Benjamin Franklin is often given credit for the saying, “Honesty is the best policy,” but the saying is actually older than Ben. The original language was, “Our grosse conceipts, who think honestie the best policie,” and the originator of that phrase was an English politician named Sir Edwin Sandys. I suspect, however, that the actual origins are even older than that, as the desire and need for honesty in relationships are as old as humanity. It has long been believed that the Devil (Satan) is the Father of lies, and it’s easy to see why that’s so. No one likes . . . → Read More: Honesty Really Is the Best Policy
|
||||
 Comments are closed  Blog  1968, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, coal, communist, deceive, Democrats, fooling people, honesty, hydro-electric, intimidation, lesser of two evils, Lord Acton, oil, policy, politicians, politics, Republicans, Robert Burns, Robert Ringer, solar, tangled web, technology, the Fugs, two steps forward, vested interests, War in Vietnam, wind, winning We (humans) are doing all sorts of damage to Planet Earth. Humans have always been careless about their garbage. In primitive times, when a tribe accumulated a lot of waste in one location, the tribe simply relocated to a new place. We have, however, run out of new habitable places. We believed, of course, that we had been told to “be fruitful and multiply.” That probably made sense at the time it was originally said, as in those days there was a lot more space than there were people, and life was short and brutal for most people. The best . . . → Read More: No Planet B Comments are closed Blog Ancient Egyptians, be fruitful and multiply, build a wall, China, Civil War, epidemics, farmers, France, greed, humanity, infectious disease, Oedipus, planet Earth, politicians, politics, population, poverty, power corrupts, pressing our luck, Pretty Boy Floyd, revolution, rich, Robin Hood, space, starvation, technology, time warp, United States, world population, World Wars No, not the The Leftovers TV show…. The “left-behinds”—those who are failing to keep pace with the technological revolution. I am increasingly one of them. At one time, I was among the “techno” leaders. I was one of the first academics to embrace email and did so at a time when most of my colleagues were rejecting email as a method of communication. I have previously mentioned secretaries I knew in days gone by who resisted having their typewriters replaced by computers and word processing programs. They were among the first left-behinds. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why . . . → Read More: The Left-Behinds Comments are closed Blog advertising, Amish, buggies, buggy whips, computers, corporations, distance learning, documents, Donald Trump, Facebook, heavy metal, know thyself, left behinds, left overs, LinkedIn, mental limits, music, online class, organizations, physical limits, Pinterest, politicians, rap, Rock and Roll, science, secretaries, social media, technological revolution, technology, TV, tweets, Twitter, typewriters, video We certainly live in interesting times, don’t we…. Lately, we’ve recently seen a number of complaints about how a percentage of those living in the US are only interested in “free stuff.” The main complaint is that those people will vote for Democrats for political office rather than for Republicans, who want to make sure that no one receives “free stuff.” According to some, we have become a culture of “cheaters.” The original impetus for this blog entry was a comment a friend made about the concern companies have about people who “telecommute” and work from home rather than driving . . . → Read More: Cheating on Our Ethics Test Comments are closed Blog "get even" mentality, 80/20 rule, academic community, adjunct faculty, bribes, captains, cheaters, college, colonels, corporate, corporate ethics, corporate systems, corporations, Corvair, credit-default-swaps, democratic, ethics, financial industry, Ford, free stuff, generals, Glaxo, globalization, GM, governmental regulations, high school, honest day's work, ignition switch, leadership, Lieutenants, lobbyists, local problems, majors, nation, NCOs, Noncommissioned Officers, office, part-time, Pinto, primary education, prostitutes, Republican, schools, secondary education, shit runs downhill, standards, standards for behavior, systemic problems, technologies, technology, telecommuting, universities, vacation, Wilfredo Pareto, working from home, world-wide According to a top Saudi cleric, driving damages women’s ovaries. Does the fact (reality) that some people believe that make it true, if only for them? What—exactly—is the relationship between reality and what we believe? You may know people who believe that their beliefs accurately reflect reality. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that one of my recurrent themes is the need for an evidence procedure that allows individuals to base their beliefs on reality to the degree that it’s possible. It was, for example, perfectly logical for our ancient ancestors to believe that . . . → Read More: The Reality of Beliefs Comments are closed Blog ancestors, ancient, atheism, atmosphere, babies, beliefs, border, Byron Katie, Catholic, cleric, CO2, driving, earth, fossil fuels, geography, global climate change, global warming, heaven, Hell, humans, Imagine, Islam, John Lennon, microscopes, mountain, Mr. Everest, Muslim, oceans, ovaries, Protestant, reality, river, Saudi, Shia, Sunni, technologies, technology, telescopes, war, women In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures Comments are closed Blog Africa, Amish, behavior, belief, belief systems, beliefs, Bible, breasts, cancer, cancerous, change, Christian, climate change, Copernicus, disasters, drought, economic policy, economics, Europe, evidence, evidence procedure, evolution, false positives, flood, floods, follow the money, food, fossil fuels, fuel, Galileo, geophysical, global warming, government, Greece, health care, history, hockey stick, human activity, human influence, interconnection, long-term, mammography, metamodel, Mideast, perspective, prosperity, PSA, PSA test, public education, public schools, real, reality, regulation, relief, Richard Bandler, risk, scarcity, science, scientists, short-term, Spain, strategy, survival, tax policy, technology, the world, thermography, time, U.S., X-ray As I am starting to write this electronic blog, one of the headlines for the day is that one of the principal bookstores in the U.S., Borders, is filing for bankruptcy. Electronic readers—e-readers—are gaining market share. In related stories, Amazon recently announced that Kindle e-book sales have surpassed sales of both hardcover and paperback books. For those of us who have spent a lifetime reading books, the move to “electronic literature” is a bit unsettling. I still have books on my shelves that I read as a college undergraduate. They have moved with me at least eight times and kept . . . → Read More: “What’s a Book, Daddy?” Comments are closed Blog Amazon, amplifiers, Boarders, books, bookstores, CDs, change, children, City Lights, computer-based, distance learning, e-readers, Egypt, grandchildren, illuminated manuscripts, Internet, iTunes, Kindle, learning curve, Middle East, Milton, monks, Nook, Paradise Lost, pioneers, records, San Francisco, Satan, smart phone, technology, tubes, turntable |
||||