There is a long list of things you were always told either to do or not to do.

• Don’t go swimming after you eat.
• Don’t tear off those tags from underneath the sofa.
• Floss after every meal.
• Eat 3 daily portions of fruits and vegetables.
• Drink 8 oz of water every 4 hours.
• Start every day with a good breakfast.

I always found these annoying.  Annoying because they were certainly things we should all do.  Only problem.  We never did them.  Nobody I knows does them.  At least not consistently.  Maybe the cynicism and skepticism was borne out of our in inability to be disciplined enough to follow instruction.  Perhaps it was manufactured cynicism that somehow, some way some one was just trying to spin us.

Mom always gave that line about swimming and eating.  But everyone knew that she was simply looking for an excuse not to have to go out to the pool or pond right after lunch in the sweltering heat to watch a bunch of rug rats try and drown each other.

But Andy Sernovitz has a good rule on social media and brands.  In a refreshingly short piece in Smart Blog on Social Media he provides a simple check list for word of mouth — make it (a) emotional; (b) portable; and (c) repeatable.

Reminded me of the shampoo.  Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Except this makes a lot of sense.

Creating a sense of urgency in your life leads to success.  And there’s a study out that proves it.  A good friend of mine, Greg Schneiders, recently sent to me a NYTimes story about a study on the issue of motivation, fear, and something economists call “loss avoidance.”

The question is this — when your back is up against the wall and you MUST do something or risk losing, are you better at doing what you do than when you simply have an opportunity and CAN do something to win.

For the Wharton professors, question was this:  “All other things being equal, is there a difference between a putt for a par and a putt for a birdie?”  For folks not skilled in the rules and scoring of golf, a par is the number of shots set as a “standard” for a particular hole.  A “birdie” is one less than par.  So a hole that is set on the scorecard as a “par 4″ is a hole that you’re expected to complete in four strokes or shots.  If you do it in three, that’s a birdie.

Back to the question.  Is there any difference between a 4 foot birdie putt and a 4 foot par putt?

Apparently there is.  According to the study:

Even the world’s best pros are so consumed with avoiding bogeys that they make putts for birdie discernibly less often than identical-length putts for par, according to a coming paper by two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. After analyzing laser-precise data on more than 1.6 million Tour putts, they estimated that this preference for avoiding a negative (bogey) more than gaining an equal positive (birdie) — known in economics as loss aversion — costs the average pro about one stroke per 72-hole tournament, and the top 20 golfers about $1.2 million in prize money a year.

What does that mean?  It means that faced with two identical putts — one for birdie and one for par — the pros are more likely to make the par putt because they have to and miss the birdie putt because … well … because they can.  According to  Justin Leonard:

“When putting for birdie, you realize that, most of the time, it’s acceptable to make par. When you’re putting for par, there’s probably a greater sense of urgency, so therefore you’re willing to be more aggressive in order not to drop a shot. It makes sense.”

So there it is … the key phrase … “a greater sense of urgency.”

Reminds me of the National Lampoon cover.  If you don’t buy this magazine then I’ll shoot the dog.

A greater sense of urgency.

So don’t get fat and comfortable.  You’ll miss the putt.

Create a greater sense of urgency … we’ll all perform better.

Most folks who know me know that I’m a BIG fan of the number three.

In fact, I should write a post about the number three.  I think I’ll do that.  Stay tuned.

Three is the perfect number.  It is nature.  It is morning, noon, and night.  It is breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It is the perfect triangle.  The triune God.  It is the Hegelian dialectic - thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  It is even Obamaesque.  Check out his non-state of the union address to Congress in January.  What did he talk about?  Three things:  education, energy, and health care.  Fact is that THREE is the number for just about every speech, sermon, or presentation structure.  But I’m going to write a post about three so I’ll stop now.

And talk about ten.

Now that’s an interesting number.  Ten most wanted.  Ten commandments.   Top ten.  A “perfect” ten.  Ten is a bit odd in that it is associated both with the divine (God’s commandments) and the deplorable (FBI’s ten most wanted).  It is associated with children (Sesame Street) and sports (Big Ten).

So it is in that spirit that I call attention to two “10″ pieces I saw recently.

First is the “10″ is Lon Safko’s “The Ten Commandments of Blogging“.  Interesting.  I thought everyone was on Twitter now and had abandoned their WordPress platform.    Pretty good stuff.  I don’t do all of them.  Then again, I can’t say that I keep all of the REAL ten commandments.  But I like Lon’s approach.  Note that he saved the best to last.  Be creative.  Have fun.

Second is Graham Charleton’s top ten social media pr screw ups on eConsultancy.  These are certainly the most famous.  I do take issue with a couple of them.  Personally, I thought Domino’s strategy in responding to the employee video was pretty good.  They certainly couldn’t be blamed for having a couple of  goof-ball employees out of the tens of thousands that they hire.  And the fact that they responded in the same media as the source (YouTube) was pretty smart.  Lots of folks would have gone straight to Good Morning America or something stupid like that.

But I guess he needed ten.  That’s that other nice thing about three.  There’s only three of them.

The name sounded so familiar.  It was the Walter that threw me off.  I didn’t know any Walter Meyers.

Ever find out something about someone way after you knew them that really threw you for a loop?  More to the point, find out something that was happening to someone way back when and you NEVER knew what he or she was going through?

Welcome Kendall Meyers, the newly discovered Cuban spy.

Kendall was my European Studies professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS.  Now I find out he was a spy.  Not only that, it appears that we was being “turned” - isn’t that what they call it? - right when I was studying and working with him back in the early 1980s.

My, my, my.

Here’s how I rememer Kendall.

He had a more-than-slight resemblance of Donald Sutherland.  He was tall and lanky and bearded.  He spoke in well-rounded words with a certain intensity and glee that got young minds excited.  He was extremely curious with a razor-sharp logicians’ reckoning that meant you had better thought a few moves ahead if you were going to make a challenge.  I remember him to be kind, but firm.  He didn’t hide his liberal views (this was the first Reagan Administration) but I didn’t find him militant or bitter — only challenging.  He’d be the guy who’d have that “challenge authority” bumper sticker on his car.

He loved the Zebra Lounge off Mass Ave. which he would constantly remind us has the best pizza / beer combination in Washington DC.

But most of all I remember his curiosity and his emotion.  He was the type of instructor (I can’t remember whether he was working on his PhD or had just finished with David Calleo) that would ask you why you thought something and seemed to really  be interested in the answer you gave.  He would be the one to say “I’m curious why you say that.”  But he’d also be the one who’d as passionately simply say that the conclusion you’ve come to is wrong.  And say that with a zeal and conviction — but no malice! - that betrayed a passion in convictions.

That was the Kendall I knew at SAIS.

I had plenty of professors at SAIS that I suspected as a spy.  But I suspected them all of working for the CIA.

How odd that Kendall would be Castro’s eyes and ears in Washington.

Books and covers.  A reminder of all the secrets we keep.

Folks who have followed the JuiceBar know that I’ve a love/hate relationship with social media.

I love it. It is wild, dynamic, open, refreshing, democratic, transparent, exciting … and just plain fun.

I hate it. It is elusive, confounding, over-hyped, out-of-control and overwhelming.

So here’s my quote of the day from Brian Mazzaferri, the lead singer of I Fight Dragons from a great story by Walin Wong of the Chicago Tribune.

“There’s so many things you can do online that make you feel you’re doing something, when in reality you’re doing nothing.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought the same.

Then something happens.  You get curious.

And you say to yourself … log on one more time!

I’m trying to connect the dots on a couple of stories that appeared today in the Washington Post.

The first was about the wolf shirt phenomenon on Amazon. Mike Musgrove writes about how CollegeHumor.com and bloggers gamed the system to make an otherwise hideous t-shirt one of the top purchases on Amazon.

This type of online rabble-rousing appears to be catching on more than ever over the past year, said Tim Hwang, the organizer of ROFLCon, a convention dedicated to celebrating Internet memes. After all, another Web-based prank crossed over into the real world just last month when a 21-year-old college student, known by the online moniker “m00t,” sailed to the top of Time’s “most influential person” list in an online poll, beating out the likes of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey. Gathering nearly 17 million votes, the world’s “most influential” person is the founder of another jokey Web culture site, 4chan.org, whose proprietor is known offline by the name Christopher Poole.

So we know that the social media stuff can be gamed.  No big deal.  Just like in the old days!  Back then it was Hearst and yellow journalism.  Now it is some folks getting a good laugh.

Parenthetically, I’ll take the latter over the former.

Then - later in the A section - which is pretty much the entire serious news part of the Washington Post these days — there’s a story about how the Obama Administration is remaking the U.S. government’s online presence.

US.gov meet Amazon.com.

Don’t tell the CollegeHumor.com folks.  We all might be trading tax dollars for wolf t-shirts.

Government meets social media.  This is a good thing, right?

First we had the Hyundai ads.

Buy the car and if you lose your job they’ll take the car back.

They used to call that “reposession”.  I guess they now call that marketing.

Then Ford followed suit.  They did one better.  Buy the truck and they’ll let you hold off on payments for awhile (then they’ll take the truck back!).

Mortgage companies, banks, and insurance companies have also gotten into the act.  “If you’re in trouble, call us,” they say and we’ll work out a deal.  The not-so-subtle marketing message is one of empathy.  We feel your pain.

Now comes Pfizer.

According to reports, if you’re a guy and you lose your job they’ll float you a year’s worth of Viagra.  Yup.  Sound both salacious and stupid?  I thought so.

Wait!  It gets worse.  For the cars, trucks, banks, etc., this recession marketing effort was all about getting people to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do.

Warren Holstein notes that part of the strategy appears to be an effort to keep folks from switching brands or going to god-forsaken generics.  Better to give something away for a little while to maintain brand loyalty in tough times than risk people wandering off and looking for some alternative.

Because hard times shouldn’t mean the end to hard times.

At least there’s no chance of repossession.

I spent Mother’s Day day with my mother in Arkansas.

She is 86-years-young and lives there just five minutes from my brother’s house.

My brother and I spent the day with her rummaging through boxes of pictures.  The bulk were on modern Kodak paper.

But there was a box or two of thick, hard and very brownish ones.  Then there were these clear and shiny black and white ones about the size of a postage stamp.

We made it a project.  My bother manned the computer.  I sorted through the photos and cycled them through the scanner.  And while they were being moved from decades old sepia and paper to digits and pixels we’d have them up on a big plasma screen while Mom would look and explain the story behind each.

[The one here was one of her favorites.  That's her in the middle with her brother.  Grandpa Rousch just got finished reading her "Peter Rabbit."]

All mothers are saints.

Not!

The “all mothers are saints” thing is a myth.  I have heard enough stories from my social worker wife to know that is not true.  Some people are lucky and have mothers that teach them how to encourage, nurture, support, cherish, and love.  Others do not.

I am one of the lucky ones.

Born of humble mid-western farming stock, my mother combines a rock-hard work ethic with purity of love and caring that is all to hard to find in a modern life.  She is a reminder that old-fashioned is a compliment.  That simplicity and virtue is not only attainable, but something that can and should guide your life.  Most of all, she reminds me of what it means to be a parent and care for family.

And funny thing is.  She never told me any of this.  She just did it.

Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Just when you thought you were out of the worst of it … Bam!  Another 200+ point drop.

I’m telling you this economic stuff is driving folks crazy.

One of my favorite subjects of discussion is what “letter” the economy will resemble over the coming months.  This has been the focus of discussion of everyone from AARP to SeekingAlpha to Blogs.com to MutualFundSmarts.

First, there is the “V” shaped recovery.  The one we all want.  Straight down and straight up.

Then there is the “U” shaped recovery.  The one more likely.  Straight down, suffer for awhile, and then go back up.

Now comes the really bad letters of the alphabet.

The “W” shaped recovery.  As if we haven’t had enough of Ws already.  Sort of a bipolar recovery.  You go broke.  Make money.  Go broke again.  Make money.  Suffer. Enjoy.  Suffer.  Enjoy.

Finally there is the dreaded “L” shaped recovery.  You decend into hell and stay there.  Hopefully over time you’ll learn to enjoy it.

We need a new monogram.

Anybody else find the phrase “toxic assets” strange?

Asset is a good thing.  Right?  You’re supposed to accumulate them.  They are a point of pride.  You show them off.  You can take them to the bank.  People require them for loans — ok, for a while they didn’t  — which leads us to the “toxic” part.

Toxic.  Not good.  Don’t drink.  Stay away.  Will kill.  Or if not kill, at least send to the emergency room.  And you’ll have some disease that only Dr. House can cure.

So how can there be toxic assets?

This, I believe, is the topic of the iceberg of economic schizophrenia that has begun to bleed its way through American society.

Things are awful.  But they’re also ok.  You need to conserve, scrimp and save.  But not too much.  This is all terrible.  But it is all good.  We’re going broke.  But we’re going back to old fashioned values.

We’re losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every month, home values continue to drop with no end in site.  Meanwhile the President’s approval rating is high and there’s been a sharp increase in consumer confidence.

I remember a quote that a cultural anthropologist friend of mine used to cite from an interview he did with a housewife during the recession of the early 1980s …

“Things are getting better … sometimes for the worse!”

Now people are saying the same thing in reverse.

“Things are getting worse … sometimes for the better!”