Harvard University neuroscientists have confirmed we spend about 40% of our day telling others what we feel or think. The main reason is that this rewards us at the level of brain cells and synapses. People are even willing to forgo money to talk about themselves. Not only did people decline money but functional MRIs confirm the highest blood flow and activity in the brain associated with mental activity relating to people talking about their own beliefs and opinions. We are getting into the meso-limbic system here which is associated with the sense of reward and satisfaction from food, money and, yes, sex.

So, twitter and facebook may be as fulfilling as a cookie and they don’t have calories….but we can look like an idiot when we don’t shut up…hmm.before I say more I think I head for the pantry.

Maybe you want a pack of Oreos around the next time the office braggart comes in. Just smile and hand him the pack.

One of his biggest regrets is that he didnt truly celebrate it. He kind of got back to work thinking about the next tournament and didnt want to make too big a deal out of it – but i…t was a big deal and this is a regret.

It is so important we take time to smell the roses. I remember when I got accepted to flight school, a big accomplishment (they only took 4 people my year from my source) I immediately started to worry about my grades at school and what aircraft I would fly. I wasnt even going to check in to the place for a year and wouldnt get my wings for three years but i was already moving on and never took the time to pat myself on the back and celebrate the achievement.

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let’s be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you’re entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They’re the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

No doubt some of you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times, even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is accomplished. Now she’s in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

If you’re like that intern, please feel free to feel sorry for yourself. Just remember she doesn’t.

Unfortunately, dear graduates, chances are you’re nothing like her. And since you’re no longer children, at least officially, it’s time someone tells you the facts of life. The other facts.

Fact One is that, in our “knowledge-based” economy, knowledge counts. Yet here you are, probably the least knowledgeable graduating class in history.

A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn’t know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn’t know who succeeded that president.

Pop quiz, Class of ’12: Do you?

Many of you have been reared on the cliché that the purpose of education isn’t to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong. I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It’s not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It’s that they can’t connect the dots when they don’t know where the dots are in the first place.

Now to Fact Two: Your competition is global. Shape up. Don’t end your days like a man I met a few weeks ago in Florida, complaining that Richard Nixon had caused his New York City business to fail by opening up China.

In places like Ireland, France, India and Spain, your most talented and ambitious peers are graduating into economies even more depressed than America’s. Unlike you, they probably speak several languages. They may also have a degree in a hard science or engineering—skills that transfer easily to the more remunerative jobs in investment banks or global consultancies.

I know a lot of people like this from my neighborhood in New York City, and it’s a good thing they’re so well-mannered because otherwise they’d be eating our lunch. But if things continue as they are, they might soon be eating yours.

Which reminds me of Fact Three: Your prospective employers can smell BS from miles away. And most of you don’t even know how badly you stink.

When did puffery become the American way? Probably around the time Norman Mailer came out with “Advertisements for Myself.” But at least that was in the service of provoking an establishment that liked to cultivate an ideal of emotional restraint and public reserve.

To read through your CVs, dear graduates, is to be assaulted by endless Advertisements for Myself. Here you are, 21 or 22 years old, claiming to have accomplished feats in past summer internships or at your school newspaper that would be hard to credit in a biography of Walter Lippmann or Ernie Pyle.

If you’re not too bright, you may think this kind of nonsense goes undetected; if you’re a little brighter, you probably figure everyone does it so you must as well.

But the best of you don’t do this kind of thing at all. You have an innate sense of modesty. You’re confident that your résumé needs no embellishment. You understand that less is more.

In other words, you’re probably capable of thinking for yourself. And here’s Fact Four: There will always be a market for people who can do that.

In every generation there’s a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else. But your generation has an especially bad case, because your mass conformism is masked by the appearance of mass nonconformism. It’s a point I learned from my West Point intern, when I asked her what it was like to lead such a uniformed existence.

Her answer stayed with me: Wearing a uniform, she said, helped her figure out what it was that really distinguished her as an individual.

Now she’s a second lieutenant, leading a life of meaning and honor, figuring out how to Think Different for the sake of a cause that counts. Not many of you will be able to follow in her precise footsteps, nor do you need to do so. But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!

Yahoo confirms misleading info on new CEO’s resume..it turns out the new CEO for Yahoo does not have a computer science degree as noted on his resume. Thompson only has an accounting degree from Stonehill College, an accomplishment that Yahoo also listed in the filing. The accounting degree was the only one listed in Thompson’s resume last year by eBay Inc. when he was still runnin…g that company’s PayPal payment service. He graduated in 1979, according to Stonehill’s website.

Yahoo confirmed Thompson’s credentials had been exaggerated in the recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, brushed off the distortion as an “inadvertent error.” (the preceding 85 or so words in this post come from MSNBC)

Now, I am not sure how a college degree inadvertenty shows up on a resume in a year. That is what amazes me here. It seems to me that cases like this are usually a misrepresentation done years back that simply sticks and two decades later it is discovered.

Does Yahoo pass or fail the integrity check? The verdict is still out. But for you, double check your resume and get it right.

PART TWO

The Nashville Predators on Tuesday suspended forwards Alex Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn — two of the team’s top scorers during the playoffs — for Game 3 of their series against the Phoenix Coyotes on Wednesday at Bridgestone Arena for an unspecified violation of team rules.

The Predators pass the integrity check big time. They are in the playoffs and suspend two adults for missing a curfew.

What do you do when one of your best does something counter to the values of the organization?

NOW FOR BREAKING AND ENTERING….What would you do if a potential employer said during the interview “Let’s drive to your house, I want to look inside and look in your cabinets and files?” I am guessing you would say no. But that is exactly what many employers and schools are doing when they ask for your password information for Facebook and other online accounts, and I for one, that it is wrong. Are there no limits?

I am hugely in favor of background checks by prospective employers and also am in favor of them looking you up online and checking out your public postings. In fact, as an employer, if you do not do this you are missing an important part of the hiring process. While I do think a firm should do their homework in the selection process I am not fan of starting off on tack that of mistrust. Requiring passwords as a condition of employment is just that.

It is an employers market these days. High unemployment makes people do things and giving passwords is one of those things. Would you want your boss watching over you while you sleep? yikes!! I cannot imagine asking someone to do this as an employer and do think it sends a poor message about trust. Maybe I am wrong but that is where I am on this and I hope the new legislation proposed to end this intrusive hiring practice passes.

But this isn’t about politics or legislation it is about a workplace built on trust and respect. Demanding passwords isn’t that.