Archive for the ‘Ramblings’ Category:
1000 TEDS, 6 words
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! These posts will give you a better idea about what this site is about. Start here, then go here, and here, and then here.If you’re like me, you look forward to the latest TED talks and their “ideas worth spreading.” The problem is there are so many of them. Who has the time to watch and ponder every...
Goethe (redux)
Eight requisites for contented living: “Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Hope...
Fear of failure and success
No other problems scare people more than failure and success. What? Fear of success? Yes, indeed. Though fear of rejection and failure seem to be the predominant reasons people avoid taking action, success also frightens many. What if I fail? Or worse, what if I succeed? People will discover all my faults and that I can’t live up to their expectations. Come on now, do you really believe that? Whether...
Evolution of the Geek
Goethe is right
I was musing on my teaching philosophy (I teach some college courses and train a lot of amateurs and professionals alike). And I ran across a saying attributed to Goethe that goes like this: “If you treat a man as he is, he will remain as he is; if you treat him as he ought to be and could be, he will become as he ought to be and could be.” – Goethe Unfortunately, you can fall prey...
Novel openings
The opening lines of a novel should really set the tone for the story to come. There are some great leads out there that always capture my attention. Some authors really know how to pull you in with just a few opening words. There are tons of examples (as I’ve read hundreds of novels!). But my all-time favorite has always been the opening to Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest: “I first...
Web works in mysterious ways
Today in my e-mail I find a message from the WordPress engine (the free software that runs this blog). It says I have a comment to approve. I’m shocked. Not because I have a comment, but because, well I have a comment already. You see I’ve been building this blog site in secret and had kept it hidden for the past few weeks. Or so I thought. I mean it’s always been out there in cyberspace,...





