Texas Ranch House

A couple weeks back, Lori and I somehow got wrapped up in a PBS reality series called Texas Ranch House. The premise is 15 people living in manor of an 1867 ranch, complete with rounding up cattle, driving them to market, and surviving with 1867 technology.

As interesting as that sounds, what really made the show interesting were the interpersonal dynamics between members of the cast. The show was setup such that a family (mother, father, and three daughters) owned the ranch. They employed 9 ranch hands to build corrals and round up cattle as well as one "girl of all work" to help around the house. The ranch owner turned out to be an incredibly ineffectual manager who alternated between micromanaging and completely neglecting his employees. His wife had strong opinions about how to run the ranch, but forced her husband to lay down the law while sat in the background listening. At points I even found myself getting really upset about the inept way that they were managing their business.

I really liked this idea about using shows like this as management training tools. Experience is the best way to learn management, and shows like this could be really interesting case studies.

Here and here are a couple of blog posts about the show that I liked.

Banned in Boston

Interesting article last week in the Weekly Standard about the conflict in my home state of Massachusetts in the wake of legalized same sex marriage. Catholic Charities recently stopped providing all adoption services because they feared that they would be forced, on antidiscrimination grounds, to allow married same sex couples to adopt. Over the last few years, I have become more of a supporter of same sex marriage (more on that later). However, this situation strikes me as an example where government has exceeded its mandate by attempting to regulate thought. We need government to take a step back and allow citizens the freedom to define their own morality, even if that upsets people.

Guess I Was Wrong

Andrew Sullivan explains the Money Quote. And I thought that he was running a family website...

Money Comment

This is hilarious. When I first started reading Andrew Sullivan, I was amused with his "Money Quote" references. It never occurred to me that quite a few people might not get the reference. Apparently, Andrew never explained it and now I am quite sure that he will never will. In the mean time, numerous other bloggers also picked up on the terminology. For me this is classic hands off internet humor.