A few Friday Briefings ago I made a ghastly mistake. I opened with a bad title, and it cost dearly. The title of the August 20, 2021 edition was A Shapeless Peg in an Undefined Hole. The article, if I may be immodest, had quite an important message, and many who read it commented on…
Who can forget the train wreck scene of The Cassandra Crossing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cassandra_Crossing) ? In an otherwise forgettable movie, we are frozen in horrified silence as the engine and passenger cars tumble in a dance macabre, like children’s toys flung carelessly into the gaping chasm. Train wrecks of all kinds have a terrible fascination for us….
It’s a funny thing, but many of my friends who are quickest with shady lawyer jokes are also the ones who spring to the defence of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Except for my lawyer friends, that is, where nobody has a kind word to say about these two. Let me say at the outset…
We’re out here by the millions, professionals who have hung up our skates. Some of us live life large, some live life small. Some opulently, some need to be frugal, but for most of us, life is better than when we were chained in the galleys. Or so it would seem. Some garden, some restore…
Yes, Betty turns 100 this year, but she still looks fantastic. If anything, she looks a little younger than when she first appeared in 1921. Over that hundred years, her hair has remained dark, skin unwrinkled, with just the right amount of makeup, and intelligent dark brown eyes. In truth, there have been eight Betty…
As curious as it may sound, a good deal of critical progress in life and in business begins when you stop doing things. For example, if I want to lose twenty pounds, a good place to start would be to cut out daily fast food and nightly snacks. If I want to get an earlier…
Out in the country, by September you want to have your supply of firewood stacked and ready. As of about a week ago, we had fourteen stove cords of nice dry hardwood on hand. After too many years in the city, it took me a bit of time to recapture my farm-boy instincts about wood…
A 2015 study showed that when baby mice were exposed to cat urine at a critical time in their development, they would grow up much less afraid of cats than their counterparts. The researchers speculated that from an evolutionary perspective, mice (as a group, not as individuals) benefit from the presence of cats, because cats…
Recently we had a dinner party at which my brother-in-law Paul was in attendance. He wore his best running shoes, which he was breaking in for a 10K race the next day. Unbeknownst to Paul and to me, my dog Meic was under the table, nibbling away at Paul’s shoelaces. By the time Paul noticed…
A lot of communication these days is said to be “frank”, “from the gut”, and “telling it like it is”. While I’ll be the last one to impeach anyone’s language for honesty, a good deal of what passes for honest expression is nothing of the sort, it’s just trash talk. Channeling your inner talk-show host…