Recently in Current Events Category

I'm going to do a little name dropping here and say that my FRIEND Jim Martin has become Stephen Colbert's chaplain. This is his THIRD appearance on The Colbert Report, and Jim invited me to be part of the audience! Unfortunately, because I am practicing my "simplification" practices for Lent (and because I'm broke), I couldn't go. But here's his appearance for all of you to watch. Having famous friends is so cool.

I tried to embed the video here, but it's not working, so your going to have to visit the Colbert website to see Fr. Jim's segment on the topic of turning to God in hard economic times. To go there click here.

"Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates," said Forrest Gump in the 1994 film. Yeah, well I think it's more like a game of Candy Land.

We've been averaging about three games a day in our house ever since the kids got the board game for Christmas. And every game the rules change depending on who has the deck of cards.

"I go first, and I get the ice-cream card," Katherine informs me. "Then you go, and you get the gingerbread card, okay?" She tucks the gingerbread card in back of the ice-cream card in the big pile on my bedroom floor.

"That's not how the game works," I explain. "You have to shuffle the cards so that you don't know what you're getting ... That's part of the fun."

"But what if I get all the way to Snow Flake Lake and then I pick the gingerbread man and have to go back all those spaces?" My 5-year-old is clearly petrified, as she should be, because that is certainly a possibility.

Thanks to fellow blogger Susan Schechter for referring me to a hilarious four-second video. Because I'm still a technological moron, I can't figure out how to embed it, so I'm going to send you all to her blog, "If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going," to watch it. Happy viewing!

Let me utter my full disclosure upfront: I spend way too much time on the social networking site, Facebook, and there is a very real possibility that I'm addicted to it. In fact, I'm developing my own twelve-step program to manage this behavior in case my friends and family decide to do an intervention on me ... you know when they simultaneously confront me on how my addiction is affecting them. ("You never participate in the dinner conversation anymore ... you just stare at your carrots ... but you have plenty to say to the new person who "friended" you on that stupid online thing.")

Recently Time magazine's Lisa Selin Davis asked the question I've been posing to myself ever since the day I set up my profile on the site: Does Facebook replace face time or enhance it? Yes, I have been pondering that quandary dating back to six weeks ago when I "friended" my first person, back before I got click happy on a mission to have at least 500 friends, because that's how many the successful New York Times journalists had.

Facebook may have started as an online gathering place for college and high school kids, but if you throw out the term at a dinner party, like I did the other day, you'll immediately learn that half of your friends and their friends have profiles on the site and have already joined a handful of groups and "causes." No one is too old for this online community. In fact, lately most of my friend requests have come from the parents of friends of mine. Yes, persons in their 70s asking to be my friend on a hip social-networking site. A tad comical, isn't it?

But does my time at the computer contribute to what Lisa Davis calls "Facebook Recluse Syndrome"... a hermit type of existence?

I don't think so.

My friend John Grohol has written an excellent article on what attributes, psychologically speaking, best predict Presidential greatness. In his recent "World of Psychology" post, he writes:

A researcher named Simonton did a study in 1981 that found the single most attribute correlated with presidential greatness was years in office. Other attributes that increase a president's perceived greatness are an assassination or assassination attempt and the number of books he published before becoming president. The number of war years that the president presides over also predicts a president's greatness. Being a professional soldier before becoming president and any scandals while in the White House decrease a president's greatness. 

What is especially interesting are the factors that do not predict Presidential greatness:

Family background, personal characteristics, education, occupation, and political experiences provided few if any predictors of presidential performance, although succession to office through the vice presidency had a generally negative effect.

That last bit might explain why Al Gore couldn't get elected, as the U.S. public seems to have a hard time taking vice presidents very seriously when they take a run at the higher office. Simonton summarized their greatness predictors:

The greatest presidents have longer administrations, lead the nation through more years of war, offer targets for unsuccessful assassination attempts, avoid major scandals, and publish many books before entering office.

These variables explain 75% of the variance of presidential greatness according to the researcher.

Then John asks and attempts to answer the question: How does this bode for Obama?

Obama has written three books and will likely lead the nation through at least another 4 years of war as he removes our troops from Iraq and continues work in Afghanistan. Hopefully he will not be the target of any assassination attempts and can avoid any major scandals, such as those that plagued his Democratic predecessor. He also has not been a professional soldier, which actually works to his favor in history's eyes. 

All of which initially bodes well for Obama, at least from the perspective of predictive psychological research.

We join the rest of the nation -- and, in fact, the world -- in watching today's inauguration and wishing Barack Obama the best of luck with leading the country through one of its most difficult times in the past century.

To read the full article, click here.

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