It seems grandmothers running marathons appeals to a lot of people. A fitness and fashion line called Miss Matahari has profiled my mother as one of (currently the first on the page, naturally) several inspirational women representing the fitness and fashion-inspired brand. Better branding you won’t find at any price. Their tagline is Have you ever wanted to do something others told you was impossible? I could get behind that[…] Keep reading →

Today’s post isn’t on one of my major themes. Trained in physics, I like looking at nature and understanding patterns. I noticed something remarkable yesterday when a couple friends talking about visiting Hong Kong and Beijing talked about how polluted those cities’ air is. As we all know,  many (all major? most major?) cities are polluted to where living in them is like smoking packs of cigarettes a day. People[…] Keep reading →

I was inspired to write the past couple days of food-related posts by an article about the food store I grew up with in Philadelphia called Weaver’s Way, which my family called just “the co-op.” The store is a cooperative, meaning you have to be a co-owner to shop and you have to work a certain number of hours per year. When I was younger and lived in Philadelphia I[…] Keep reading →

I got this exercise from a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who writes on self-awareness, mindfulness, and meditation. I find it helped me understand a lot about how I perceive my world and how I can influence how I perceive it. I don’t know if he made it up or got it from somewhere. Anyway, all you need is three raisins and some free time. The Three Raisins exercise Preparation: get[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know if I have to explain how shopping for, preparing, and eating food qualifies as fundamental to self-awareness and therefore leadership. A few years ago I would have considered food shopping irrelevant to self-awareness. I’ve changed. I’ll start with an aside on how big an effect just gardening can have with Victory Gardens. During the World Wars, when mainstream food production dropped, governments promoted their citizens planting so-called[…] Keep reading →

After posting about how Churchill and others overcame impediments on their ways to greatness, I saw an article in the New York Times about great historical figures humbly learning things late in life — Marie Curie learned to swim after winning two Nobel Prizes, Leo Tolstoy learning to ride a bike after writing War and Peace, Dwight Eisenhower learning to paint after World War II ended, and a couple other[…] Keep reading →

North Korea constantly talks of reunification with South Korea. South Korea is doing well and as generations change seems to lose interest. Unrequited love hurts.

I figure most people have seen this quote before. It’s scary — particularly for how matter-of-fact it is. You get the idea he has no doubt of the effectiveness of his strategy, probably from years of trial and error. It’s scary not just for its historical roots, but for how well it seems to work in more mundane but still important contexts — particularly with national leaders. People as individuals[…] Keep reading →

Back when Occupy Wall Street was making more news and I was writing about it and leadership and on it and responsibility, I had an idea about corporate control of our lives I thought would be interesting. As an entrepreneur and inventor, I felt the control closer to those areas of my life. I’ve written about how the patent and copyright systems have created monopolies and oligopolies that distorted their[…] Keep reading →