After The Sale.
Barack Obama is the President-Elect of the United States, fuck yes mother fucker.
Now that the emotional wave of yes we did is starting to subside a little, we should all remember that he’s still a politician. He still managed to convince something like 90 million people to vote for him instead of someone else, and that’s an awesome feat.
Here’s a quote from Richard Feynman’s second anecdotal collection, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
The only way to have real success in science, the field I’m familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good and what’s bad about it equally. In Science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.
In other fields, such as business, it’s different. For example, almost every advertisement you see is obviously designed, in some way or another, to fool the customer: the print that they don’t want you to read is small; the the statements are written in an obscure way. It is obvious to anybody that the product is not being presented in a scientific and balanced way. Therefore, in the selling business, there’s a lack of integrity.
My father had the spirit and integrity of a scientist, but he was a salesman. I remember asking his the question “How can a man of integrity be a salesman?”
He said to me, “Frankly, many salesmen in the business are not straightforward—they think it’s a better way to sell. But I’ve tried being straightforward, and I find it has its advantages. In fact, I wouldn’t do it any other way. If the customer thinks at all, he’ll realize he has had some bad experiences with another salesman, but hasn’t had that kind of experience with you. So in the end, several customers will stay with your for a long time and appreciate it.”
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When I see a congressman giving his opinion on something, I always wonder if it represents his real opinion or if it represents an opinion that he’s designed in order to be elected. It seems to be a central problem for politicians. So I often wonder: what is the relation of integrity to working in the government?
Also, the presidential administration-to-be has a rather nice site to check out, Change.gov. The president-elect has a blog. And to think, we almost elected a president who didn’t know how to use a computer!