I’ve been awfully neglectful of this blog since I started writing at Forbes.com. I resolve to do better in 2019.

We just finished a great Christmas, although one that came and went way too fast. But even so, Miss ViVi and I knocked out pretty much all of our “canon” of old Christmas movies that we watch every year, plus a good bunch of extras.

It all got me thinking back to one of my favorite Christmases ever. My oldest brother John had gone off to college, but was home on break. And cable TV had just expanded by a station called “TBS,” which commenced to showing endless movies for our enjoyment.

At some point during the break, John and I got onto a kick of watching them far, far into the night. It was a mix of the same old Christmas classics my wife and I have watched every year since we were married – “Holiday Inn” and “White Christmas,” for example. But TBS also threw in other old gems – “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” and “It’s a Bikini World,” among others.

I lost a lot of sleep during that vacation. But I got to spend hours and hours with my big brother, whom I admired a lot then and admire even more today (but don’t anyone tell him I said that, because he’ll get a big head). And I got started on a holiday pastime that has lasted for decades and become a staple of my marriage.

I’ll think I’ll cue up “It’s a Bikini World” for Miss ViVi tonight…

I had a great time collaborating with Gabe Batstone, CEO of contextere, on my latest Forbes column.

Along the way, though, I learned about another part of Gabe’s life. Four years ago, his 8 year old daughter Teagan was murdered by her mother, Gabe’s ex-wife, who had had mental health problems and had attempted suicide. Yet – despite clear evidence of danger – Gabe was forced by the courts to return his daughter to her care.

Subsequently, Gabe and his wife Stephanie founded the Canadian national advocacy organization Teagan’s Voice as a vehicle to promote children’s rights, and particularly to lobby for public policy changes to protect children from violence.

As a dad myself, I can’t – I don’t want to – imagine what Gabe and Stephanie have been through. But I applaud them for taking an experience so unthinkably horrible and devastating, and working to make something positive come from it.

Please donate if you’re able.

I just finished Hellcats of the Sea: Operation Barney and the Mission to the Sea of Japan, by Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood and Hans C. Adamson. It’s the account of the attack by the US submarine force on shipping in the previously inaccessible Sea of Japan late in WWII. (New sonar technology allowed the subs to infiltrate and exfiltrate through mined channels.)

In it was a side story about the USS Harder, and her captain, Cdr. Samuel D. Dealey, of Dallas, Texas, who earned the moniker, “Destroyer Killer,” and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during Harder’s fifth combat patrol. Sadly, Harder and Dealey were lost to an enemy depth charge attack on their sixth patrol.

But of course, Dealey’s name and hometown had me wondering: is he the namesake for the infamous plaza where President John F. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated 55 years ago this past Wednesday? What a travesty it would be, I thought, to have a war hero’s name sullied by an innocent association with the murder of a fellow war hero.

It’s not the case. Dealey Plaza was named for George B. Dealey, a businessman who owned the A.H. Belo Corporation, a media company, and who was the longtime publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

Of course, it’s also a shame to have the name of an honorable businessman, public figure, and civic leader sullied by such an association. Such are the injustices of history.

So the thread I thought I’d found turned out to be nonexistent. But there is a lesser thread. George B. Dealey was Sam D. Dealey’s uncle.

I’ve long thought that nobody can go to work for long in Washington, DC, and remain a useful member of society.

This story from the book I’m currently reading, Freedom’s Forge by Arthur Herman, about the industrialists and businessmen who went there in the 1940s to lead the manufacturing charge for WWII production, only helps confirm my thinking.

Of course, the ways of Washington sometimes baffled even the best business minds. The vice president of one New York bank applied for a post in the Office of Economic Warfare. He waited a long time in vain. Then one day the OEW’s director showed up at the bank to ask its president if he knew any likely candidates for the very same job. The president mentioned his vice president, and the man was hired on the spot.

He moved to Washington and soon found himself inundated with the usual paperwork related to the OEW. A month or two passed, and a letter arrived forwarded from his old New York address. It was a rejection letter, regretfully turning him down for the very post he now occupied.

Now familiar with Washington bureaucracy, this came as no surprise to him. The surprise was he had signed the letter himself.

I’m pretty sure that’s the best laugh I’ve ever gotten from a history book.

Another entry in the “interesting tidbits of history” category…

I’m deep in the midst of a riveting book about the industrial side of the US involvement in WWII, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in WWII by Arthur Herman.

An aside in the book involves the medical innovation helped along by Henry Kaiser, who got his start in road paving in the burgeoning American West, then branched out into dam building. His firm became part of the Six Companies consortium that built the Boulder (later Hoover) Dam in Nevada. He went on to build the Grand Coulee dam as well. It was there that he became involved in a unique means of providing health care to his thousands of workers, a pre-payment agreement with innovative physician Sidney Garfield, MD.

It was just a few short years later that Kaiser took the leap that really put him in the history books, when he accepted an order to build ships for the British war effort even while the US was still on the sidelines. That led him to build the Richmond Shipyards outside San Francisco, which set him up to accept American contracts when the war came to our shores. And that led him to be the top producer of the Liberty Ship, the key merchant marine element in saving the British, supplying our troops, and winning the war.

Kaiser brought along his new medical provision ideas to the shipyards he built, not just in California, but in Oregon and Washington as well. Eventually he made the medical side of things its own division of his business empire, adding the name of a creek on his lodge property in Santa Clara County, California.

And that’s where Kaiser Permanente originated. Now you know the rest of the story.

Professor Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit posted a link to this article this morning. Read it and weep.

As I see it, the author conducted an experiment that showed that doing the opposite of what she’d always done before by speaking directly, establishing firm expectations, being firm and concise, but collegial, she got much better results in every area of her life.

But she rejected those more effective actions, because she sees them as the behaviors of an “entitled white male” (or apparently worse still, a “southern white male). Therefore, she concludes, she shouldn’t change – society should.

I don’t know Judith Taylor. I therefore don’t know if she’s a sexist or racist, or an odious human being. I do know that what she’s written here is destructively sexist and racist, and deeply odious. I feel sorry for her if this is how she truly feels – it is singularly repellent.

I found it interesting that, as I read of the “entitled white male” behaviors she adopted in her experiment, they reminded me of this post of mine, and specifically this passage:

Platoon Sergeant Fred J. Kluge of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry was moving his men into the fighting holes along the old perimeter. “Two of my men called me over and pointed. There was a dead American sergeant in the bottom of the foxhole. I looked at him and couldn’t help thinking: He looks just like me. I told the two troops: ‘Get him by the harness and drag him to the choppers.’ Someone came up behind me and said, ‘No, you won’t do that, Sergeant. He’s one of my troopers and you will show respect. Get two more men and carry him to the landing zone.’ It was Colonel Moore, making a final check of his positions. If we hadn’t found that sergeant he would have. I had cause to remember his words, and repeat them, just two days later.”

Lt. General Harold Moore was one of the finest leaders America has ever been blessed with. But to Judith Taylor, apparently, he’s just another “entitled white male,” his most effective traits as a person and as a leader forever tainted by his DNA.

The poison of identity politics will darken this world for many years to come, unfortunately. We will all suffer for it.

My little brother Rich and I trade song lyrics from oldies we grew up with, e-mailing them to each other from time to time.

Along the way I’ve come across a handful of guys who had solo hits, but who got their start years earlier with bands that also had hits.

One of them is Gerry Rafferty. He had a big solo hit in 1978 with “Baker Street” on his album City to City.

“Right Down the Line” was his second hit from the same album.

But Rafferty had had an earlier big hit, with his band Stealers Wheel and the 1973 song “Stuck in the Middle with You.”

Jay Ferguson is another such artist. He’s a one-hit-wonder as a solo act, with his smash single “Thunder Island” from 1977.

Almost a decade earlier, though, Ferguson was part of Spirit, the band that was also a one-hit-wonder with their song “I Got a Line on You.”

(Incidentally, Spirit remains in the news today; their lawsuit against Led Zeppelin for stealing the tune to their song “Taurus” and using it in “Stairway to Heaven” was revived by a judge just last month.)

In 1984, John Waite had a #1 hit with his solo single “Missing You.”

But much earlier – way back in 1977 – Waite was with a band called The Babys, and had a hit with their single, “Isn’t It Time.”

The Babys would have another hit in 1979, with “Everytime I Think of You.”

Our final subject is one Paul Carrack. In 1987 he hit it big with his solo single, “Don’t Shed a Tear.”

Unlike the others above, though, Carrack had multiple hits with multiple previous bands. First there was the band Ace, with their hit “How Long.”

Then he made the charts with Squeeze, and their hit “Tempted,” in 1981.

Then he joined Mike & The Mechanics, and had several hits. First was “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” in 1985.

Next up was “The Living Years” in 1988.

Finally, there was “Over My Shoulder” in 1995.

There you go. What similar examples can you think of?

I’m slowly working my way through the online course from Hillsdale College An Introduction to C.S. Lewis. Do check it out – it’s more than worth the time.

One of the instructors is Visiting Professor Michael Ward, a Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. In addition to other skills that make him a simply fascinating teacher, he occasionally uses etymology to reinforce a point. Here are a few things I’ve learned from him in that regard:

• The root of the word religion is the Latin religare, “to tie” or “to bind” – that is, to connect things together (think ligament).
• And that is the opposite of analysis, from Latin ana, “up” or “back,” and lysis, “a loosening” – that is, to separate into parts.
• Cosmology comes from the same root word as cosmetics, the Greek kosmos meaning “an ordered whole.” The former is studying the universe as an ordered system, and the latter is putting your face into order.
• Influenza is Italian for influence, and comes from the old days when everyone, even doctors, believed the other planets had influence on earth’s air. So if you had an undiagnosed malady, your doctor would blame that astrological influence.

I love this stuff.

I’ve repeatedly pointed out the unforgivable leadership failures and lack of ethics demonstrated by the many top-level corporate executives who misuse their companies as platforms to push their personal politics.

What do you get when this is allowed to happen again and again? You get employees at all levels of the company with the “correct” politics who become political bullies, expecting (correctly, as it turns out) that they can with impunity mistreat their colleagues who don’t share those politics.

This latest battleground can be seen in this article. An executive at Facebook, Joel Kaplan, has been forced to grovel because he appeared last week in his personal capacity in Washington, DC, to support Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a close personal friend of his.

Left-wing employees have now been supported by other executives in their bullying of Kaplan. Sheryl Sandberg, who routinely pushes her left-wing views from her official corporate perch, publicly dressed Kaplan down for what he did in his private time. Other executives who supported him at first were similarly browbeaten and forced to capitulate to the angry Facebook employee mob. At last telling there was yet another ridiculous company meeting scheduled where, no doubt, the company would plead fealty to the “progressive” cause.

This is where we’re headed when irresponsible, unethical, and bitterly partisan top executives are given free rein to misallocate their corporate resources for their own personal politics. Not only are there now different rules for the corporate elites and lower-level employees, but now there are also different rules for liberal and conservative employees at all levels.

Over at Google, you may have heard, the top executives misused company time and the salaries of a huge number of employees to wail and gnash their teeth about their anger at the results of the 2016 presidential election. A year later, they fired engineer James Damore for daring to express opinions that challenged their lockstep left-wing political orthodoxy, with their VP of “Inclusion” and their CEO brazenly lying about what he wrote at the time to publicly shame him (which should make everyone wonder just where in the hell HR was in all that).

We live in very troubling times. It’s high time more of us started pushing back, and pushing back hard, against this ideological weaponization of public companies.

Today, at the urging of my younger son AJ, I read the very interesting young people’s book about the American Revolution, King George: What Was His Problem? It’s a hugely informative book and very interesting read – I recommend it highly.

Along the way I read the story of Benedict Arnold, who was influenced in part in his betrayal of our young country by his wife, Peggy Arnold (née Shippen).

Now, I spent a fair amount of time in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, for work years ago, and wondered if perhaps the town’s name and the legendary beauty Peggy had anything in common.

The answer: yes, indeed – Mrs. Arnold’s grandfather is the town’s namesake. He was a prominent Pennsylvanian, and served as mayor of Philadelphia.

Interesting where digging into history will lead you…