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Thinking Tools – The Work of Edward de Bono

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Most of us probably take thinking for granted as a reflexive, automatic process, like breathing. Thoughts pass in and out of our consciousness in an endless, effortless stream. Edward de Bono looks at thinking differently. He sees thinking as a set of tools that we can employ in a deliberate manner to gain insights, create [...]

Embracing Unpredictability – Life Among Black Swans

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

During the course of his long (and by any standards, successful) career, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been categorized with numerous titles – among them scholar, philosopher, professor, ‘senior Wall Street trader’, and hedge fund manager. As a writer and essayist, he has developed philosophical theories based on his observations of probability, statistics, and mathematical finance [...]

The Real Discovery of America

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

It is a cornerstone of American history – the 1492 discovery of the Americas by Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to the colonization of the New World by the Puritans. Recited by schoolchildren, expounded upon in basic history texts, and portrayed in film – this [...]

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Thomas Staley’s Look into the Millionaire Mind

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

What does real wealth look like? Is it a vacation home in Tahiti? An always-reserved table at the city’s finest restaurant? Or maybe it’s a ‘trophy spouse’ and extravagant weekends in Vegas? Well, author Thomas J. Stanley doesn’t think so – and he’s one to know. Having studied the affluent for over 30 years, Stanley [...]

Flash Mobs – The New Political Dissent

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

With the popularity of such widely-viewed YouTube clips as ‘Grand Central Freeze’ and ‘Oprah Flash Mobile Dance Party’, flash mobs have entered into our mainstream consciousness. Defined as a ‘sudden, seemingly spontaneous activity planned through the rapid transmission of announcements’ through a variety of web-based tools (LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook, et al.), the concept has been [...]

How the World Would Live Without Us

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

How permanent are we? This is a question that has intrigued some of the greatest creative minds of our civilization. In our modern lives, we are surrounded by the seemingly eternal (steel, concrete, plastics, a global human population of billions) to such a degree that it can be difficult to envisage a world in which [...]

Neuroscience Explores the Wisdom of Aging

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

Wisdom has fallen out of fashion. This is not meant as an inflammatory statement, but rather an observation of the times in which we live. Case in point: during John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign, much was made of the fact that at age 73, if he had won the race, he would have been the [...]

Twenty Summers of Life

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

A good friend of mine once explained to me her philosophy of life as she gets older. She calls it the “20 summers philosophy.” I continually give her all the credit for coming up with this, but she claims someone else deserves the real credit, perhaps the guys who wrote the book Twenty Good Summers. [...]

Business Connects with Social Network Analysis

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Due to the growing popularity of social networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, most of us have developed a working knowledge (however slight) of the real-world concept of connectivity. Useful In both personal and business-related areas, we can reconnect with our high school sweetheart or approach an industry peer. By utilizing data sets we [...]

On Being of Multiple Minds about Personality – Multiplicity by Rita Carter

Friday, July 24th, 2009

When it comes to the study of the human psyche, any theory decrying itself as ‘new’ is flirting dangerously with the watchdogs of medical research history. Which is the prime problem facing Rita Carter’s latest book, Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity and the Self. The human brain, and the complexity of our programming, [...]