“Take my wife, please,” the Jewish comedian Henny Youngman once said with such definitive sarcasm it became a running commentary on the state of marriage. Little did Youngman know that the joke was borrowed from Roman antiquity, minus the sarcasm, of course (another concept also borrowed from Latin).
Archeologists have…
Why Elon Musk’s Twitter Poll Was Smart Some of us awoke to the headline, “Tesla Share Price Slides After Musk Promises to Sell $21 Billion Stake.” Was this another of Musk’s “oops” moments, similar to smoking marijuana on a podcast or selling his only home? For the world’s wealthiest man…
Question: When did social media become a dystopian religion?
Answer: About four hundred years ago.
Call it the year of Tweeting badly. Rants on social media are now substituted for scientific reasoning. No one gets the final say until they are blocked. If you say anything that disagrees with the…
“To measure the man, measure his heart.” ― Malcolm Forbes
In 1990, a yellow taxi dropped me on lower 5th Avenue a block or two from where Greenwich Village meets Little Italy. It was bitterly cold and I yanked the belt on my trench coat. A red Mercedes honked the…
There are few ways to confirm stupidity so effectively.
The founding principles of the magazine that calls itself a newspaper
“To take part in a severe contest between intelligence.”
To those who believe The Economist is meant to be about the economy, that is logical but inaccurate.
The New York Times doesn’t write about time, nor does Time magazine…
Elizabeth Holmes was a brilliant engineer who dabbled in Mandarin for fun. As a freshman, she dropped out of Stanford in 2003 to found Theranos. Soon after she discovered a look that resembled Steve Jobs, and in one of life’s great ironies, she has the same name as his first…
“Hit the little ball before you hit the big ball.”
Golfers use the expression above to prevent taking a large divot before striking the ball. When you don’t follow this rule, it can be very unpleasant as dirt flies in the air and the ball barely moves or is shanked…
Germans have a word for just about everything. Schwellenangst is the fear of embarking on a new adventure. For some, it’s the first time they fly in an airplane, while for others it’s the start of a new job, a new relationship, or a move to a new location. …
“My only measure of success is how many people love me.”
On May 29, 1969, Doris and Roberta, two sisters from an average-sized midwestern town, born to an average midwestern family and enjoying an average if happy midwestern life, received a letter letting them know their brother was about to…
Professor of Leadership. Extraordinary Lives Project. Author “Be Somebody” (2021); 2019 Telly Award IconicVoices.tv; ex-publisher Forbes
