Sam I Am

When white Vaudevillians complained about having to share dressing rooms with dancer Sammy Davis, he'd tell his young son to ignore them. "They're just jealous 'cause we got a better act."

Because he traveled from the age of three with his dad's act, Sammy Davis, Jr. was kept out of school, and thus sheltered from Jim Crow-style segregation.

It was only when he turned 18 and joined the army that Davis realized his color was a handicap. But when he was removed from latrine duty and assigned to entertaining fellow troops, he also realized talent was powerful.

"My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight," he once said. "It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking."

Talent, in any walk of life, is the only power most of us—not born into wealth—possess.

Davis exploited his to mount the pinnacle of the entertainment profession—even winning membership in the original hipster supergroup, The Rat Pack.

Along the way, he broke down more racial bars than did many other, more dignified black luminaries of the day—in 1972, even kissing Archie Bunker.

How about you? Are you using your talent to break down bars?

Does Content Produce Oxytocin?

A recent survey by PwC shows one in two CEOs think lack of trust threatens company growth. They have good reason: Prerequisite to any purchase is trust. And trust is a rare commodity these days.

Why do we trust each other, anyway?

Researchers in California asked test-subjects to choose any amount of money they wished to, and transmit it to strangers via computer. But first, they told the subjects that the money they sent—whatever the amount—would automatically triple in value, after they sent it. They also told the strangers they could keep the money they got, or share it with the senders. Before and after each transmission, the researchers measured the amount of oxytocin—the brain chemical responsible for "social bonding"—in both the senders and receivers.

The researchers found the more money recipients got (money being the gauge for trust among senders), the more oxytocin their brains produced; and the more oxytocin their brains produced, the more likely they were to share that money with senders (money also being the gauge for trust among recipients).

The researchers' conclusion: Oxytocin reduces our fear of trusting a stranger.

I'd like to encourage the Content Marketing Institute to fund a comparable experiment to prove my pet theory: Marketing content produces oxytocin.

If the Institute is unwilling, you can send me money (via computer), and I'll fund the experiment.

It'll be money well spent.

Trust me.

Hobbes vs. Locke

All differences of political opinion boil down to the differences in the philosophies of Hobbes and Locke.

Hobbes believed we're at war with one another, all the time, “every man against every man.” We need government to keep us from killing each other over property. Without it, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Locke believed we want to live in peace with one another, all the time, and are governed by "natural law." We don't annihilate each other because self-preservation is basic to natural law. We need government only to act as a referee when we disagree over property.

Hobbes advocated for absolute monarchy; Locke, for representative democracy.

How about you?

A Knapsack of Nouns

A "team of lawyers" and a "herd of buffalo" exemplify the figure of speech we call the collective noun, which names a group of people or things.

Many were first recorded in the 15th century in manuals known as "Books of Courtesy," written to keep aristocrats from embarrassing themselves while on the hunt.

These nouns often evoked the behavior of the things named. So, for example, we say:

• A pride of lions
• A leap of leopards
• A burden of mules
• A murder of crows
• A gaggle of geese
• A stud of horses

Other collective nouns evoked the jobs of the people named. So, for example, we say:

• A tabernacle of bakers (a "tabernacle" was a merchant's stall)
• A misbelief of painters (artists created illusions)
• A stalk of foresters (these guys tracked down poachers in the woods)
• A sentence of judges (who spoke in legalese)
• A faith of merchants (meant ironically, since most were cheats)
• A superfluity of nuns (the convents were overcrowded)

To keep you from embarrassing yourself on the next hunt, I recommend these up-to-date collective nouns:

• A keep of recyclables
• A fancy of food trucks
• An annoyance of pop-ups
• A vanity of celebrities
• A swamp of congressmen
• An embarrassment of commanders in chief

HAT TIP to resident medievalist Ann Ramsey for suggesting this post. Opinions are my own.

Getting Even

Boy, if life were only like this.

— Woody Allen

In a 2005 interview in TV Guide, comedian Jack Carter described his run-in with Woody Allen.

"He was one of the top writers on The Gary Moore Show, where I was a regular," Carter said. "One day I was on a panel show with Woody and Mickey Rooney, and Woody was picking on Mickey unmercifully. I came to Mickey's defense and attacked Woody, and when we got back to The Gary Moore Show he wrote me out of it quickly. We've been enemies ever since."

Boy, if only you could write people out of the show. Revenge would come easy.

The year before Jack Carter's interview, scientists at the University of Zurich proved revenge doesn't have to come easy to be sweet.

They PET-scanned test-subjects' brains while they played a game. The game involved exchanging money, and the rules allowed any player to penalize another player if he made a greedy move. However, according to the rules, penalties came at a cost to both players.

The scientists found most players penalized selfish ones, even at their own expense.

The PET scans showed penalizing another player activated the dorsal striatum, the part of the brain involved in joy. They also showed a correlation between the strength of that activation and the size of the penalty imposed. Players with strong activations were willing to incur great expense to penalize others who were greedy.

The study suggested that activation of the dorsal striatum reflects an anticipation of joy in punishing people who misbehave. The greater the activation, the more willing you are to get revenge—even at your own expense.