Microsoft's Game Free Cell is a Metaphor for Career Success

I heard someplace that Microsoft developed the Solitaire game Free Cell in order to help teach people how to drag and drop on a computer screen using the mouse. Nevertheless, since its inception the game has been played hundreds of millions of times by people thoroughly familiar with using a computer mouse, most of whom are looking for a way to pass the time.

I too enjoy playing Free Cell, but over time I’ve become convinced that the strategy for winning the game is a metaphor for the strategy of winning at life. My strategy is simple: 1) I try to reach for the heights, piling as many cards on top of one pile as I can from the other piles; 2) I am relatively unconcerned with where the “prize” Aces are; and 3) I let final completion of the puzzle surprise me with it swift resolution. Allow me to explain why this is a metaphor for career success and even life.

By reaching for the heights, I am unconcerned about short term goals, like getting the next card or removing cards from the playing table. The strategy is to “reach for lofty goals” while being unconcerned with receiving immediate credit for solving the puzzle. I’ll admit to being somewhat spiritual in my metaphor and thinking that the more I aspire to achieving Divine will on earth, the more likely I am to achieve worldly success at some unexpected point, seemingly without striving for it.

While I claim to not be overly concerned about where the “Aces” are on the table, I always do note their positions. If they can be reached by moving just one card off of the table to one of the four “free cells,” then I do it, but I will seldom fill two free cells just to reach an Ace.  In other words, while I am unconcerned about worldly goals, if there is “low-hanging fruit,” I do snatch it because it makes completion of the remainder of the game easier.

I am always surprised that when Aces come too easily at the beginning of the game, and without too much struggle, that the game is to successfully finish. When a game starts with two aces on the tops of the piles, a situation which should make the puzzle easy to solve, I frequently fail. I don’t know why that is, but the metaphor is that easy gains lead to ultimate failure and that it is better to have to struggle for those gains than to have them handed to you without your having to expend effort. If I see a game starting with too many advantages, I know that I am unlikely to succeed in completing it.

By following this strategy: reaching for new heights, being unconcerned about receiving credit, and being nonchalant about reaping immediate rewards, I find that suddenly the puzzle is finished, the cards are all falling into place effortlessly, and my success seems effortless as well. However, I know that it was only by selflessly toiling earlier in the game that my ultimate success comes so suddenly.

Anyway,  if you too find Free Cell to be a metaphor for career success and for life,  let others know.  It may help them to succeed while making success appear to effortlessly fall into their laps.

Professor Rod Sullivan

Contrast: Hillary Clinton and Dr. Rice

I am convinced that Hillary Clinton, despite her protestations, will be President Obama’s running mate in the 2012 election.  If I am right, then Dr. Rice provides an refreshing contrast to Mrs. Clinton.

First, Dr. Rice rose to the position of Secretary of State on the merits of her education, training and ability.  Mrs. Clinton rose to the position of Secretary of State by being the First Lady.  Is she competent?  Yes.  Did she help make Bill Clinton the man he is?  Yes.  Did she get where she is through her own hard work and determination?  Being honest.  She got there through marriage.  I know, that’s politically incorrect.  However, it happens to be true.

Secondly, Dr. Rice’s tenure as Secretary of State outshines that of  Mrs. Clinton’s.  Mrs. Clinton presided over the Arab Spring, the destabilization of the Middle East, and the rise of Iran as a nuclear power.  We will long live to rue these changes in world politics.  Did she cause them?  I doubt it.   Did she hasten them?  We’ll never know.

Thirdly, both Dr. Rice and Hillary Clinton will appeal to female voters.  However, Dr. Rice won’t repel the votes of men like Mrs. Clinton will.

Contrast: Barrack Obama and Dr. Rice

Dr. Rice has impeccable academic credentials.  She would be proud, I am sure, to share her college transcripts with the world.  Barrack Obama’s college and law school transcripts have never seen the light of day.

Dr. Rice has written academically for years.  These are her own works, crafted in her own hand, reflecting her own thought on important topics.  Barrack Obama is the only editor in the history of the Harvard Law Review to have never published a scholarly article.  He has never published an scholarly paper, even as a college professor.  His ability to rise in both Harvard and academia without writing or publishing can only be attributable to one thing—he was pushed along despite failing to meet the minimum requirements to be a law review editor or a college professor.

Dr. Rice and Barrack Obama have both written books about themselves, but no one doubts that Dr. Rice authored her own books by herself.  The lingering doubt about Barrack Obama is that his books were ghost-written by political supporters to promote his candidacy to the Presidency.

Dr. Rice can speak eloquently extemporaneously, and without notes.  Barrack Obama fears leaving his Teleprompter.  It is his crutch and his support.  The words projected on it are the words crafted by others for him to speak.

Barrack Obama was the product of a less than ideal home.  He was raised without a father, and primarily by his grandmother.  Dr. Rice was raised in a loving home with a mother and father who were educated, hard-working, and married.

Dr. Rice grew up knowing racism in Birmingham, Alabama.  Barrack Obama grew up in multi-ethnic Hawaii and Indonesia.  He didn’t know the sting of racism that Dr. Rice did.

In short, Dr. Rice and Barrack Obama make a glaring contrast of what African-American’s can overcome in this country.

Contrast: Mitt Romney and Dr. Rice

Romney Gives Great Stump Speeches

Mitt Romney’s strong suits are executive ability, financial ability, leadership ability and domestic policy.  Dr. Rice’s strong suits are foreign policy, language, and the arts.

Dr. Rice was the National Security Advisor on 9/11.  She speaks Russian.  She is a concert pianist.  She knows all the leaders of the world, and particularly those of the former Eastern Bloc,  on a first name basis.  Mitt Romney and Dr. Rice complement each other.

The Question of Religion

Let’s fact it, the religion question is out there.  While George Romney’s faith was never even raised when he ran for President in 1968, we have become less religiously tolerant over the past 44 years, and now people, including my own mother,  are being silently bigoted about Mitt Romney’s religion.

Dr. Rice is a Presbyterian—one of God’s frozen chose, as Presbyterians are proud of calling themselves.  She is the granddaughter of a Presbyterian minister.  She doesn’t wear her faith on her sleeve, but she is a person of faith.  Her silent but heartfelt faith is part of her strength, and her presence on the ticket will appease some of those who have unstated animus towards Mr. Romney’s equally heartfelt faith.

Conclusion

In short, I think Dr. Rice is the best person to run with Mitt Romney as VP.  After all, if its Romney and Rice, the ticket will be RR, and that combination of initials has never been bad for the country.

Professor Rod Sullivan

The President is being somewhat hypocritical when he says that overturning statutes because they are unconstitutional is “unprecedented” and “judicial activism.” At the same time that Obama is criticizing the Supreme Court his administration, with his blessing is essentially asking federal courts to find the Defense of Marriage Act, which was similarly “passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress” is unconstitutional.

On February 23 of 2011 Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress saying that the President and the DOJ would no longer defend the DOMA in court against challenges to its constitutionality and that if Congress wanted to defend the Act, it needed to appoint its own counsel.  See http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/February/11-ag-223.html.

A year later, on April 2, 2012 President Obama said “Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

Then on April 3 the President revised his comments to say: “the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.”

The DOMA provides that: “the word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

I interpret Obama’s comments as being a desire to fool the uneducated into believing that a Supreme Court decision overturning the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act would be unusual or “unprecedented” when if fact it is an ordinary part of the function of the Court to determine whether a statute is constitutional.

The federal government says that if you object to paying a tax, you must pay the tax first, then go the IRS and try to settle the case with them. It’s only after you’ve tried to work it out with the IRS that you can go to court.

The argument pitted Robert A. Long from Covington and Burling, who argued against the Court hearing the case, against Solicitor General Verrilli, who was arguing that the case should be heard.

Here are some of the more humorous portions of today’s argument:

Scalia: “There will be no parade of horribles [if we hear this case] because all federal courts are intelligent.” (laughter from the audience)

Justice Alito (to Solicitor General Verrilli, arguing in favor of Obamacare): Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax.

Justice Kennedy (to Solicitor General Verrilli): “Don’t you want to know the answer [about whether Obamacare is constitutional]?” (laughter from the audience)

Justice Breyer (to Solicitor General Verrilli):  “Why do you keep calling it [the individual mandate penalty] a tax?”  (big laugh from the audience—Verrilli will argue tomorrow that it is a tax, not a penalty.  Today he is supposed to be arguing that it is a penalty, not a tax.).

Professor Rod Sullivan

The Occupy Movement threatened to disrupt CPAC 2012 but in the end, their presence fizzled out.

Over 1000 protestors were in the street on Friday, but then an enterprising reporter got one of them to admit on tape that they were all being paid $60 each to spend the day there by their labor unions, and were bused in from out of town. That explains why all the protestors seemed to be from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and cities other than D.C.

Saturday was somewhat different. A number of protestors had paid the $25 admission fee. Security was too tight for them to protest in the main ballroom, so they focused their energy on the upper level where the break-out sessions were being held in the smaller Marshall Ballroom, and the Taft and McKinley rooms, where I was all day.

At one point three or four of them showed up in a session discussing the proliferation of criminal laws. They unfurled a large banner accusing a speaker from Kansas of being a racist. It was a pretty good stunt but for one minor glitch. They had picked the wrong room. The guy they were targeting was across the hallway. The people in the room where I was laughed and laughed at them, until they left in embarrassment. Then security showed up and escorted them away. The target of the banner never even knew about it. Simple incompetence.

On Thursday there was a similar scene in a press conference held by Andrew Breitbart and Citizens United. When the floor was opened to questions, one “member of the press” asked a question intended to embarrass the producer, David Bannon. Breitbart picked him out right away as a plant and it was revealed that he was a liberal blogger from a site called “Crooks and Liars.” Now the questioner was the focus of lots of laughter from the crowd, especially when it was revealed that all he knew about the film he was asking about he got from the trailer. Bannon and Breitbart, to their credit, treated him respectfully and even offered to give him a DVD of the film he was criticizing so that he could watch it. Classy guys.

The press conference, which I got to attend as a blogger, is called Occupy Unmasked. It will be released in April, and if it is anything like its trailer, it will be intensely entertaining. You can watch it yourself here. Occupy Unmasked

Thursday was quiet.  A gaggle of four protestors stood outside the front door of the hotel,  a pathetic looking group. They needed a deck of cards and a card table.  No one paid them any attention.

On Friday,  Mitt Romney was scheduled to speak at 12:55.  The morning had been quiet,  but at noon, as I was leaving the main conference room I saw a member of the media,  a short woman with a backpack,  running out the front door,  shouting into her phone.  I knew something was up so I followed her.

On the street in front of the hotel there were now about a thousand protestors,  many carrying pre-printed signs saying “we are the 99%.”  Police sirens were screaming and I could hear over them the competing instructions of an Occupy leader on a bullhorn telling them to march on the hotel,  and the police on a loudspeaker advising them that they would be arrested if they trespassed. One of the men in the lead,  an black man in his thirties wearing a “Good Jobs, Better Baltimore” jacket  was telling the police that they wanted to pay to attend the conference.  The police were having none of it.

So who are these Occupy protesters?  They are about 75% African-American,  and the leadership,  at least today,  were all black.  They’ve set up about four pop-up tents between the sidewalk and the street and on the sidewalk are about twenty folding chairs for elderly protestors,  too old to stand or walk.  One aging black women holds a sign saying “Medicare is Sexy.”  She,  decidedly,  is not.

There are a couple of hand-drawn signs,  but even these appear to be centrally manufactured,  with neat,  even block lettering saying “If its not for the Greater Good,  It’s No Good” and “Corrupt Politicians And Criminals” a reference to CPAC.

The Sheet Metal Workers, Local 100, from Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland brought a giant inflatable which stands about ten feet tall,  depicting an overfed cat in a three piece suit with one paw clutching a big cigar and the other around the neck of a small, thin white man who is clearly choking.  No one in the crowd resembles the choking victim though.  The one demographic missing from the Occupy crowd is white blue collar workers.

Many of the protestors, like the leader of the march on the entrance,  sported clothing identifying where they were from.  Many in the forefront had jackets from Good Jobs Better Baltimore which bills itself as “people in unions, churches, and in neighborhood groups” which formed in April of 2011.  There was a contingent of drummers,  all wearing blue stocking caps reading “Fight for Philly.”  Fight for Philly bills itself as a coalition of labor unions, community groups, neighborhood associations, and faith organizations.

The chants were unimaginative:  “A people united,  will never be divided;”  “Whose Street?  Our Street;”  and “Who Let the Dogs Out” were the most common.

Once the marchers decided not the risk arrest by moving closer to the door of the hotel,  they decided to sit down in the street.  A leader with a bull horn was telling them to just sit down,  but most of the crowd was not interested in planting their bottoms on the cold Washington pavement in February,  so they remained standing.

One loan bearded white man dressed all in black and carrying a large backpack decided to brave the cold and sit down,  using his backpack as a back rest.  As he clasped his hands behind his head,  an anxious reporter wearing dark classes and carrying a pad began asking him questions.  Apparently he liked the answers he was getting because shortly he had a big smile on his face and was nodding and scribbling rapidly.

It was time for me to go.  There would be no violence today,  and no arrests.  Mitt Romney was getting ready to go on the podium,  and I wanted to hear him speak.

Professor Rod Sullivan

Mitt Romney has the ability to be a great President.  Why do I say this?  First,  he is the only candidate with executive experience.  He can run the country and, in the long run of four to eight years,  isn’t that what’s important?

Second,  he can defeat Barack Obama.  Beating an incumbent President is tough.  In my lifetime it has only happened twice.  I think Mitt can be the third.

I’d like to tell you a story.  My mother told me that she could never vote for Romney.  Why?  “You now,  it’s the Mormon thing.”  I responded “Mom,  that makes you a bigot.”  She responded in horror “I am not.  Some of my best friends are Jews!”  I tell that story because in the back of some people’s minds in the religious question.  They may not talk about it,  but it’s there.  In 1968 Mitt Romney’s father,  George Romney ran for President too.  Back then,  over 40 years ago,  according to Wikipedia “Romney’s membership in the LDS church was scarcely mentioned at all during the campaign.”  Religion is mostly an accident of birth.  We are the religion we are because that is what our parents were.  Let’s show everyone that we have put behind us the things which divide us,  and that we will focus on those things which unite us.

I’m like you.  I want America to be great again.  Romney can help us achieve that.  Please give him your vote.  It would mean a lot to me.

Professor Sullivan with Justice Scalia

Justice Antonin Scalia is 74 years old and so is Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 78. Justice Stephen Breyer? He’s 72. The next President of the United States will have the opportunity to shape the future of the nation either for or against conservative principles. This is an historic opportunity.

Too often conservatives have been fooled. Republican Presidents have nominated judges to serve on the Supreme Court who said they believed in limited Constitutional government. Too often conservatives and Republican Presidents have found out too late that they didn’t.

Justice Earl Warren was a Republican. Justice William Brennan became one of the Court’s most liberal justices. Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v Wade was a Republican. All three of them were appointed by a Republican President. More recently, Justice John Paul Stevens, the liberal author of Massachusetts v. EPA, was appointed to the bench by President Gerald Ford, and Justice David Souter was appointed by George Bush.

Conservatives need to know what to look for in a Supreme Court Justice, and they need to be better educated on how to make those decisions.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter.

The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a Communist regime.

After the lesson, the student approached the professor and asked a strange question: “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.

When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they
are caught.

Soon they go back to eating the free corn . They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops, welfare, medicine, drugs, while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

She is passing from from denial toward anger. She’s not quite there yet, but she is getting there. She is lashing out at Israel, trying to keep them in the Western fold, and angry that even many Israelis have concluded that Western liberal democracy is failing.

After anger, she will pass into bargaining with Israel and the Arab Spring nations. When that fails she will go into depression, which means that she will blame Bush. Finally, there will be acceptance of the reality—West liberal democracies are on the way out, Mid-Eastern conservative theocracies are on the rise.