The old saying is, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” It isn’t true, however. Sometimes names are the most hurtful of injuries, leading to shame and embarrassment that last much longer than any associated physical injury. Another very old saying is, “Actions speak louder than words.” While generally […]
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Posted March 1, 2021 in Monthly News Debra and I are very different in some ways. While we have sufficient traits in common to allow for working together, the way we process information and relate not only to the past but also to our sense of the future differs significantly. Some of those differences are gender based: men learn to process information […] Posted February 1, 2021 in Monthly News The title of my post is based on a song written and performed in the 1970s by the Steve Miller band. It was one of those songs that made an immediate impression on me. Based on record sales and “air time,” it evidently made a similar impression on many others (see “Fly Like An Eagle […] Posted December 31, 2020 in Monthly News When Debra selected Adjectives as her subject, I suspect many of you surmised that I would select “Adverbs,” which seems a complementary part of speech.The challenge then becomes how to make the two types of linguistic modifiers work in a way that makes sense. Both are terms describing the way a specific word or phrase […] Posted June 30, 2020 in Monthly News We seem to be living the “ancient Chinese curse” that was rumored to have been made up by Robert Kennedy in the 1970s. The phrase has been investigated many times because it has the “ring” of truth. Peace and plenty are not as interesting as war and famine. We can find a lot of times […] Posted September 30, 2019 in Monthly News From a poem by American poet, Walt Whitman: I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They […] Posted July 31, 2019 in Monthly News One of the best known poems of the Nineteenth Century was the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It captures both the courage soldiers display when facing certain death and the foolishness of war. The Light Brigade had been ordered to charge the front, and although that meant charging into certain death, […] Posted October 31, 2017 in Monthly News In 1991, Edward de Bono published a book that seems to fit the tenor of current times: I Am Right, You Are Wrong. We (humans and probably all mammals) become addicted to patterns of thought. When patterns produce desired results, they are reinforced, making it more likely we will repeat the pattern, which reinforces it—making […] Posted February 28, 2017 in Monthly News Debra’s article this month, “Mohini,” provides an example of learned behavior. Having learned how much space she was allowed, Mohini remained within her learned limits, even when more space was available to her. Behavior is often developed—shaped—by environment. Humans demonstrate this every bit as much as tigers and other animals. B. F. Skinner was a […] |
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