Utopia Lost

Utopia Lost

When will they ever learn/When will they ever learn? As a naïve adolescent in the ’60s, I bought into all the equally naïve, adolescent claptrap about peace, love, harmony, and understanding. As I got older and more observant, I realized all the naïveté, all the...
From the Mailbag: Volume Five

From the Mailbag: Volume Five

Thanks to the volume of correspondence we receive from you, our intrepid and incorrigible readers, we now have more people working in our mailroom than Santa has elves in his workshop. We’re running three shifts, 24/7/365. And we may have to add members to our...
The Straight DOPE

The Straight DOPE

The story you’re about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. In my entire working life, only one attempt has been made to stiff me for an invoice. It was the mid-1990s. Having been cut loose from The Travelers Managed Care and...
The Rhetorical Rumble

The Rhetorical Rumble

Naïveté comes in all shapes and sizes. So does academic detachment. And so it is that we have a match-up of lightweights, who’ve now squared off three times in what’s come to be dubbed, The Rhetorical Rumble. For each bout, they enter the ring with...
Get Your DUCKs in a Row

Get Your DUCKs in a Row

I’m noticing what seems to be a proliferation of a phenomenon called use cases. These seem to constitute vignettes or scenarios in which sellers of products or services illustrate various applications of said products or services — having already elucidated the...
The Gentle Realist

The Gentle Realist

I don’t know Steven J. Thompson. But I admire the man. All I know of him, so far, is that he published this post: “Leadership without Arson”. But because of that post, I know and admire these things about Mr. Thompson: He’s a realist. He...