Craig's Corner

I used to like to watch cable news.   Then the hyperventilating began.   More egregious than the breathless introductions has become the repetitiveness – saying the same thing in 3 different ways.   Listen to any of the questions being asked – it’s asked, summarized and rephrased all before the guest has a change to weigh in.   It’s a total irritation and waste of time.   It’s done because repetition is effective in making an impact.   People need to hear things multiple times.   Consumer buying behavior indicates that it can take dozens of impressions to move people to action.   This is why repetition matters.   Repeating things helps people understand things when it’s phrased differently and compels them to act.   There’s lots of data to support the thesis that providing information multiple times causes people to remember the message. Anniversaries are opportunities to reflect and remember.   At my Parish in Hollywoo...

This past weekend in the Twin Cities was beautiful – 75 degrees, sunny, just really nice.   Monday morning flurries and hail and thunderstorms welcomed the week.   The weather in Minnesota is a hot topic of conversation here (mostly because it tries to kill you so often).   It seems most people are meteorologists in their spare time and quite anxious to explain the disparity from one day to the next.   Others of us who aren't quite as anxious to know why there are huge swings in climate just refer to it as weather.  As humans logic is how our brains process conflicting pieces of stimuli and information.   We don’t always come to the same conclusions as this week's news proves. Tony Perkins, the President of the Family Research Council concluded that this week’s Secret Service scandal was a direct result of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell   “It [the hiring of prostitutes] was actually legal; it was legal there to do that, so why should we...

Mid-April marks the annual reconciliation with the IRS.  It also is the six-month marker from when President Obama deployed the military and began a defacto war in Africa.     Mid-April is also when the 2011 Presidential financial reports become public.  An underreported fact shows that 87% of military contributions went to RonPaul .  In the 2008 election Dr. Paul received more than double the dollars than President Obama received from active military donors.  Obama at that time was the other anti-war candidate and combined they received nearly all of the donations from military personnel.  It’s a powerful statement that the working men and women of the military overwhelmingly support anti-war candidates.  Is anybody listening? The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150 countries around the world, with more than 205,118 of its 1,425,113 active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its terri...

“April Fools” is an expression used as the punch line to many a gag the other day.  April 1 has been a day of jokes going back to Chaucer’s Canterbury tales in 1392.     I love frivolity, humor and a good gag as much (if not more so) than anybody.  With my self-depreciating sense of humor, I’m also a good sport about being the brunt of a joke.  I’m less enamored with the three separate incidents this week that show how our privacy has gone public...really the basis of what should be a bad joke but isn't.   The Supreme Court authorized strip searches of people arrested – even for minor incidents.  In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid.  This decision makes the TSA seem restrained.  Certainly nobody wants guards to be at risk.  If there’s a reasonable suspicion the practice...