Aesthetics - rather than reason - shapes our thought processes. First comes aesthetics, then logic. 'Thinking in Numbers' is not about an attempt to impress the reader but to include the reader, draw the reader in, by explaining my experiences - the ...
In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I, as a writer, will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so...
It's very simple. If the American people care about a lot of things including corruption in government, then, in fact, if you use the power to appoint in order to do political business, to clear fields, to save your party money and so on, if it's not...
If someone really wants my company's business, why shouldn't he be able to do everything he can - including paying me off - to get that business? Because bribery encourages people to make decisions based on the wrong criteria, which means in the busi...
When companies are trying to find a state to locate a new business or factory, they look at a number of factors - including tax structure, employment base, infrastructure, education system, etc. One of the most important is a strong and sound health ...
My presence in the social media and on the Internet is much bigger than many of the other candidates, including Mitt Romney. So, when you take the social media and you take the Tea Party citizens movement, you have a combination there that, quite fra...
Because we men have been physically stronger and more arrogant, we've influenced much of the cool stuff of the world, like basing the definition of courage on what we do on battlefields rather than on the patience or endurance or tolerance necessary ...
I get a lot of mail from boys in detention centers, including one from a center where they only had a few copies of my novel. They had a deal with each other that they'd read a couple of chapters and then slide it under the door to the next guy. I th...
No one is better placed or more philosophically suited than Obama to construct the new counter narrative as we go forward in our new New Deal. But many masters of the old universe, including quite possibly his chief economic adviser, can't recognize ...
Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance be...
If I were a capitalist I would not give my employees health insurance with no deductible, which I do, including dental, and paid pregnancy leave. That's not called capitalism, that's called being a Christian and someone who believes in democracy, so ...
My first encounter with James was when I was seventeen. My brother brought home from the public library a science fiction anthology, which included 'The Beast in the Jungle.' It swept me away. I had a strange, somewhat uncanny feeling that it was the...
Like many physical diseases, anti-Semitism is highly infectious, and can become endemic in certain localities and societies. Though a disease of the mind, it is by no means confined to weak, feeble, or commonplace intellects; as history sadly records...
Hard systems are everything we're using right now - computers, phones, planes, the clothes you're wearing, the room you're in. Everything there involves 100% use of technology and expertise to make it, and nothing we make - including space exploratio...
I've anchored my share of live coverage over the years, including car chases. At MSNBC, I often prayed the 'delay switch' would actually work as promised. And, I frequently wondered what I would do or say if a violent and graphic incident accidentall...
My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times....
The records in the house I really remember were, well, Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' and 'Galveston.' Even as a kid, I knew these songs were glorious. My dad also had records by Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Waylon Jennings, and then there was al...
When you work with web design companies in San Francisco, you end up with a bunch of twenty-somethings who have their own cultural peculiarities, including obscurity for its own sake. You give those guys a website for a banking institution and they s...
So many struggled so that all of us could have a voice in this great democracy and live up to the first three words of our constitution: We the people. I love that phrase so much. Throughout our country's history, we've expanded the meaning of that p...
In every aspect of life, including the economic dimension, we are always challenged to do the right thing. In many cases in the market system, which allows a great deal of latitude for human choice, people can get carried away to excess.
In our national mythology, we seem to include only one-way migrations to the great capitol cities. The journey from the small Wisconsin town or Minnesota city to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. Certainly for some people, that journey is a round t...
