How funny is this? It’s amazing to me that the “leaders” in the fastest-dying part of the West continue as though it’s not obvious that THE.  GAME.  IS.  OVER.

I have to admit I felt a bit funny traveling to my hometown for the funeral of a friend I knew for over thirty years, Mark “Biff” Fitting.  After all, it’s not like we were an everyday part of each other’s lives.  I worked for him for a couple summers in the early ’80s, and […]

He’s a recruiter wanting to place me in an exciting new job.  But that’s neither here nor there. He’s a Canadian.  Named Vlad.  It’s at once exhilirating and contradictory. I may change my name to Vlad.

I wrote a few months back about what I see as our crisis of leadership, and how — in both business and politics — we suffer “leaders” who want only the perks of position, and none of the awesome responsibilities. I’ve seen two additional regular phenomena as I’ve studied the problem. The first is that our leaders today have […]

US reserves of oil and gas are skyrocketing — with gas reserves increasing by the most in history last year, thanks to technology advances. If oil prices remain high, our shale comes into greater economic play, and energy independence becomes nearly fathomable.  (Of course, it’s a very little-known fact that only a relatively small percentage […]

Much ink is being spilled these days about the failure of our elites.  I agree with the overall notion; in both government and business, we’ve seen colossal incompetence on display. I think a huge part of the problem is that our leaders don’t really want to be leaders.  Too many of those who are reaching […]

Just this morning, I was reading Michael Gerber’s description of the small business ideal in his book The E-Myth Revisited, where he tells of the heavenly customer service experience he gets each and every time he visits his favorite resort. I can’t help but believe that the owners of the Mexican restaurant my wife and boys […]

My friend Carrie Burbrink pointed out another area of office gear deserving of disparagement:  the roller bag. Really, I’m sure there are people for whom there’s no other solution.  I mean, I had a serious back problem a couple years ago for a blessedly short time, and I know all too well that anyone suffering […]

What is it with the proliferation of the backpack for the office?  I know our newcomers to the workforce carried backpacks to school, but they also wore shorts to school.  Both look equally professional as working attire, in my less than humble opinion. And now I see it’s not just the simple backpack, but what looks like full-blown […]

I’m reading The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, which tells the whats, hows and whys of the 1854 London cholera epidemic.  This morning I came across this passage: For millennia, most cities had been bound inexorably to the natural ecosystem that lay outside their walls; the energy flowing through the fields and forests around them established […]