Bite Force

Perhaps my all-time favorite television show is 24 starring Kiefer Sutherland. The show is an action thriller featuring a character named Jack Bauer (played by Sutherland) who works for a Federal Agency called CTU (Counter-Terrorism Unit). Jack Bauer is constantly doing 24-hour stints in foiling terrorist plots, although he himself is occasionally captured by the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

I picked up a really great book at my local Barnes & Noble this week. In fact, I also picked up an equally great book at the same Barnes & Noble the week before. But this journal entry is not about the books. It’s about something strange I noticed. In fact, I have been going […]