Rachel Gold: books | marketing | play | enlightenment

The Case for God - review #1

I'll start by saying that I love Karen Armstrong's books and I considered this one to be a personal favor to me, even though we've never met. With the rise in media coverage of the "new atheism," I was really hoping someone with rock solid credentials would come out with a brilliant and reasoned response. For that you really can't do any better than Karen Armstrong. Now I can have the deep joy of telling anyone who wants to argue religion with me that they should go read this book first.

This is a dense 332 page book with about 60 pages of notes and glossary so I'm going to summarize some of the points in this article, but will also pull out specific themes in later articles to explore in more detail.

Is your marketing copywriter is too heavy on the marketing and too light on the writing?

Good writing makes content easy to read. It must include attention to punctuation, grammar and style. With the amount of web writing and marketing writing that companies need these days, you can find many marketing writers playing fast and loose with the rules of punctuation and grammar. Don't buy it.

A Writer's Time - Ken Atchity

I've read many books about how to write and this remains one of my favorites. He covers not only time management tactics, but also creativity management, which is crucial.

I recently found this page of notes that I wrote to myself as a quick review of my favorite points of the book. I'm presenting it here to give you an idea of the scope, but to really dig into his strategies for managing yourself as a write, I recommend you read the whole book. (He has a good style, you'll enjoy it!)

A Writer's Time: Making the Time to Write

How much caffeine is in my espresso?

Since I was wondering and thought other folks might be as well, here's a list of caffeine contents of the stuff we're drinking at eating, culled together from a few sources on the web:

Drip coffee                 115-175 mg
Double espresso                120-150 mg
Brewed coffee                80-135 mg
Starbucks Chai Latte        100 mg
Black Tea                        40-50 mg
Pepsi (12 oz)                   38-45 mg 
Oolong Tea                     30 mg
Green Tea                        20-25 mg
Dark Chocolate (1 oz)           20 mg
White Tea                        15 mg
Milk Chocolate (1 oz)            6-8 mg

All tea measurements are based on one tea bag.

I wasn't able to find a good measurement for Mate tea, which seems to vary widely. 

Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity and Self

The central idea of this book by Rita Carter is that most of us are comprised of multiple personalities, but not disordered because these personalities share memories with each other. In what used to be called multiple personality disorder, now dissociative identity disorder, the real problem is that the personalities are disconnected from each other and don't share information. In this book, Carter gives examples of people who are co-conscious of multiple personalities and use that as a strength.

She builds a case for multiplicity as a survival trait in the human species that has become increasingly important as the modern world forces us into diverse roles, often within a single day. For example, you might know a woman executive who is a very different person in her office from the person she is with her young daughter.

Carter writes, "I found that if one thinks of each person as a group rather than as a single, unchanging personality, many familiar but previously puzzling things made much more sense. ... The way we can remember some things at some times and not at others, for instance, is entirely understandable if you think of each person as a vessel in which different personalities-each carrying their own 'bag' of memories-come and go."

Are You Game?

This July, Discover magazine came out with an article suggesting that some video games might actually be good for people (shock!).  If you've spent more than two minutes on this site, you know I'm an avid gamer.  I'm also committed to parents and children having strong relationships.  This is the first in a series of essays on connecting parents and their gaming kids, helping parents understand gaming and sharing in beneficial games with their kids.  This article looks at research showing gaming can be beneficial and then suggested some games that are good for the brain (at the end, so feel free to skip down).

Parenting Kudos

In his book Freakonomics (also available through Audible), economist Steven Leavitt looks at 16 factors that might make a difference in a child's school performance and details which 8 do make a difference and which 8 don't (according to the data from one massive school performance study -- not a direct line from God).

Online Tarot

My favorite site for an online Tarot reading is The Osho Exerience which features both the Osho Zen Tarot and their Transformation Tarot (which is not actually a Tarot deck but rather a collection of 60 wonderful teaching stories on cards). When you load the site, you'll see a link to Zen Tarot on the lower right of the menu bar and that will load up their Tarot deck in Java and allow you to do a few different kinds of readings. On the right menu bar from that page you can also select the Transformation Tarot if you want to explore that deck.

The Osho Zen Tarot is widely applicable with many fine cards about meditation practice, but also some great modern challenges expressed, including cards for stress and exhaustion.

Enjoy and let me know about your experiences!

The Creative Life

I'm again reading the classic It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys and contemplating my work habits.  I took the Mission Control workshop a year or two ago and like their system, but even that is too officey for my creative bent.  I'm looking for a metaphor or vision for the way I manage the details of my life and will let you know when I find a good one. In the mean time, I'm open to suggestions and I'd love to hear from people who their organization role models are, particularly in creative fields.