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When Thought Leaders Give Bad Advice. . .
Brené Brown is a popular thought-leader with a devoted following. I have only scant familiarity with her work and don’t have an opinion on the few things of hers that I’ve read or heard in the past. However, recently I was sitting in a meeting where the presenter was using PowerPoint slides. The final slide […]
Reify
Building Your Power of Expression Reify, v. Pronunciation: ˈrēəˌfī Meaning: To reify is to take something that is abstract and render it more concrete or real. It is to give definite content and form to a concept or idea. It is often used in the past tense. Usage: With this constraint, many of the possible […]
Compete Against Yourself!
I don’t compete with others as a general rule. Instead, I compete against myself. As a young sales professional early in my career, I was given a sales quota of $600,000 for the year. Knowing the nature of the sales realities I was dealing with allowed for the possibility of closing business every week (as […]
Inside the Transgender Empire – Part 2 of 5 By Christopher F. Rufo
From the Fringes to the Center The trans movement was hatched, then, on the fringes of American academia. But how did it move so quickly to the center of American public life? Like many other things, it began with a flood of cash, as some of the wealthiest people in the country began devoting enormous […]
Tone and Style
It’s interesting to realize that the manner in which people communicate, the way in which they carry themselves, seems to have a great deal of pull. I am becoming more and more convinced that people who go into attack mode on Facebook, coming across as hyper-aggressive to the point of being obnoxious, may not actually […]
Vanguard
Building Your Power of Expression Vanguard, n. Pronunciation: ˈvanˌɡärd Meaning: In a military context, this word referenced the foremost part of an advancing army or naval force. It also is more commonly used in reference to a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas. In addition, it could be used to […]
How To Eradicate Your Slothfulness
All of us, from time to time, get into a sort of funk. We lose our focus. We get “writer’s block.” We get lethargic. We lose our momentum. I know an easy way to stay productive. When you have a list of tasks that need to get accomplished, you undoubtedly write them down somewhere. Some […]
Inside the Transgender Empire – Part 1 of 5 by Christopher F. Rufo
The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” The sudden and pervasive rise of this movement provokes two questions: where did it come from, and how […]
Truth vs. “My Truth”
Whenever I hear someone speak or write in terms of “my truth” or “your truth,” I immediately recognize that truth is not their thing. Opinion is. Truth is simply there. It is not owned by me or by you. We either submit to truth, or we delude ourselves into imagining that whatever opinion or preference […]
Recalcitrant
Building Your Power of Expression Recalcitrant, adj., n. Pronunciation: rəˈkalsətrənt Meaning: This word describes having an obstinately uncooperative attitude toward authority or discipline. As a noun, it describes a person in possession of such an attitude. Usage: Unfortunately, I was given a class comprised of recalcitrant 15-year-olds. Tommy is a problem child in that he […]
Guest Editorial by Alan Weiss of Summit Consulting
When I was very young, a man would come around the neighborhood with a grindstone on his back ringing a large bell. He would settle on a corner and sharpen knives and scissors for five cents each. Women, of course, were home, and would send their kids down to provide the man with their blades […]
Why Israel? Why the Jews?
I was recently asked by someone to write my thoughts on the recent events that took place beginning on October 7th in Israel. I am not happy to do so, but I am willing to do so. We need to begin with an understanding of the origins of both Israel and the Jewish people. This […]
The Mysterious Power of Questions
Questions are our most potent intellectual tool. They are the most significant arrows in our intellectual quiver. How questions are framed really matter. Change just a few words, modify the syntax, and you could get a very different answer. I credit Gordon Allport for this pithy story to illustrate this: Two Catholic Priests were engaged […]
Secretion
Building Your Power of Expression Secretion, n. Pronunciation: səˈkriSH(ə)n Meaning: A process by which substances are produced and discharged from a cell, gland, or organ for a particular function in the organism or for excretion. I often use the term symbolically, in its non-scientific contexts. Usage: His endless blather was like the inky secretions of […]
Good Advice
I was speaking to a group of college students this week, and during part of my presentation, I did a Q&A. Lots of questions were coming my way, and all them were more or less thoughtful and intelligent questions. But my favorite question was this: “Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give […]
The Death of Normalcy
Something predictable happened recently, followed by something unfathomable. First, the predictable. A young man named Ryan Carson, a 31-year-old poet and community activist, found himself sitting on a bus stop bench in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, 32-year-old Claudia Morales. It was around 4:00 AM, and they had left a wedding reception they had attended on […]
An Ongoing Irony
Although I’ve never met her in person, I’ve gotten acquainted with a relatively young lady – quite a bit younger than myself – through social media. An artist by profession, she is extraordinarily talented at drawing and painting. I’ve literally been mesmerized by some of her work, and I’ve told her I plan to one […]
Apotheosis
Building Your Power of Expression Apotheosis, n. Pronunciation: əˌpäTHēˈōsəs Meaning: In some circles, this word has a particular theological meaning. When speaking of divine things, apotheosis refers to the process of divine sanctification wherein a disciple of Christ, at some point in the next life, is elevated to the status of a divine being, a […]
How To Be “On”
Recently I was the opening speaker at a conference. I was to be followed by another speaker who would close out the conference. Happily, I was prepared. I had crafted a powerful message, had rehearsed it carefully, and when it came time to deliver it, I did so in a compelling manner. It was a […]
What We Can Learn from Day 1 of the Biden Impeachment Inquiry
While Donald Trump, both as President of the United States, and also to the present day, has been the subject of multiple witch-hunts and hoxes perpetrated by Leftist-Democrats and the media ever since he announced his intent to run for President on June 16, 2015, and has been formally impeached by Congress not once but […]
Incident in Broward County
A news item caught my eye this week. The incident in question took place on July 10th of this year; I’m writing about it now because an arrest took place just this week following an anonymous tip. Back in July, a man by the name of Marc Cohen, age 63, was taking his wife out […]
Parsimony
Building Your Power of Expression Parsimony, n. Pronunciation: ˈpärsəˌmōnē Meaning: Parsimony refers to a rather austere commitment to frugality, or an aversion to spending money or other resources. Usage: I think you need to have a little parsimony injected into your brain; your spending habits are out of control! A great tradition of public design […]
The Sand in the Hourglass
Most of us squander the most precious resource we have – our time. A lot of this is due to poor planning. Sometimes it is due to a lack of clarity around our sense of purpose. And both of those remain our own responsibility. Let’s start with the second one. Our life, our very existence, […]
Another Example of Confronting the Left
In the previous issue of Uncommon Sense, I shared with you a letter I wrote to the Mary L. Stephens – Davis Branch Library up in Davis, California. If you recall, I was confronting a male librarian who had invited Sophia Lorey, a former college soccer player, to give a speech at the library about […]
On Being a Teacher
Fundamentally, I am a teacher. That entails my acquiring knowledge from many sources and dispensing that disparate knowledge in coherent ways to unformed minds. Teachers make contributions to society only indirectly. We don’t directly build bridges, create new technologies, or provide landscaping services. We don’t heal people using pharmaceuticals, nor do we judge legal cases, […]
Blinkered
Building Your Power of Expression Blinkered, adj. Pronunciation: ˈbliNGkərd Meaning: Those in the equestrian world might refer to a blinker as something that serves as a blinder for a horse. More broadly, it can refer to a person who has a narrow or limited outlook on a situation. Usage: I consider your approach both small-minded […]
Slaying the Boiled Frog
There are forces all around us that pull us into the vortex of mediocrity and slothfulness. I call this tendency The Boiled Frog Syndrome. Most of you have heard about this metaphor. The short version is that if a healthy frog is dropped in a pot of boiling water, that frog with take immediate, decisive […]
Confronting the Left
Recently a library up in northern California invited a woman named Sophia Lorey, a former college athlete, to come to their library and deliver a speech about what it’s like being a college athlete. Ms. Lorey graciously accepted the invitation, but during her speech, she made a comment about how men who pretend they are […]
On Social Science
What’s with the new fad of claiming one is a Digital Creator? What are they creating, apart from a persona? What does it even mean? At first, I thought it sounded kind of unique: “What do you for a living?” “Oh, I’m a Digital Creator. . .” “A what?!” But I’ve begun to notice that […]
Intuit
Building Your Power of Expression Intuit, v. Pronunciation: inˈt(y)o͞oət Meaning: To intuit is to understand, comprehend, or work out by instinct. Usage: I intuited his real identity. I need to do a little more intuiting before I can decide on a proper course. Please revisit the documents and see what you can intuit from them.
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