Obama’s proposed financial regulations aren’t terrible, but are they motivated by prudence or populism? The NY Times’s new revenue model also has potential, but needs to be pulled off the right way.

Bob reports on the latest in the Microsoft/Google/Apple frenemy love triangle: Bing may become the default iPhone search engine.

And we recap the Golden Globes, that less-credible stepsibling of the Academy Awards.

Listen here:

Download directly:  Practically Ideal Episode 7 (Right-click and select “Save Link As…”)

Or via iTunes:

As always, music is provided courtesy of Devin Martin and David Wesson from the Emergence and Charles Jischke. I encourage you to follow the links and check them out further.Listen

One of my heroes is Shawn Phillips.

[Background: I used Shawn's brother Bill's Body for Life program quite successfully when it came out about ten years ago. I lost a lot of weight and got in great shape. A few years later, somehow the program's effectiveness had diminished for me. Then I heard Shawn in an interview with Ken Wilber on the old Integral Naked website, and I was excited about some of Shawn's updates to the program. A little later, Shawn came out with Strength for Life, which explained his new insights and put the whole thing together in a new and improved program that extends into being an effective person with strength to be successful at life, not just get big muscles or hit a target weight. Thrilled, I jumped into the new routine last year and felt my fitness (and life) starting to get back up to where I wanted it to be. I'm back on a Transformation cycle, starting yesterday, ready to kick it in gear and get up to my peak physical condition in twelve weeks.]

Since both Shawn and I are now on Twitter, I figured I’d give a holla that I was starting his strength program and was pumped about it. He hit me back with an encouraging “right on!,” which made my day right there. But it gets better. His reply came just as I was tweeting my latest podcast episode. Apparently, he noticed my podcast and started listening, tweeting that he was enjoying the ‘cast!

Here’s the exchange:

LoganBeaux @shawn_phillips Started a transformation cycle today. Feel great! Now enjoying a Full Strength shake. Let’s rock this shit! 9:30 AM Jan 24th from web

Shawn_Phillips @LoganBeaux Right on! RT @shawn_phillips Started a transformation today. Feel great! Enjoying a Full Strength shake. Let’s rock this shit! about 2 hours ago from CoTweet in reply to LoganBeaux

LoganBeaux Podcast ep 6 is a week late but it’s now live! Google/China, Conan/Leno, Twitter/Facebook, Midseason TV http://lbeaux.com/?p=446 about 1 hour ago from web

Shawn_Phillips@LoganBeaux enjoying the show! RT : Podcast ep 6 live! Google/China, Conan/Leno, Twitter/Facebook, Midseason TV http://lbeaux.com/?p=446 39 minutes ago from Power Twitter in reply to LoganBeaux

LoganBeaux@Shawn_Phillips Thanks! I’m honored. Been a huge fan of yours since I heard you on Integral Naked w/ KenW! RT @LoganBeaux enjoying the show! 16 minutes ago from web in reply to Shawn_Phillips

Which is why Twitter kicks ass. A personal hero is listening to my podcast, all thanks to Twitter.

Google has second thoughts on its presence in China after suffering a cyberattack, but is its response the right thing to do? And Conan and Leno, what a circus!

Twitter and Facebook seem to be getting more and more like each other. Is this a good thing?

This episode also contains our midseason TV check-in.

Listen here:

Download directly:  Practically Ideal Episode 6 (Right-click and select “Save Link As…”)

Or via iTunes:

As always, music is provided courtesy of Devin Martin and David Wesson from the Emergence and Charles Jischke. I encourage you to follow the links and check them out further.

Well I’m still waiting for Comcast to get someone over here to fix my cable so I can watch the Big Love season premiere. So I may as well provide links to the reviews I’ve been reading in the meantime.

Salon.com (Heather Havrilesky): “And this is where ‘Big Love’ really succeeds: By demonstrating the challenges of holding together an elaborate, unwieldy group of individuals, the drama presents an exaggerated portrayal of the very fragile nature of the nuclear family.”

HitFix.com (Todd VanDerWerff): “‘Big Love’ is decidedly agnostic about whether this way of life is a good thing for its central characters, particularly its women. It’s smart enough to realize all of the ways polygamy stunts the growth of Barb, Nicki and Margene, but it’s also smart enough to realize that the Henrickson suburban compound is seductive in its own way, as are all religious sects.”

New York Magazine/Vulture (Nick Catucci): “But the true (and we have to say brilliant) farce plays out between Bill’s parents. Lois — who, with Ben’s help, is flipping birds, picked up at swamp meets, to pet stores — meets Frank for ice cream, and he brings along three goons with ropes. Luckily, she’s packing a pistol. Later he comes to her apartment, and as the birds make their cacophony, the two enact the greatest elderly fight scene we’ve ever witnessed, a messy, lurching match that’s as hilarious as it is pathetic.”

The AV Club (Amelie Gillette): “For me, the most effective part of tonight’s episode was the Henrickson church service—not just because it was one of the few scenes that held for more than 60 seconds, but because Barb, Nicki, and Margene, the emotional centers of the show, were at the center of it. When Bill asked his small congregation if there was anything that they’d like to pray for, it was a revealing, character-deepening moment: Margie, always the chipper cheerleader/businesswoman prayed for the casino to succeed; Barb, ever the nurturer, prayed for the church to bring the family together; and Nicki, being Nicki, prayed for herself, that she would be forgiven.”

Entertainment Weekly (Ken Tucker): “I like the idea of Bill running for political office in order to defend his polygamous lifestyle. So is anything to do with Alby Grant (Matt Ross), a devious son of Roman Grant hellbent on controlling dad’s empire but unable to resist cruising men in the park, a scandal in the making. (These two strands entwine artfully as well: Bill’s move into the political arena for a certain kind of sexual freedom can stand as a metaphor for gay-marriage rights, and the repression Alby suffers, no matter how much of a weasel he is in his other dealings, is rendered with stinging poignance.)”

New Jersey Star-Ledger (Alan Sepinwall): “The strongest aspect of the series, by far, is the interplay between the three wives and their kids (notably Amanda Seyfried as eldest daughter Sarah, who wants no part of her family’s lifestyle). Everything else — Bill’s businesses, his clashes with local politicians and church leaders, and, especially, all the shenanigans with the caricatured weirdos at Juniper Creek — feel like distractions.”

Bob declares 2010 the year of the e-Reader, and we break down what needs to happen for e-Books to break big.

Finally, we give our Big Love preview. Season 4 started Sunday. If you’re not watching it yet, we’ll talk you into it!

Listen here: 

Download directly: Practically Ideal Episode 5 (Right-click and select “Save Link As…”)

Or via iTunes:

As always, music is provided courtesy of Devin Martin and David Wesson from the Emergence and Charles Jischke. I encourage you to follow the links and check them out further.

According to the plaintiffs’ brief (which I’ve admittedly only skimmed), Prop 8 is being challenged on Due Process and Equal Protection grounds. My outta-my-legal-specialty (and outta-my-ass) analysis finds both grounds relatively shaky as the law stands now. The best chance plaintiffs have is if they can successfully argue that Prop 8 employs a classification based on sexual orientation that qualifies for strict scrutiny and that gays and lesbians constitute “a group that has been subjected to a history of discrimination and is defined by a ‘characteristic’ that ‘frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society.’”

Not sure the law sees it that way. (Though, again, I could certainly be wrong.) Which brings me back to being torn. As I said, I’m not a big fan of courts making new law. As pissed off as I am at the people of California for voting for Prop 8, that’s the way laws get made in that crazy state. But in this case, changing the law through the courts would lead to a good end result–in fact, I suppose it’s possible that this case could ultimately end in a US Supreme Court ruling declaring same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional throughout the entire country, which would be fantastic, if you’re an ends-justifies-the-means sort of person.

My dream scenario, of course, is that we could get same-sex marriage legislation passed in every state. But that’s not happening any time soon. Of course, I really don’t see this judicial challenge being successful either. I imagine at the end of this I’ll find myself in a country that still mostly prevents same-sex marriage and in this one case didn’t create new law judicially. Uh, huzzah?

Here are the latest HBO previews:

Clip 1 (watch full-size in popup window)

Clip 2 (watch full-size in popup window)

Clip 3 (watch full-size in a popup window)

Counting the minutes until tomorrow night . . .

More on salaries here.

(Via Felix Salmon via Tyler Cowen.)

This passage highlights the combination of deeper purpose and profit motive (and explains the necessary organizational setup to do it effectively):

The reason Google.org is not just a foundation is that lots of people believe that if you want to have a big impact at scale on the world, then you need to go beyond what a 501(c)3 can do, which is to make charitable grants, so you need the ability to invest in companies, to do engineering projects, to do things that might at some point actually make money.

We’d be delighted if some of this stuff actually made money, obviously; it is not our goal to not make money. All else being equal, we’d like to make as much money as we can, but the principal goal is to have a big impact for good.

That could almost be read right out of the John Mackey playbook.

I recently composed, for a separate project, a brief outline of the book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. The book offers fantastic practical advice for changing the way we look at and participate in tough conversations involving relationships, offering criticism, emotionally-charged situations, etc.

The summary is short and a little rough, but I wrote it because I couldn't find anything better for free on the Internet. So even though it's nothing fancy I'm posting it here in the hope that it may be of some benefit to my fellow conflict resolution Googlers.]

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Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

When conversations start to get difficult, usually three conversations are going on, but we’re often not consciously aware of all of them:

1. The “What Happened?” Conversation. Common errors in this conversation are focusing on who is right, what each person intended by saying or doing something, and who’s to blame for the problem or for things getting out of control.

2. The Feelings Conversation. Often we don’t acknowledge what we’re feeling about the topic or the conversation. If things are getting charged, obviously we’re feeling something big, and if we can notice it in ourselves (and possibly mention it to others but maybe not, depending on the situation) we’ll be better able to integrate our feelings and navigate the conversation we want to be having. Otherwise, our suppressed emotions are likely to come out in unhelpful ways.

3. The Identity Conversation. When the stakes are high, our ideas about how we see ourselves and what the outcome says about us are often in play. Having our self-images challenged can be disorienting and anxiety-provoking, sometimes without us realizing why.

In a “difficult conversation,” it’s easy for someone to say something meant to be confined to just one aspect of the conversation that gets interpreted by the other as having implications for the others, or vice versa. In fact, that’s pretty much what makes tough conversations tough.

Note: When a conversation gets hard, it’s important to realize that it might be better to let it go. Remember: you can’t change other people who don’t want to change, short-term relief may have long-term psychological or relationship costs, and hit-and-run comments may not be helpful if you don’t have time or energy to really talk through the issue. If it’s hard to let things go even when it makes sense to do so, remember that it’s your responsibility to do your best and NOT to make things better, the other person has limitations and failings too, the conflict is not who you are, and letting go doesn’t mean you don’t care.

That said, if you are going to engage the conversation, focus on purposes like learning the other side’s story and why they have the views they have, expressing your views and feelings to your own satisfaction, and collaborating to solve the problem.

Then, try to have a Learning Conversation:

1. Begin from the “Third Story” , i.e., the story using neutral language an observer with no stake might tell and both sides might accept, and invite the other to join in the purpose of mutual problem-solving if it makes sense to both of you.

2. Listen, using the skills of inquiry, paraphrasing, and acknowledgment.

3. Express your own story by speaking for yourself with clarity and power. Speak directly. Don’t present your conclusions as The Truth, share where your conclusions come from, and don’t exaggerate with “always” and “never” and give the other person room to change.

4. Take the lead in problem-solving. Reframe what is said in terms of the three-conversations framework. Listen to what’s being said. Name any dynamic that is preventing progress. Then, use problem-solving techniques like those in Getting to Yes.