Squirrel traps

What fascinates me about the film, Capote, is the elusiveness of the protagonist's character. It's as though Capote is walking around in one of his books, not quite sure if he's the hero or the villain. Harper Lee, his friend and counterpoint, punctures the messianic bubble with her blades of integrity.

Business schools take a page from Harper Lee.

At Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, about half the grades are handed out for work that's done in teams; members of each team provide one another with anonymous feedback, and the school has hired counselors to help students absorb the lessons from this criticism. "In the past, you could go through business school and nobody would say you were coming across as a jerk," says Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School. "But that might have been the most important factor in your future success as a manager."

Experienced sound engineers pay attention to the way a recording's inner workings come across to the listener. George Massenburg recently told a Sweetwater masterclass:

There are two types of balance with any kind of mix: internal balance, referring to the relationship of the sounds in a piece of music to one another, and external balance, which is how your mix relates to the outside world...

I see the internal balance in a mix as not being so technical, I see it as more musical. An external balance would be, "okay, when I play it in my car, I can't hear the kick." Or "I can't hear the cowbell," or the playback circumstance is such that it just doesn't work.

On the world stage, our I'm-the-decider president reminds us who's boss as Rumsfeld digs the mass grave in clueless spades, behavior coaches nowhere to be found.