I have nothing to write about.  I developed the habit of devoting a certain amount of time each weekday to writing a post for this blog. On the first 4 days of the week those posts are topical and then I write about something I feel like talking about on Fridays.

But...to be honest...there's not a lot going on in the tech world right now. When the top story on Techmeme is someone discovering what the model number of the next gen iPhone is you know it's a pretty dead news cycle.

So with that in mind, I hope you'll forgive me for this.

For the record, this isn’t all fluff.  It is a great example of what I see in real life all the time.  Much of getting things done in IT is convincing non-IT people to do what you tell them is right.  This requires getting them to respect you and in that way this is instructional (at least in my opinion).  Here’s the situation…

She's speaking, of course about the "a-hole" episode, when Jessica called out Bill O'Reilly and then harassed a reporter who didn't want to answer her questions—taunting him with "Be neutral about it, be Sweden!" This, of course, gave TMZ a chance to call her a ditz for not saying Switzerland.

But Jess isn't going to sit around and let people call her stupid, especially when Wikipedia and MySpace exist to clear her name. This is her defense of giving Sweden the neutral shout-out:

"Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people...it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: [Wikipedia link] if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!"

Now the irony here is that even the Wikipedia source she cites points out that Sweden was neutral in assertion only and in fact took sides when it fit their needs.

But putting that aside the real point is this: She obviously meant to say Switzerland.  Switzerland is the country that everyone uses in these types of examples because Switzerland is the country that has built their entire livelihood around a neutrality pledge. 

Beyond that if she had meant Sweden it would only make sense if the person she was talking to had extensive knowledge of World War II.  Enough to know that Sweden, a country with slightly more people than the State of Washington, had declared themselves neutral during WWII. 

All this leads to one conclusion, she clearly meant to say Switzerland.

So why am I posting on this?  Because I think it’s a good example of how people make themselves look bad.  When you’re wrong, be wrong.  Say you were stupid and move on with it.  We’ve all said stupid things by mistake and it’s not like anyone can really hold it against you.  If they do they were just looking for a reason to attack you so it doesn’t matter what you say. 

I didn’t lose any respect for Jessica Alba when she said Sweden because it’s an honest mistake.  I did lose respect for her when she tried to cover it up because she thinks so much of herself that she can’t admit she was simply wrong.