Orwell on the abuse of language

George Orwell writes on the abuse of language in his 1946 essay, “Politics and English Language.”

Objectivity in Media

Brooke Gladstone from NPR‘s On the Media dives into the murky conversation of objectivity in journalism in The Influencer in Slate.

Time Speeding Up

Adam Dachis explains why time seems to speed up as we grow older in Why New Experiences Are Important, and How They Positively Affect Your Perception of Time in a Brain Hack in LifeHacker.

The A-B-Cs of Planning Your Marathon

Planning your marathon race will take you a long way. Or put another way, doing your race-day homework will pay off.

Write out what you need for nutrition and hydration, pacing, mental preparedness, visualization and race logistics, says Bettina Warnholtz, President and Head Coach, of Race Lab, Scottsdale, Ariz.

“There are a lot of things you cannot control,” Warnholtz says. “Be in a relaxed mode, focus on the task at hand. No panic.” She gave a talk on marathon planning at REI, Paradise Valley, Jan. 13, 2011.

1. Nutrition
During the pre-race week, reduce your training volume, increase resting periods, increase carbohydrates (CHO) ratio, about 55 to 70 percent of total calories. People often make the mistake of starving themselves the final week because they are afraid to gain weight, Warnholtz says. This is the wrong thing to do

Instead:
– Take in 300-600 grams of CHO, emphasizing complex CHO.
– Eat clean foods and limit simple sugars and empty calories.
– Eat about five to six meals daily to maintain proper energy levels.
– Store glycogen, which is easily digestible. Low glycemic index.

During the pre-race day:
– Eat the same as pre-race week.
– Eat seven to nine meals throughout the whole day, and .
– Drink lots of water.
– Avoid heavy, spicy food.
– Get good hydration all day long and don’t forget electrolytes.

For hydration:
– Take extra electrolytes all week — 300-500 total electrolytes a day.
– EFS is a good product. Need 300-600 an hour of electrolytes.
– Combine water, carbohydrates and electrolytes.
– Consume drinks of less than eight percent of electrolytes. Any more is is nutrition not hydration.
– The best carbs can be had by mixing different types of sugars.
– During the race, don’t consume a gel with a carb drink.
– Take a gel every 30-40 minutes.
– Consume 120-250 calories an hour.
– Remember: Glucose has a 10 Glucose Index, or G.I.
– Oatmeal has fiber. Eat an apple, not apple juice.

Two hours before the race:
– Eat a pre-race meal of 70 percent carborhydrats, 15 percent protein and 15 percent fat.
– East low fiber, low fat, some protein, plus 20-32 ounces of water.
– Consume solid and liquid nutrition that is easily digested
– Consume two to four calories per pound of body weight.
– A 150-pound athlete needs 300-600 calories.
– Try half of a banana and a gel.
– Yogurt, apple slices and pieces of cheese are a good, easy, natural mix.
– Get an even energy source, feel better and not feel depleted.
– Try one salt tablet or a sports drink.

Close to the start:
– Have a pre-race snack with complex CHO, liquid or gel, totaling 100-200 calories.
– Avoid high fiber, fat and protein.
– Body can store only 1,800-2,000 calories in muscles and liver.

During the race:
– Don’t forget — avoid consuming gels with energy drinks.
– You will burn 2,500 to 6,000 calories during event, but can only store 2,500 calories before race.
– Eat and drink the same things you did during long training sessions.
While it is rare, beware of hyponatremia — a condition of a low sodium ratio in blood plasma. The
sweat rate is typically 300-600 milligrams of electrolytes g per 16 ounces of lost fluid.

Post event: 30:00 to two hours after the race:
– Eat carbs: 0.5 grams per pound of body weight in 30 minutes, and repeat in two hours.
– Eat six to 20 grams of protein within 30 minutes as part of meal within two hours.
– Take in 110-200 milligrams of sodium in eight ounce of water.

Sometimes it pays to be flexible, Warnholtz says. Before a marathon in French Bordeaux, she lost her
favorite gels and resorted to eating grapes from aid stations along the way, which worked out just fine.
Chocolate milk is considered an excellent recovery drink. Forget gels — they are junk food for the race.
Also, full-strength coffee generally may be good to drink, as caffeine helps burn fatty acids, she says.

Pace strategy
Having a series of goals, finishing strong, not bonking and giving everything you have on race day is
an exemplary plan, she says.
“Do your best with what you have that day.”

Rely on your intensity, heart rate or perceived exertion, but not pace, Warnholtz says. A racer should stay under the lactose threshold until the last hours of the race.

“If you reach it sooner, lactic acid build-up will develop in the muscles,” she says.

Start slow to finish fast, running each segment faster than last.

“If that is not possible, you are running too fast,” she says. If you start 10 seconds faster than what
you should, this will equal one minute at the end.

There are five defined stages in the marathon
1. Warm up: First two miles
2. Comfort Zone: Five-12 miles
Breathing is labored, but you feel you can go faster. You feel strong, can go much faster but holding back.
3. Quiet Zone: 13-17. Keep moving, don’t think too much.
4. Mental Zone: 18-22. You dig deep. Check your hydration.
5. Finale: 23-26. You pick up pace, settle in, pick up pace, and repeat.

“The race starts at mile 20,” she says. Think of a six-mile run you typically do, and run that.
“Think right. Think of what you are accomplishing. You chose to do it. Finishing a marathon is a blessing.
Forget about pain. Think about what you need to do.”

Think mental readiness and practice visualization. Sit back, close your eyes and go through what you want it to be — a week before race. Have a plan for what you want can go wrong. Think: I will do the best I can do on this particular day.

Sustain your confidence and determination to achieve your goal. Keep an “I-can” attitude. Think about the performance of your body and your motivation, she says. Have an unshakeable belief in your ability to reach your goal. Think of your hard work and preparation with no fear or doubts. Focus on the task at hand. Plan you goals. Write out a plan on paper — a series of sequenced goals.

Finish, enjoy and feel okay with your results at end of race. “Be satisfied with the results,” she says.
“You do what you want with the race.”

Use your mental readiness and toughness. Also, consider the x factor. The human body can only do so much, and then the hear and soul take over.

The great distance runnerLasse Viren didn’t give up, she says. He fell during the 10,000 meters in the 1972 Olympics, got up, and went on not only to win the race but to break the record.

Steal, beg or borrow to boost your ideas into something great

Austin Kleon, a writer and artist living in Austin, Texas, offers up a provocative theory here. It’s worth checking out.

This site works well

Panabee. If you need some ideas for a domain name, you should try it.

Zig when your competition zags: Social media driving school

To make a difference in social media strategy for your company, zig when your customers zag, Joe Manna says.

And remember the big picture: Create content that engages people. “Quality content, however, demands quality time,” Manna says.

Joe Manna

Manna presented “How B-2-B Small Businesses Can Implement Social Media Sustainably and Effectively” April 20, 2011, at special interest group event organized by the American Marketing Association, Phoenix Chapter.

Beware of the time-draining Twitter and FaceBook channels. “There’s no money in that,” says Manna, who is community manager at InfusionSoft and who used to work as a community manager at AOL. There are more eyeballs or dollars per keystroke on a blog than e-mail marketing, Manna says.

For blog posts, start a conversation, pose a question or short survey, share a story, customer testimonial, free reports, reaction to major events or industry trends. Share valuable updates around the clock in your company and mix it up with lead generation, culture, brand, service and content.

“A blog post is a mini-skirt: It has to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject,” Manna quotes a recent post by @WendyMarx.

A good frequency is blogging two times a week, Tweeting a few times a day and posting on Facebook once daily, he says.

Some common real-world challenges in getting a fledgling social media program up and running include:
1. Lack of executive support. Solution: Find one executive sponsor, and share your vision.
2. Not knowing where to start. Solution: Reverse engineer competitors who do social media right, and make realistic, but ambitious goals.
3. Few resources, budget and staff. Solution: Start small and let the results make the case for more resources. Find out what your competitor does with you as a prospect.
4. Lack of results: Solution: Expect nothing. Do it for the cause of your company.

Think effective vs. sustainable vs. efficient. Are efforts scalable with the company’s growth?

For analytics, there are abstract Key Performance Indicators — requiring context — such as inbound mentions, web analytics, SEO rankings and Facebook insights, and related KPIs — requiring no context — such as revenue, cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value, customer service saturation percentage, NPS and cost.

A few other ideas Manna recommends:
– Keep a cross-department editorial calendar or content plan.
– Use HyperAlert for e-mail alerts.
– Other useful posting tools in order of complexity, power features and cost from low to high: HootSuite, CoTweet, TrackURL, ViralHeat, Position2, Sysomos and Radian6.
– Develop an auto-response sequence.
– Own a key search term.
– Direct traffic to a specific landing page.

More resources:
Social Media for B-2-B Businesses
Infusionsoft’s 28-page guide on internet marketing tips to apply in business

Radical transparency: Getting real with green

Initiatives to go green are often tarnished by phony PR, marketing noise and advertising fluff. Consumers are smarter than corporate executive teams think they are, and easily see through this vague haze, ignore it — or worse — lash out at it on social media channels such as Twitter. Instead, savvy consumers want to know exactly how companies claim they are green.

“We need the facts. Don’t fluff them up,” says Dawn Brown, Leed accredited architect of Deutsch Architecture Group, Phoenix.

Companies like Patagonia capitalize on radical transparency — telling the straight dope on the real environmental impact of the material goods we consume by telling stories in its Footprint Chronicles about its environmental campaigns. Patagonia gets honest about the struggles it faces in building a sustainable enterprise, according to Derrick Mains, CEO of Green Nurture, Tempe, Ariz. Patagonia’s willingness to tell consumer about its imperfections makes its fans even more devoted to the outdoor gear brand.

The only organization that truly can call itself green is Green Peace, according to Park Howell, owner, Park&Co., Phoenix. Others should re-frame green as a complete social responsibility program or tie it in with sustainability, and, for example, something more specific, such as recycling, fuel savings and product life-cycle.

The trio spoke in the panel discussion “How Being Green Can Pay Big Dividends To Your Bottom Line” at an event organized by the Phoenix Chapter of the American Marketing Association in Phoenix March 30, 2011.

Forget the ROI: Show how social media will get you to your other marketing goals

It’s hard showing higher-ups in the organization that there’s an R.O.I. on social media, isn’t it? Instead, win them on social by showing how it will help achieve your other — more conventional — marketing goals.

This is the better direction, according to a panel speaking on “The Facts about New Media or Case Studies That Show How It Actually Works in Real Life,” at a get-together of the Phoenix Chapter of American Marketing Association in Phoenix, Feb. 23, 2011.

Michael Barber, Digital Strategist at Defero, Aaron Bare, CEO of Buzzmouth and Chris Bird, V.P. of Bulbstorm offered up other tidbits. Among them:

1. Try Flowtown.
2. Push Twitter into your blog and FaceBook site.
3. Want to see how a consumer product should by promoted on FaceBook? Like Coke.
4. Ask for referrals on LinkedIn.
5. Start an event on FaceBook. Events with a deadline build scarcity.
6. The most impressive FaceBook stat: active users.
7. Is your B-to-B business boring? Give it a unique story.

Ninety percent of people will check you out on line before doing business with you, according to the panel. Not surprising, but worth remembering.

The event was moderated by Jackie Kardesh of the Phoenix Business Journal.

Another Interesting Menu

I get a kick out of the creative wording of menus from little — and sometimes not-so-little — independent restaurants. The latest one’s from Dragon China, a self-proclaimed Japanese Sushi Bar, Szechuan, Hunan, Cantonese, New York-style place in Orlando. I had a delivery made to my hotel room after helping set up a 10-by-20-foot corporate trade show exhibit at Power-Gen International, Dec. 14-16, 2010.

I ordered the four fantail shrimp appetizer and the house specialty — Wonderful Chicken, described as: “Slice white meat chicken sauteed with our chef’s special golden brown sauce lightly spices. You don’t even know why you love it so much. Please try it.”

With a description like that, who could resist? Plus, I wanted to try something for which I wouldn’t even know why I’d love it so much. And, while it verges on desperation, I feel the menu made a real connection to me in issuing a declaration, a sincere plea for someone to order the dish: “Please try it.”

Well, it was, in fact, pretty wonderful, and — the menu’s right — I still don’t know why I love it so much.