The Magic Word to Get What You Want

We all know one “magic word”. Please works well, but there’s another word that you must know if you want to get your way and must recognize if you want to be less susceptible to manipulation.

Turtle Index: Healthcare, Ethanol and Video Games

For this month’s Turtle Index: focus on healthcare in America. The number in square brackets refers to the source, given below. 4 dollars: portion of the cost of a $299 iPod made in China that actually stays in China, according to University of California study [1]. 160 dollars: amount that stays in the United States […]

Celine on The Value of Education

I was recently listening to someone on the radio who had worked with the Rwandan truth and reconciliation commission and she was saying how one of the things that surprised her was how the people who participated in and fomented the genocide were often the best educated. Priests, doctors, teachers. The heros she found were […]

Single-issue customers – How to count vegetarians

You’ve no doubt heard of single-issue voters. People who vote for a candidate purely based on issues like abortion, capital punishment, gun control and so on. But what about single-issue customers? That is, customers who won’t patronize your business because it’s so unfriendly to smokers, vegetarians, or whatever. How many of those groups can you […]

Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (book)

If you want to be really afraid, read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, a prize-winning history of the CIA based heavily on recently declassified internal documents and hundreds of interviews with former and current agents, including most living directors and some dead ones (the author has been covering the intelligence […]

Meets Expectations (a one-sentence novel)

As I sat in front of the television in my bathrobe eating cold soup straight from the can, I was struck by the feeling that I was not going to exceed my father’s expectations. Epilogue. My hopes were renewed when I noted that at least I had taken time to dig a spoon from the […]

Uninstall a Service in Vista, Repair Adobe CS3 and Clean Up the Registry

I totally messed things up with a botched uninstall of Adobe CS3 [update: although, as you’ll see below, some people have used this on Adobe CS4 as well and I would bet this works for CS5 too]. Basically, all I was trying to do was get rid of the absurd and unnecessary Version Cue Server, […]

The Problem with Courage (book)

Review of Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage I had high expectations of Michael Beschloss’ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, but must say that I was disappointed. I had expected stirring narratives of cases where presidents stuck to their guns in the face of criticism and opposition. That’s more or less what’s […]

Hitler, Bush and Historical Accuracy

“An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our Homeland.” This quote, according to hundreds of pages on the web, is by Adolf Hitler from a 1933 (or 1932 or 1922 on some pages) announcement of the creation […]