Leadership creates community. I’m writing today on leadership and creating community in a specific context for clarity, but it applies to anyone’s participation in any community, online or off. I expect you can translate everything below to your world easily enough. If not, comment below and I’ll clarify. An effective measure of your leadership skills is how much community you create. Another is how much your community appreciates you. Online[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know I work to communicate effectively with groups that don’t know or act much on sustainability. My goal is to lead them to where they want to act for their own reasons, expecting success. I’ve succeeded with conservatives and evangelicals. Other groups are more challenging. Geeky communities like Slashdot and Hacker News tend to like nuclear, escaping to Mars, and other tech-based solutions. They seem to miss unintended[…] Keep reading →

One of my top resources on the environment is the book Limits to Growth. Reading it was revelatory. They approached the environment the way I thought made sense, then created a model, researched the numbers, plugged them in, and got answers. What made sense was what they call a systemic approach—not to look at one of all the interacting parts, but to look at the whole system, including how the[…] Keep reading →

Columbia University offered me nearly $10,000 to fly to Shanghai to teach an entrepreneurship class, block-week style, meaning a semester in a week, 9-5 each day. I’ve taught that way before and got great results. I love teaching entrepreneurship. I’m not bragging to say that my reviews say I’m exceptional at it. I love my alma mater, Columbia, and as an adjunct professor, experience teaching at Ivy League schools helps[…] Keep reading →

I read this commencement speech on leadership given by a military man at the University of Texas at Austin. As much as I found the speech inspiring, I couldn’t help but think the following and post it at Hacker News. Here is the full discussion there on the speech, which, as you’ll see, contained some controversy. It sounds like an impressive speech. I understand people share his values. The bravest[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday’s Washington Post reported “NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say“. I commented the following at Hacker News, which got voted as the top comment, and, as a testament to the ethos of tech-savvy people, at least in that community, one of my highest overall voted comments ever (see discussion here, and I recommend reading the comments on the Post’s page too). More like “USA morale[…] Keep reading →

The New Yorker this week published an article titled “Diet Drugs Work: Why Won’t Doctors Prescribe Them?” I responded (on Hacker News, where you can see discussion on it) More relevant questions: Why don’t we stop subsidizing corn so much? Why don’t we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school? Why don’t we teach effective exercise, sports, and fitness in schools? If we can ban alcohol and tobacco sales to[…] Keep reading →