Scroll down for the picture I’ve held back from posting since this site is mostly about leadership, meaning, value, importance, purpose, emotional awareness, emotional skills, etc. First a few words. I find people’s attitudes toward diet and exercise become self-righteous so I prefer not to bring up diet and exercise in conversation, so I’d generally not bring it up here. Plenty of sites show before and after pictures of people’s[…] Keep reading →

I’ve always wanted to experience the feeling of surfing when I’m skilled at it. Have you ever asked a surfer to describe it? They can’t put it into words. I love skiing and playing ultimate. Surfing seems to have something similar, maybe more. So I’ve meant to learn for a long time. It turns out they teach surfing at the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York City, a subway ride[…] Keep reading →

Monday’s opinion piece, “Turning College Into a No-Thought Zone,”described how a semi-public college in California created what it called “free-speech zones” where students could speak freely, disallowing some forms of speech everywhere else. The article contained this statement (sadly, to me, from someone else with a physics background): “The creation of the free-speech zones, and the enforcement of sound-level ordinances, was not to prevent free speech, but give religious or[…] Keep reading →

Once as a kid after a getting a haircut, my classmates taunted me, “Josh got a haircut! Josh got a haircut!” I felt ashamed. I didn’t want to get haircuts after that for fear of being teased. I didn’t consciously realize until recently that decades later, I still feel a tinge of being teased when I think about getting my hair cut, even though I would never feel ashamed if[…] Keep reading →

A few days ago the New York Times ran an article, “Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater,” describing how mercenaries the U.S. hired were threatening to kill Americans after already killing Iraqis: weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued[…] Keep reading →

A friend who grew up in Queens and became the senior ball boy at the U.S. Open told me a story about his friend who worked there too. One day he was working at the door to the U.S. Open’s VIP room enforcing the jacket-and-tie dress code. Jack Nicholson came by and started walking into the room wearing shorts and a t-shirt. My friend’s friend, following the rules, in a[…] Keep reading →

Why is “know thyself” hard? You’d think you’d know yourself better than anything. Here’s a major reason why: because almost everyone in the world benefits from you not knowing yourself. Because organizations mediate your interactions with everyone in the world except the dozen or so people closest to you and nearly all organizations benefit from you not knowing yourself. They benefit from manipulating you. Don’t believe me? Think of the most[…] Keep reading →

John Perkins and his peers described themselves as economic hit men. He wrote a memoir describing their work called “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which I found thrilling to read and chilling to think about its consequences. What do economic hit men do? According to him Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from[…] Keep reading →

I read and recommend Steve Martin’s memoir, “Born Standing Up.” He writes honestly and concisely. He persevered through a challenging life. Unlike many people we admire, he didn’t overcome obstacles that befell him. My list of inspirations on my “Resources and Inspirations” page includes three big ones for me who overcame outside challenges that they couldn’t have foreseen and have to handle—Victor Frankl, Jean-Dominique Bauby, and Mark Zupan. Overcoming challenges[…] Keep reading →