Weekend Edition: The Secrets Of JFK Edition

TV SHOW: SEN. TOM COTTON + THE STATE OF THE SUPERPROJECT

This week on Talk Business & Politics:

The state legislature does its part to help Arkansas land a $30 billion superproject in Camden. What might this mean for the Arkansas economy and what happens next? Mike Preston, director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, is our guest.

Our political roundtable dissects the special session including the superproject and party primary moves. Wes Brown and Jessica DeLoach Sabin offer analysis.

Plus, Sen. Tom Cotton has an opinion – on the superproject, the latest in Congress, and the GOP presidential field. Sen. Cotton is in studio for a one-on-one interview.

Tune in to Talk Business & Politics on Sunday at 9 a.m. on KATV Ch. 7.

WANT TO BE A BETTER ENTREPRENEUR?
How about traveling the world?  That’s what entrepreneur Gillian Morris did in what he calls “an unconventional career path.”

“After college, I took an unconventional career path. No two-year contract with a bank or consulting firm, no paralegal work, not even a stint on my parents’ couch. I took a contract to teach English in China for a month and decided I’d figure out the rest along the way,” he said.

Over the next five years, I lived and worked my way through Mongolia, Russia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Turkey. I taught English, worked as a freelance journalist, wrote analysis for a consulting firm, and threw parties to bring together the fascinating people I met along the way.

Friends openly wondered if I’d ever get back on the career path after “disappearing” for years.

How did he do it and what didn’t his friends realize? Find out from Harvard Business Review at this link.

IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO LISTEN, STOP TALKING
Want to be a “master persuader”? Harvard Business Review says there is power in what you don’t say.

It’s counterintuitive, but it turns out that listening is far more persuasive than speaking.

It is easy to fall into the habit of persuasion by argument. But arguing does not change minds — if anything, it makes people more intransigent. Silence is a greatly underestimated source of power. In silence, we can hear not only what is being said but also what is not being said. In silence, it can be easier to reach the truth.

We can feel the substance behind the noise.

If you would like to learn more about this persuasive source of power, including the No. 1 thing you must do, click here.

“TED TALK”
Mr. Media Training asks, “What makes a TED talk go viral?”

But first what actually is a TED talk and what does it stand for?

Wikipedia says:  TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a global set of conferences run by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan “Ideas Worth Spreading.”  TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event; the annual conference series began in 1980.  TED’s early emphasis was technology and design, consistent with its Silicon Valley origins, but it has since broadened its focus to include talks on many scientific, cultural and academic topics.

So back to our original question, what makes a TED talk go viral?

The TED Blog recently asked that question and used a research-based study to answer it. According to TED:

“Over the last year, a human behavior consultancy called Science of People set out to answer this question. To do so, says founder Vanessa Van Edwards, they polled 760 volunteers, asking them to rate hundreds of hours of TED Talks, looking for specific nonverbal and body language patterns.”

Five specific patterns were found.  Learn what they were at this link.

CELL PHONES ARE BIG AGAIN
ALLDAY reports on what is commonly known. What is old style can become new again. Except we’re not talking about fashion here, but rather cell phones.

Cell phones were massive. Then they shrunk.  Now they’re enormous again. Here’s why:

Read more at this link.

RUBIO’S BLUEPRINT
Actually The Washington Post calls it a “A Rubio 2016 blueprint, for all to see.”

“It isn’t often that a presidential campaign blueprint comes packaged between covers and available in bookstores and online for all to see. But that’s the inescapable conclusion from looking through the pages of the book entitled, “2016 and Beyond,” by Republican pollster Whit Ayres,” the Post reports.

Ayres is one of his party’s leading analysts. He also happens to be the pollster for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The new book is subtitled, “How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America.” If not exactly the strategy memo for a Rubio campaign, it’s a good proxy.

Read more on Ayres’ research and analysis and what it means for GOP Presidential candidates at this link.

LAST OF SECRET JFK DOCUMENTS COULD BE RELEASED
A special team of seven archivists and technicians with top-secret security clearances has been set up at the National Archives and Records Administration to process all or portions of 40,000 documents that constitute the final collection of known federal records that might shed light on the events surrounding JFK’s murder, POLITICO has learned — files that according to law must be made public by October 2017.

But the records’ release is not guaranteed, says Martha Murphy, head of the National Archives’ Special Access Branch. While the JFK Records Act of 1992 mandated the files be made public in 25 years, government agencies that created the paper trail can still appeal directly to the president to keep them hidden.

 And some scholars and researchers, not to mention the army of JFK conspiracy theorists, fear that is exactly what will happen given the details about the deepest, darkest corners of American spy craft that could be revealed — from the inner workings of the CIA’s foreign assassination program and front companies to the role of a CIA psychological operations guru accused of misleading congressional investigators about alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities.

Could we ever see these records that some say will provide a “beautiful snapshot of Cold War America and the intelligence community,” and others “predict” could lead to a “smoking gun”?

Follow this link for the full story.

THE DENNIS HASTERT ORDEAL
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert catapulted back onto the national stage this week when he was indicted on money laundering charges tied to what appears a “hush money” scandal dating back to his pre-Congress years as a high school teacher and coach.

The turn of events has led many to question how the low-key Hastert became so wealthy to spend millions covering up a hidden past. The Washington Post has delved deeply into Hastert’s finances and reports:

Former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who was indicted Thursday on charges of concealing bank withdrawals related to a secret $1.7 million payoff, made a fortune through real estate investments before leaving Congress.

In one controversial trans­action conducted through a trust, Hastert reaped millions of dollars by selling farmland near the site of a proposed highway that was to be financed in part with funds that the then-speaker had earmarked.

When he arrived in Washington in 1987, Hastert’s biggest asset was a 104-acre farm in southern Illinois that his wife inherited, worth between $50,000 and $100,000, according to his personal financial disclosure. By the time the Illinois Republican left 20 years later, his reported assets had swelled to between $3.1 million and $11.3 million, largely because of his investments in farmland in booming parts of Illinois.

Read more at this link.

THE FIFA SCANDAL
We couldn’t close out the week without exploring the politics of the FIFA indictment. The governing body for world soccer is facing scrutiny from U.S. prosecutors vowing to clean up what they say is massive corruption.

Hours after Swiss authorities arrived unannounced at a Zurich hotel and arrested top FIFA officials early Wednesday morning, the Justice Department and prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York forcefully declared that their investigation had only just begun and pledged to rid the international soccer organization of systemic corruption.

“These individuals and organizations engaged in bribery to decide who would televise games, where the games would be held, and who would run the organization overseeing organized soccer worldwide,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who supervised the investigation from its earliest stages, when she was the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “They did this over and over, year after year, tournament after tournament.”

Read more in-depth coverage of this international scandal from The New York Times.

VIEW FROM A DRONE OF SUDAN’S MYSTERIOUS NUBIAN PYRAMIDS
Everyone’s heard of the great pyramids of Egypt, but thousands of kilometers further south along the Nile stands another impressive group of ancient structures, which have survived in the Sudanese desert for the past 3,000 years.

And thanks to this new drone footage captured by National Geographic, we’re finally able to get some insight into the sheer scale of these incredible and little-studied pyramids.

Take a great ride, here.

20 INCREDIBLE IMAGES OF ATOMIC AGE INFRASTRUCTURE
The image is simple. It’s just some old-fashioned light bulbs aglow in a facility that reminds one of the boiler room from high school. But the shot is hugely historic along with the other images posted by Gizmodo of the post World War II atomic age era from the archives of the Department of Energy.

The Department of Energy keeps plenty of archival phtos from the post-war era on Flickr, including one gigantic album of AEC-affiliated facilities, from Fermilab to the Stanford Linear Accelerator. It’s a vivid look at a complicated, sprawling organization whose legacy ranges from important to morally indefensible.

Click on this link for 20 of the more “incredible” ones, including why the simple shot of those burning light bulbs was so important.