Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show heard here and seen online at theBusinessMakers.com. This is that show about free enterprise, about innovation and entrepreneurship.

John: That's right, Russ, and you just said it all, so I'll just be quiet so we can get this segment going.

Russ: All right, well let's get it going, but I think you've got something that's getting ready to get going, too.

John: Yes, Celebrate!Enterprise. It's about a month away, and the event that we have on the 19th at lunchtime is called the Heath Care Heros. What we do is honor and recognize people who innovate, save lives, and do all the great things that health care providers in this city give people.

Russ: Cool.

John: It's a good event, a great event. The presenting sponsor is Panasonic Healthcare Co. Ltd. They're a big medical device manufacturer, and a lot of people don't know that.

Russ: Do these people on this panel have an opinion on health care reform.

John: No, it's not a panel discussion. It's more of a recognition event; although, Dick Wainerdi, the guy who runs the Texas Medical Center, will be the featured speaker.

Russ: All right. It's time for the Businesmakers School of Business, brought to you by Ambrose Property Tax Consulting.

John: Ah, yes. Great tax consulting company, especially for business owners who own their own property.

Russ: Absolutely.

John: They're great at getting those property taxes whittled down to a dull roar.

Russ: Absolutely. Well, last week we sort of touched on some of the residential work that do, but their expertise is definitely in business property tax consulting. They have an incredible track record. Our research indicates that 20 percent of their customers get a reduction in taxes. So, if you want the best, just go to Ambrose tax consulting.

John: You got that right.

Russ: All right. And this is, as I said, the BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not your business-as-usual school either.

John: That's right, Russ. This is a shoot-from-the-hip exercise if there ever was one. I think that's why we're so popular among our students is that they know we're irreverent, and we call a spade a spade. We don't treat business and capitalism like it's a holy writ. It's a very important of our country's operating system, but that doesn't mean we can't poke fun at it every now and then.

Russ: You bet, and we kick off the School of Business with the Quote of the Day.

John: Quote of the Day.

Russ: Today's quote comes from Rita Mae Brown - no relationship to Coach Mack Brown.

John: Or how about Rita Hayworth? Any relationship to Rita Hayworth?

Russ: There might be a distant relationship there. [Laughing] And here it is, "Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment." That's why I've got some good judgement because I've had enough bad judgement to have a whole database full of experience.

John: I know. I lot of mistakes, if taken the right way, can really help you grow wiser quicker.

Russ: There you go. And that brings us to This Week in Business History. What happened during this April week in business history?

John: Okay. This week in business history, we're going back to 1501. There was a geographer named Martin Waldseemuller. He was a German cartographer, and he is the one credited with using the first usage of the word "America" on a 1507 map in honor of an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. That's how America came along.

Russ: Cool.

John: Named after an explorer. This week in business history, 1792, the French guillotine was first used on a person April 25, 1792. You know, before the guillotine, you had some guy with a big ax and sometimes they weren't that accurate.

Russ: [Laughing] And it got real messy. Inhumane.

John: Inhumane. So this was very -

Russ: Clean. [Laughing]

John: Well, not clean because blood goes all over the place, but you know, one shot does it.

Russ: There you go. Right. Another innovator right there.

John: That's right. Where would we be without a clean execution. Okay, this week in business history, in 1789, George Washington is inaugurated as the first president. Now, he was very reluctant to become president and be the president and be elected president because, you know, he had a rather full career. He had his ups and downs, his successes and failures as a military commander. I think he probably thought "enough's enough," but -

Russ: Did it anyway.

John: Fortunately for us, he decided to do it. Okay. This week in business history, in 1844, Samuel Morse sends the first telegraphic message.

Russ: Boy, this was a big week.

John: This week in business history in 1900, The Last Ride of Casey Jones. This guy has been celebrated as a hero but actually, he was pretty reckless. He got on this train. He's trying to make up time. He didn't see this flagman trying to slow him down, because there's another train on the track, and boom.

Russ: You can't slow those trains down very fast.

John: No, you cannot.

Russ: But I heard he was a hero because he had time to tell his brakeman and stuff to jump off.

John: Well, he had a guilty conscience. He knew he screwed up. The guy should be castigated. I mean, not much difference between that and these aircraft controllers who fall asleep.

Russ: Right. [Laughing]

John: Oh, they need they're sleep; they've been working hard. Just one of 500 people up in the air. That doesn't get you very far. Okay, this week in business history. In 1916, the birth of "The father of information theory," Claude Elwood Shannon. He is unknown to the general public even though his research laid the foundation for today's communication and computing technology. You probably know the guy.

Russ: Well, you know, he was the guy who invented the 1's and 0's.

John: The 1's and 0's, that's right.

Russ: You can tell everything if you just have two numbers.

John: And it works pretty well. So far, so good. This week in business history, in 1931, the Empire State Building opens in New York City.

Russ: What a week.

John: Now I thought - okay, when did King Kong climb that? I though it was before then. Wasn't that movie in the 20s. No, it was probably in the 30s.

Russ: Maybe that wasn't non-fiction. [Laughing]

John: You know, that's a good point. [Laughing] I'm going to New York in a couple weeks; I'll check it out. I'll do a forensic analysis of the observation deck to see if there's any gorilla hair.

Russ: Good idea.

John: This week in business history, in 1937, the world's largest Ponzi scheme. The US Social Security system makes its first benefit payment.

Russ: Speaking of fiction. [Laughing]

John: Speaking of fiction. That person doesn't know how lucky he is. This week in business history, in 1939, Batman, my favorite comic book hero, hits the street.

Russ: Did you read Batman comic books?

John: Yeah.

Russ: Well, some of us didn't know about Batman until the TV series.

John: Yeah, right. You must have led a very sheltered life. [Laughing] This week in business history, in 1940, Glenn Miller records "Pennsylvania 6-5000." This week in business history, in 1941, General Mills introduces Cheerio's. I used to love Cheerio's. I used to eat them all the time when I was a little kid.

Russ: So think about it, that means Cheerio's is 70 years old.

John: I wonder if they'll pull a Coca-Cola and come out with a new Cheerio's.

Russ: Well, I think they already have. There's chocolate flavored -

John: But they haven't done away with the old Cheerio's. See, that's the problem with Coca-Cola. They did away with the old one. Okay, this week in business history, in 1952, the American Bowling Congress - I'll tell you, this must have been a huge decision. They must have had a lot of annexed, but the white smoke came through the chimney when they approved the use of an automatic pinsetter.

Russ: I'm sure there was. Think about all those pinsetters that didn't have anything to do.

John: The amalgamated brotherhood of pinsetters.

Russ: They were just thrown out on the street.

John: I wonder if they inhabited the headquarters of the bowling congress like they did up in Wisconsin.

Russ: That's right. They tried to push it back.

John: Okay. This week in business history, in 1960, Russia shoots down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plan over Sverdlovsk.

Russ: I remember this so vividly.

John: Eisenhower was ready to have a big pow-wow with them, and this kind of messed it up.

Russ: Kind of put a fly in the ointment.

John: It would have been better had there been a fly in the ointment in Sverdlovsk instead of - Eisenhower could have handled that.

Russ: Instead of a spy flying over and getting shot.

John: Yeah, with spyecticide. [Laughing]

Russ: It's interesting that Gary Powers survived the crash.

John: Yeah, he died in a helicopter crash.

Russ: But later.

John: He was a traffic reporter for a TV station. This week in business history, in 1961, Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba. Who needs elections; you got me. [Laughing]

Russ: Yeah, you got me. [Laughing]

John: This week in business history, in 1961, Robert Noyce patens the integrated circuit and manufacturing process.

Russ: What a week this is.

John: What a technology week. That and the bowling congress and the automatic pinsetter. That's the icing on the cake. [Laughing] Okay, this week in business history, in 1967, Aretha Franklin releases her signature song, "Respect."

Russ: Further confirmation that it's an extraordinary week.

John: That's right. This week in business history, in 1981, Xerox Parc introduces the computer mouse. Everybody thinks that an Apple thing. No. Xerox. This week in business history, in 1986, a nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Until this year, that was history's worst nuclear accident.

Russ: Right.

John: A power plant in Chernobyl, part of the Soviet Union, and it has come out since then that that reactor was mainly used to create uranium for the atomic bomb.

Russ: Weapons grade?

John: Yeah, power of the earth. All right. This week in business history, in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope is placed into orbit by the shuttle Discovery. Now, it didn't work right away, and they had to go up there and fix it.

Russ: Yeah, it was out of focus for awhile.

John: I don't know if you've seen any of the pictures from that, but they're breathtaking.

Russ: Oh, out of this world.

John: I always wonder if those are real pictures though.

Russ: Yeah, that's a good question. [Laughing]

John: I wonder if there's some digital artist on there at NASA. Maybe this thing never has worked. [Laughing] This week in business history, in 1997, the electronic mail system with communications to mobile processor is patented by Thomas J. Campana, Jr., Michael P. Ponschke, and Gary F. Thelen. It's a Blackberry patent in 1997.

Russ: What a history lesson. Does that wrap it up?

John: Hey, that's enough, man. What more do you want?

Russ: My goodness, Blackberry, guillotine, mores code, Fidel Castro, and the bowling congress automatic pinsetters.

John: That might be the key story, right there. [Laughing]

Russ: All right, and that brings us to the Jargon Challenge Round - our vocabulary lesson. I find a new word. Sometimes I come up with it if I can't find one, and I challenge John to guess the meaning.

John: Yes, the guess the meaning.

Russ: Are you ready?

John: I am ready.

Russ: Today's word is "gamification."

John: Gamification. Well, we all know what a game is. That's something you do to amuse yourself as a competition, usually between you and someone else, although there are some games you play where you're just - like Tetris, for example.

Russ: Those are the kind where you kind of play it yourself.

John: Yeah. Gamification. So it's kind of like an addiction to a game. You just keep playing and playing it, and you just ignore everybody around you. You become so obsessed with the game that you -

Russ: Nah, I'm sorry. I thought you were going to get this one right. I'm sorry. No. In fact, you should know it, because last week we were talking about the Rice Business Plan contestant that changed the capture thing to a game. Remember?

John: Oh, right.

Russ: So this kind of falls in that category. It's the use of game-related concepts in non-game websites and applications to encourage users to perform actions desired by the business. In other words, you see little games now on websites to kind of attract you.

John: Yeah.

Russ: This guy used a game to replace the crazy capture, which is also like a game. And that brings us to Dumb Moments. Do you have a dumb business story for us today?

John: Yeah. I gotta tell you, it was hard finding a dumb moment.

Russ: Wow. Things must be doing well.

John: Well no, things are terrible, because S&P just downgraded the US ______

Russ: That was kind of a dumb moment to think that it wasn't going to happen.

John: That might just be the dumb moment. It just goes to show what happens when there's not enough money to go around. Just tear that one out. [Laughing] Actually, it's about global warming. Experts predicting forced migration due to global warming.

Russ: Migraine headaches? [Laughing]

John: Yeah, migraine headaches. As it turns out, all the areas they thought were going to be losing population have actually gained population.

Russ: Well, that will happen.

John: But this S&P thing - how could it now happen. I mean, that could be game over. I read an article a couple weeks ago about five things that will happen if the country goes bankrupt, and it's pretty scarey stuff.

Russ: Is this step one?

John: No, this is way after this happens. We're talking about Weimar Republic kind of thing.

Russ: No, but I mean S&P downgrade is step one.

John: Step one before we go broke.

Russ: You know, President Barack Obama kind of considered it just a pollical ploy, didn't he? He didn't like it.

John: Yes, he did. No, he didn't like it.

Russ: I mean, none of us liked it. But it's good somebody's standing up and saying, " You know what, these kind of economics don't work."

John: It's too bad these downgrades didn't come about during the subprime mortgage crisis when all the rating agencies were saying, "Hey, these funds are great." Anyway, it's just what happens when a country runs out of money.

Russ: There you go.

John: It starts printing it.

Russ: And before we wrap up this morning's School of Business, brought to you by Ambrose Property Consultants, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook. So let's welcome Mr. Greg Price.