meetings to fail, about the last thing you want to do is to ask people to prepare for the meeting.  People should walk into a meeting with no idea of what it is about, and with no ideas, topics, or research to share.  Additionally, avoid making assignments during the meeting for work to be completed outside of the meeting.

Don’t read this book: Successful Meetings: How to Plan, Prepare, and Execute Top-Notch Business Meetings by Shri Henkel.  Of all the books I found at the library to improve meetings, this one was fairly short, straight forward, and easy to follow.  Anyone looking to have bad meetings should stay far away from this book.  It is available from Amazon.com or from the Square Galaxy Store.

(Image used under CC license from Flickr).

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So few M&Ms

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I’ve come up with 5 things that Stargate Universe must do in order to avoid disappointment.

1. Don’t become a Stargate meets Battlestar Galactica series. I very much appreciate the sentiment to make Stargate Universe a fresh spin on an old franchise, so don’t ruin it by becoming a Battlestar Galactica clone.  Already they’ve adopted the “lost in somewhere in the universe trying to find our way home” theme from Galactica, and when combined with many of the same lighting and camera shooting techniques as Galactica, it looks less original.  I would like to think that part of the reason that Battlestar Galactica was so good and popular (at times) was that it was a very fresh Sci-Fi show.  Copying something that was fresh doesn’t mean that it still is.  Stargate Universe must be its own show if it wants to succeed.

2. Don’t forget the Science in Science-Fiction. Although you air on a network which changed its name to SyFy, it doesn’t mean the science is gone from science fiction.  One of the things I really liked about Stargate SG-1 was that I felt that I could relate to it because it was set in present-time.  A problem for Stargate Atlantis was that the setting was to alien, and hard to relate to.  Too many times, including in the finale, Atlantis presented some miracle tech to save the day at the last moment.  Keep the Stargate Universe tech and science to a reasonable level that the audience can more easily relate to.

At the same time, don’t leave out the science and tech by making the series all character based.  I think audiences like feeling like they are learning, even if they aren’t learning anything real.  The first Jurassic Park movie was entertaining because they explained the whole cloning thing, while the sequels were just dinosaurs eating people.  Keep enough science involved so that people feel they are being educated a little bit.

3. Give the audience a hero. What made Stargate SG-1 fantastic, was Richard Dean Anderson’s role as Jack O’Neill, as well as the rest of the SG-1 team.  I believe that audiences want to cheer their hero on every week, although sometimes their hero wins or looses.  However, the hero shouldn’t betray his audience.

Stargate Universe characters need fans, just like athletic stars and Facebook.  Create characters worthy of having fans.

4. Don’t be depressing. I watched every episode of Battlestar Galactica right up to the point where I recognized that the show was making me depressed.  I talked to other former Galactica fans, who said they also stopped watching because the show got to dark and depressing.  Don’t let Stargate Universe find the same fate.

I feel this could be especially a trap for this show.  If too many characters become obsessed with, “We will never make it home, what is there worth living for?” the audience will adopt those sentiments with “What is there worth watching for?”

Relatedly, turn on the lights.  If the setting is always too dark, such as on your ship with little lighting, then it will feel more depressing.  Also, dark scenes don’t look as great when viewed on a low-cost home projector.

5. Give it a little humor. Stargate SG-1 was packed full of little humorisms.  I could feel that the actors really enjoyed the show.  Their enjoyment, when combined with little facts (Teal’c’s favorite movie is Star Wars) make the show very enjoyable to watch. 

Bonus.  Keep the camera shots stable. No one likes getting motion sick from a show where they couldn’t keep the camera still.

After just two weeks of tuning into Stargate Universe, I can’t quite claim that it is a winner.  I’ll keep tuning in, unless, of course, I feel like the show had betrawed my many years of Stargate fan-dom.

Stargate Universe airs Friday evenings on the SyFy channel.  (I still think the renaming of Sci-Fi channel to SyFy was dumb).

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All men are free to choose, and let us not escape the consequences of our choices.

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June 2:

• “When University Police arrived, they found no one suspicious on the hill.”
• “Officers couldn’t find anything upon arrival.”
• “ The man was gone when an officer arrived.”
• “The men were gone when officers arrived.”
• “The male was gone when a university police officer arrived.”

May 27:

• “Officers were unable to locate him upon arrival.”

May 19:

• “ No suspects were found when officers arrived.”
• “They were gone when officers arrived.”
• “Officers could not find the woman or her children.”

Are BYU police just slow at arriving to the scene?  Usually the suspect is gone by the time officers arrive.  Here is a case where the suspect is found before officers arrive:

An athlete was missing from the NCAA track at the Special Olympics but was found before officers arrived at the site.

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An educated man is not one who has trained is mind to retain a few dates in history. he is one who can accomplish things. Unless a man has learned to think, he is not an educated man, regardless of how many college degrees he has after his name.

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• If what you are doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder.  Stop and try again.  This is especially true for breaking and accelerating.  If you push down on the accelerator and you aren’t moving like you should, don’t press down harder.  Lift your foot up and try again.  If you push on your break and you don’t stop, lift your foot up and try it again.
• Only do one thing at a time.  Don’t try to change your speed while turning.  Don’t speed up or slow down while turning.  If you know your turn is coming up, slow way down before you even start your turn.  Complete your entire turn before speeding up again.
• Use your headlights.  While you may be able to see just fine, other drivers might not have entirely cleaned the snow off their windows, and your lights will help them know that you are there

And the most important thing about driving in the snow, is knowing when not to drive in the snow.

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Flickr Stock Photo

Why are there different types of gas (premium, regular, and super) but it seems like there is only one gas tanker?

Although the tanker truck looks like one big tank, inside it is actually subdivided into a series of smaller tanks carrying gasoline of different grades. When a tanker trunk refuels the gas station, it can deliver all three types of gas.

(photo credit)

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On September 11, 2001, there were 2,752 people who died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Because of that attack, thousands of soldiers have gone to war costing the U.S. billions of dollars.

Every year, an average of 2,600 people die because of car accidents related to cell phones, nearly the same number of people ever year who died in the terrorist attacks. An additional annual 12,000 serious injuries have also occurred because of talking on the phone while driving.

But what are we doing about this to save lives?

Laws could be passed making cell phone use illegal, but it really should start with personal responsibility.

(Photo Credit)

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