Missouri's first State Poet Laureate. Walter Bargen. I can't tell you how pleased I am by this. Walter is a first-rate poet and, just if not more importantly, a decent human being. He will be formally introduced on February 13th at the state capitol. After that, he will serve a…
I came across an article a few days ago written by John Hockenberry, an award-winning journalist who once worked for NBC's Dateline and is now a fellow at MIT's Media Lab. Titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience": What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC, this article is a…
Personal anecdote time. Yesterday (Sunday) we went shopping. We stopped at Office Depot to buy a new chair. As we approached the entrance, I spotted a friend of ours and called her name. We gathered outside the entrance to chat. As we talked, a man approached us, begged our pardon,…
It is five days into the new year, and I am glad of that - 2007 was a particularly trying time for me, full of a lot of personal and professional changes and challenges. It is good to have a fresh chapter to write, a blank page upon which to…
In an article entitled "When Words Decide," Barry Schwartz (writing in the August/September 2007 edition of Scientific American Mind [not available online]) gives some good examples demonstrating the great power of default choices. These examples add more fuel for a long burning fire-that people are not the rational careful-thinking beings…