Small Bag of Fun Links

Courtesy Newmark, "College Writing Class Assignments with Real World Applications" including

6. Write a letter to your parents notifying them that you have decided to drop out of law school and they won't be getting back any of the money for this semester, which only started two weeks ago.
10. Write a cover letter to a bank manager that claims your B.A. in literature gives you advantages that people who have degrees in business, finance, or economics simply don't have.
11. Write an e-mail to your dad with not-so-subtle hints about how you're overqualified for the only openings you can find and how the job market is just not what it used to be.

Dave Barry asked these questions in 1986 and they're just as relevant today:

Where are the weird candidates? Who, on the national level, will pick up the torch dropped, with a typical lack of manual dexterity, by Richard M. Nixon? Where are the fat candidates? Where are the ugly candidates? Where are the stupid candidates? Where are the candidates who go to formal dinners and pass out in the shrimp? Who set fire to themselves with cigars? I believe that if we are to keep the tradition of participatory democracy going in this country, if we are to revive voter interest, we need more weird people running for high office, and we need them right now.

If you want to increase diversity in our nation's capital, try voting next week for the most outlandish the ugliest, or the fattest candidate you can find. Make it possible for people who don't fit into the mold to make it to the top. Because really, with obesity trends the way they are going, the only people left to fill our top leadership roles will come from Hollywood.

Can you differentiate between fake and genuine smiles? 20 tries.

From The .Plan "--Paul Sullivan, NYT, on the advantage of being a generalist"

Being able to look beyond their specialty early — as opposed to being highly specialized their entire career and then thrust into a leadership role — distinguished great leaders more than any inherent advantage in their upbringing... “These people had a chance to be a generalist early on, as opposed to being specialists their whole career,” Mr. Lindsay said. “They had that experience in their early 30s or 40s.”

 "The easiest way to feel creative is to find people who are more ignorant than yourself."