A few years back, I was visiting a former workplace when one of my erstwhile colleagues ran up to me with a big smile on his face. “Steve! So glad to see you! I have to tell you—you said something to me when we worked...
Here’s another in my occasional series on the art and practice of writing, good or bad. Today: bad. Picture yourself at a swanky business reception, or some other social/professional event. You’re having an interesting conversation with a fellow practitioner whom you’ve just met, maybe even learning...
“Attention must be paid,” sobs Linda Loman about her poor, doomed husband, Willy, in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” It’s a seminal moment in a landmark play. But when I hear that line, I don’t ponder on the importance of every human’s dignity, as Mr....
Occam’s famous razor tells us that the simplest explanation is usually the best. I’d add a little razor of my own to Mr. Occam’s philosophy: more often than not, the shortest way to say something is also the best. As I mentioned when I recently...
It was news that rocked the nerd world. Sensational headlines last year proclaimed that a computer program in England had become the first to pass the so-called Turing Test. The condensed version of the test proposed by the tortured computer genius Alan Turing back in...
Remember Clippy? If you’re chuckling derisively right now, you do. For the uninitiated, Clippy was a much-maligned animated, anthropomorphized paper clip created by Microsoft as an “intelligent user interface” assistant for Microsoft Office products in the late 90s and early 00s. The software would monitor what...
I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about the difference between having a great story to tell and telling a great story. Well, our friends at The Economic Club of Washington, DC have a fantastic story to tell about their scholarship program...
Here's an excellent - and fun - short video from the Every Frame a Painting YouTube channel that points out how, as you watch Looney Tunes, you're getting a master class in storytelling! So, you see, I wasn't just wasting my time on Saturday mornings. [embed]https://youtu.be/kHpXle4NqWI[/embed]...