Apprentice

I was telling my friend Greg Skelly about this Bogger the other day and invited him to post things on it as well so without futher a do here is his first post:

There was a rerun of last week's Apprentice on tonight. Since I already knew the winners and losers from last week's show, I could study and analyze their performances on last week's task and identify why the losers lost and the winners won.

Magna met in person with customers and asked them to identify their office supply needs. They also met in person with Staples executives and asked them to name some customer needs. The other team, Net Worth, did neither. Magna won in a landslide; the customer focus group favored their product highly. The lesson: Never underestimate the power and benefit of a focus group, and of meeting in person. "Telephone meetings never accomplish nearly as much as face to face meetings," Trump said afterwards. No kidding.

I know that from my own experience in CollegeWorks, it's much much much easier to convince someone to go with you, or your product, or your idea when you present it to them in person. Take your business to the customer to succeed.

Laws of Attraction

What causes a person to be attracted to another person?? For a long time I wondered what caused this, I pondered the idea and threw it up and down till I came up with a few ideas. First off we all have our own interests in life, things we like and this can be one cause. When we see someone else displaying like interests this can promote attraction to that person the movie height Fidelity John Cusack's character says, "Its not what we are like but what we like that attracts people,"one of my favorite movies/book and a great quote. Another reason, the most obvious reason of all is looks, if the girl is hot us guys are going to be attracted. One of the best reasons I have found and I can usually associate this with everything is mystery. If the girl is sweet, has a nice smile, I find her attractive and seems intelligent but hardly ever speaks I find that mysterious as hell and it makes me want to know more. Some girls just have that effect I guess, a sense of mystery with hidden depth that just beckons you to want to find out more.
So what causes u to be attracted to someone else??

Rules of Relationships

This is an old email I sent out to a bunch of friends but I thought it was worth reposting it on this site because I believe it holds some very important insights.

As I was sitting at my computer tonight I was looking through a very interesting web site that I must give Greg credit for directing me to known as tuckermax.com. As I was thumbing my way through the eventful and funny stories which I recommend to all of you I was noticing some corresponding ideas this guy and I have on relationships so I thought I would share some of these things with you for your enjoyment and maybe this knowledge will help you in some way or another one of these days when you find yourself not knowing what to do.

Rule # 1: Do not and let me repeat do not let yourself become blinded by emotion.

Now you might say that love is all about emotions and how can you tell me to shut those off, very easily actually if you want to keep from getting walked all over. Everyone can get carried away with what they want to be true instead of what really is true, you have to learn to step back and evaluate what's going on or the next thing you know it will be over and this person has walked off with your pride, dignity and in some cases credit cards.

Rule # 2: Always pay attention to actions and never words.

In this day and age words mean almost nothing at all so there is no point in paying attention
to what is coming out of a person's mouth. If I wanted I could very easily lie to a person about who I am what I like and what I enjoy doing, most people can read your body language and tell you exactly what you want to hear just to get from you what they want.

Rule # 3: If you are in a relationship do not lie to yourself about the relationship. (Kind of corresponds with Rule # 1)

Now I should probably clarify this rule a little bit, what I mean here is that you shouldn't allow yourself to see something that isn't there. I have had plenty of friends of mine girls and guys complain to me about their relationships and when it comes down to it the whole problem was they made out their bf or gf to be perfect, they had put them on some sort of pedestal. Please do not do this because this road leads no where but disappointment.

Rule # 4: Learn to deal with and accept change. (Maybe the hardest rule of them all)

Change is a very problematic thing for people to deal with, if any of you guys have read my article on change then this is a bit of a repeat for you with a new spin but its relevance is still there. Most people are frightened of change, they get use to how things operate and don't wish to complicate the cycle by throwing something new into it, even when the current occupants become worn out or old. Many people refuse to realize when a relationship is over (me being one of them), now when I say over I don't mean when the two of you decide to part and go your separate ways but when in the relationship you come to the point where you realize you can't take it any further and it has to end. I realize this is hard to do for two reasons especially, 1. You are scared you won't be able to find anyone else out there so you try to stick it out thinking this is your last shot. Then number 2. You are having trouble with the idea that it just isn't going to workout and won't let it go because of this. Over time people do change, that's just the way things work, sometimes because of this people fall out of love with one and other and this isn't anyone's fault, it is just something that happens. So then the hard part is learning to recognize this and dealing with it.

As I was reading Tucker's ideas they reminded me of these things that I have thought about and I have many more but I won't bore you anymore with them because I am sure if you have actually read this all the way to here you are sick of reading it and wondering why I sent this out. I guess my main reason is to throw it out there, through my experiences I have learned these things and I hope you guys can benefit from them as I have.

What I know for sure....

When I was younger I thought I had a good understanding of the way things worked, now that I am older I realized all the things I knew when I was young were wrong. I have called this the "Ear muffs and blinders syndrome." This is when your parents tell you all these things to hide the truth about the world from you until one day these things are revealed to you all of a sudden, it is as if the ear muffs and blinders get ripped off revealing the true world to you. Now I am a philosophy major and I have studied many ideas of what the world is. Did you know some believe that the external world doesn't even exist, that everything we perceive is actually just in our minds or that existence is basically just a bunch of perceptions shared by multiple minds. I would like to say that was true but then again I don't think I could truly that cruel to myself. The world is a mean place so if it was really all in my mind why would I put myself through all that? As I sit here with my trusty Corona(my drink of choice) I ponder the ideas of the universe. This idea brings me to many ideas that I have noted in science from such great minds as Hawking, Descartes, Kant and even Homer Simpson with his idea of the donut shaped universe, a very perplexing idea indeed. What I have decided from all this is that the only thing I really know to be true is that I exist, "I think therefore I am" as Descartes puts it in his First Meditations of Philosophy and as for now it truly is the only thing I can prove.

Now wait, you may think, how can you doubt the outside world, it is right in front of you. Well yes it is but the thing is everything right in front of me I perceive through my senses and I realize that my senses can be wrong. Like take for instance when I have had a few too many of my trusty Coronas and I decide that I can beat the crap out of the 300 lb guy that just bumped into me. Yeah I may know karate but I also know just down right suicidal, except for when I have had too many coronas. That said we all know that even when we are stone cold somber we can be deceived by our senses, we might see things that aren't there or just from the angle we don't see it the same way as we would from another angle. With this said maybe you should rethink what you can clear and distinctly perceive to be real and false.

Everything has a beginning

Well boys and girls this is my first post on this thing so I thought I would start by introducing myself. My name is Michael Foreman, I am currently a junior at SIUE doing a philosophy major, I later plan on going to law school. I currently work at American Eagle and should start working at the Simmons Copper Law Firm this summer. The only other things worth noting about me is that because I am a phil major I usually have some sort of interesting idea that I am entertaining at the time so I thought I would put these ideas out in the world with this site. Enjoy everyone.