According to today's new poll, a hotly contested Missouri U.S. Senate Seat May 'Flip' from Republican to Democrat. Democrat Claire McCaskill's site reports today's poll results: In an election for United States Senator from Missouri today, 10/12/06, Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill leads Republican incumbent Jim Talent 51% to 42%, according to a…
Here are two disturbing pieces from DemocracyNow.org: The Co-Author of a Medical Study is estimating that 650,000 people have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion. The study was conducted by American and Iraqi researchers and published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet. This link goes to an…
Having good ideas is a quest with which all writers struggle. And all non-writers too.
How does one develop good ideas? Have them, recognize them and hone them, it would seem. But only the first of these three tasks (having raw ideas pop into one’s head) is easy. For the most part, good ideas are developed (not found) and this requires hard work. Developing good ideas is rarely like it is portrayed on television, where fully formed ideas drop down from the sky with little effort.
I am not suggesting (by writing this post) that I have more original ideas than the average person. I plainly admit that almost every worthy idea I’ve ever expressed was not original to me. In fact, I’d be surprised if I had more than a couple dozen original, substantial and worthy ideas in my entire life. I assume that most of my ideas have been plagiarized (though usually not intentionally) or that they were simply a modified versions of someone elses’ ideas (modified by stretching them, inverting them or combining them with other borrowed ideas).
How does one have good new ideas? When Linus Pauling was asked how he was able to make so many discoveries, he replied: “You must have lots of ideas and just throw away the bad ones.”
Those who don’t have many ideas of their own (for instance, those who watch lots of mind-numbing television) don’t have many good ideas of their own. For most of my life, I have …
You can learn the following things and much more in this article by New York Magazine: He’s the eleventh of eleven children. Every night, he would listen to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” before going to bed and it would make him cry. He studied philosophy in college. His favorite…
According to this article by McClatchy, U.S. federal spending “increased by 9 percent in fiscal 2006, the biggest jump since 1990. It's risen sharply for education, agriculture and several non-defense programs as well as for the war on terrorism and homeland security.” Surprising to me, defense and homeland security account for…