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Category Archives: People

Thin-Slicing, Experts, and the Power of the Human Brain Help Capture Suspect Two Alive

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The police in Watertown responded magnificently. But the most brilliant strategic move gets little notice from the press. For about sixteen hours, hundreds of law officers, FBI agents, helicopters, and satellites scoured a relatively tiny area of Boston suburbs for one wounded terrorist. At the same time, they kept the public relatively safe, off the streets, and out of the way of their manhunt. But they didn’t find their man. By seven o’clock, Col. Timothy Alben admitted they didn’t know where Dzhokar Tsarnaev was. They believed he was still in the Greater Boston area, but they couldn’t know for sure. So authorities lifted the “shelter in place” request, allowing people to leave their homes with a powerful admonition: remain diligent. Col. Alben made clear that there was no “all clear.” The world is a dangerous place, but Watertown, Massachusetts was beyond dangerous. Somewhere in that quiet neighborhood lurked a dangerous, desperate, wounded animal who knew

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If Women Are Looking Prettier, Your 401(k) May Be Looking Uglier

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Lipstick effect gives beauty products a lift in recessions as women instinctively try to attract more desirable mates.

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King Lehrer: A Tragedy in 3 Quotes

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My episodic memory stinks. All my birthday parties are a blur of cake and presents. I’m notorious within my family for confusing the events of my own childhood with those of my siblings. I’m like the anti-Proust. That’s how Jonah Lehrer began a Wired Science blog on false memories. I believe in false memories. Thanks to Jonah and others, we know that memories change a bit every time we recall them. And we are pretty sure that multi-tasking impairs the brain’s episodic filing system. Perhaps Jonah is a multi-tasker. Yesterday, Jonah Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker magazine after admitting that he invented quotes from Bob Dylan and subsequently lied about doing so. Like Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter who wrote Jonah’s journalism epitaph, Jonah Lehrer took license from his fast fame. The story in his mind was much richer than the story the facts supported. So he told the story in

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Why John Locke’s Readers Love Him and What You Can Learn From It

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I should have written this post ages ago. I owe the author.  No, John Locke has never intentionally done anything for me that I know of.  Not consciously, anyway.  Instead, John Locke has shown me how to be a better . . . person. You might think John’s a self-help writer, or maybe he writes about faith. Nope.   John Locke writes action novels, and great ones. He develops some awesome characters, especially the hero of his action novels, Donovan Creed. Creed is an anti-terror assassin, but, no, John Locke isn’t teaching me to kill.  John Locke’s teaching me to love people more. Seriously. The reason John Locke’s readers have made him the most successful self-published author in history is simple:  he loves his readers first. Here’s how John shows his love to those readers: John Locke Respects His Readers’ Time:  I read a lot of business books. I end up hating most of them, even

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Meditate on This, Why Don’t You?

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I was 18 and a college freshman. It was a Tuesday night in October. My 1970 Chevy Impala felt wide open in the fifty-degree air and the smell of freshly fallen leaves. I drove through Forest Park feeling the rhythm of the yellow street lights as I moved between light and dark. “Memory” from Cats came on the radio. I lit a Camel (no filter). I was free. In America, we often think of independence as a collective thing. That’s bassackwards, isn’t it?  Independence is individual. July 4th is Independence Day–the day we celebrate breaking free from Britain.  We broke from a nation, as a nation. The collective celebration makes sense. But we did not break free because of some philosophy about groups of people; our philosophy, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, is about the rights of individual human beings. We do need other people. We are social animals. But we are free to

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Missing the Message for the Words

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The SMS text message screamed in all caps: SETH GODIN IS  A COMMUNIST! photo courtesy of minaka And that was only the beginning.  My cellphone vibrated with new revelations about Godin for the next seven minutes.  What started all this?  My friend – let’s call him “Jim” – just finished Linchpin by Seth Godin.  Jim was convinced that the book’s purpose was to inspire an overthrow of the US government and to replace it with a Soviet-style Marxist regime. I admit that Seth alluded to The Communist Manifesto a few times in Linchpin.  I also admit that the book talked about an economic revolution that would change everything about the way we work and make a living. Not to mention, I’ve disagreed with Seth Godin in the past. But I don’t believe Godin is a communist.  Actually, I think Linchpin is profoundly anti-authoritarian.  Here’s why. First, Godin doesn’t “call for” a revolution. Instead, he observes

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Who’s Lucky?

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There’s a “special” school in St. Louis County. Its seniors graduated on last Friday. How sad it must be for those kids. They’re not graduating from the district’s “normal” schools with their peers. For various reasons, they’ve been relegated to a school for misfits. Seeing the building makes the bad feelings worse.  It’s a former grade school, crammed inconveniently behind a bank and a Taco Bell. Its Eisenhower era architecture stands out  amidst its Mortgage Boom surroundings like a dandelion on golf course. And the high school kids—some in their early 20s—appear freakishly large in the building. The clown car impression intensifies inside the gymnasium. Its small, undersized basketball court barely holds the families of sixty or so graduates. The scene was such a contrast for me. I graduated with almost 600 other kids. Of them, I knew only a small percentage, really. At my high school graduation in the cavernous Cathedral Basilica of St.

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Declare Victory

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Politics creates incentives to shout, “we lost.” That’s why after every great debate, both sides rush to claim defeat. Defeats help fire up the emotional base. Screaming, “We’re behind,” helps fundraising.  Here’s why claiming defeat isn’t such a great idea:  most people who listen to you are not your base.  Nor or they your opponents.  Most people listening are concerned people trying to decide which side’s right and which side’s wrong. When you declare yourself the winner, some will agree, some won’t.  When you declare defeat, everyone will agree with you.  Claim defeat often enough, and people will just call you a loser.

I Bet You Can’t Do It

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I hope you can, but I doubt it.  If you think you can, please comment before and after. Go one work week without uttering a single acronym or abbreviation. No ASAPs, no TPS Reports, no MRIs. Recently, two dozen people sat around a board room table.  I was one of them. After 30 minutes it was all I could do to stay in the damn room. “We have acronyms for everything,” one woman said.  Not to be outdone, representatives from three other organizations one-upped her.  “We have books to define all our acronyms.” “New people can’t even figure out what do with all our abbreviations.”  And they all laugh. I slapped the table. “Would you people listen to yourselves?” I hissed.  “You’re bragging about being unintelligible.  Like it’s respectable to speak in gobbledygook.”  Actually, I smiled like an idiot and continued the meeting.  But I wanted to fix the real problem. Arcane speech kills understanding.

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