Sean Penn Interviews El Chapo, Gets Dissed by ISIS
In case you missed it, actor Sean Penn wrote a long, rambling piece for Rolling Stone about “El Chapo” Guzman, the Mexican drug lord who recently escaped from prison. Somewhere in the 10,000-word essay...
View ArticleFear and Loathing in Politics and Pop Culture
Fear. Once it takes hold of you, that powerful emotion is nearly impossible to control. That’s no accident. Fear and the fight-or-flight response it induces have been fundamental to human survival for...
View ArticlePoliticians are Clueless on Encryption Backdoors
Max Levchin is a very smart guy. He’s the former CTO and cofounder of PayPal, a member of the PayPal mafia that spawned much of Web 2.0, and the chairman and largest shareholder of Yelp. And when it...
View ArticleHow to Tell If You’re a Jerk
I love getting email from readers, especially hate emails like this friendly missive from a gentleman ostensibly named “Doug” (Warning: expletive alert … even though I bleeped some of them, it’s still...
View ArticleWhy “More” Is a Four-Letter Word
If you want to get a lot of people’s attention, tell them how they can get “more.” More what? Fame. Money. Power. Influence. Hair. Bandwidth. Page views. Productivity. Fans. Followers. Downloads. Apps....
View ArticlePersonal Accountability, RIP
As children, we were taught that actions lead to consequences. I know I was. And when I behaved badly, those consequences were immediate and unavoidable. There was simply no way to escape their causal...
View ArticleThe PC Police and Gender-Specific Pronouns
Quick question: When you see the title, subtitle, and image below, what comes to mind? This is what one woman took away from it: She’s referring, at least in part, to the phrase “Entrepreneurship is...
View ArticleWhy Are You Here? (It’s a poll … you should take it)
I know that sounds like a philosophical question, but I’m not really into that sort of thing when 1) I’m the only person in the room (there’s a dog here but when I ask her a question she just wags her...
View ArticleDon’t Be a Jellybean
Who decides the standard height of kitchen counters? Tables? Desks? Chairs? Toilets? Can you imagine what it must be like for a 7’ 6” NBA center like Yao Ming to sit with his knees up in his face? And...
View ArticleThe Problem With Socialism, Entitlements & Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders may be way older than I am, but that aside, we grew up under strikingly similar circumstances: no frills working class families in small rent-controlled Brooklyn apartments. And yet, the...
View Article‘Do What You Love’ Can Lead to Spectacularly Dumb Decisions
In a culture where everyone’s too distracted to remember more than a sound bite or a quote, everything gets taken out of context. Lost are those all-important assumptions, nuances, caveats, and...
View ArticleRichard Dreyfuss Backlash So Uncool … and Uninclusive
Richard Dreyfuss took a lot of heat for attending a Ted Cruz campaign rally a few weeks ago. Which is ironic, since the famous actor leans about as far left as you can without falling over. He just...
View ArticleThe Next Big Thing: You
The obesity crisis has my wife very upset, but I’m not sure why. She’s a nutritional consultant, takes care of herself, and is in great shape. You’d think she’d be happy. Guess not. The reason, I...
View ArticleQuit Making Excuses … Even If the Dog Did Eat Your Homework
I was just reading a post on LinkedIn about a sales management candidate who apparently cancelled a job interview on short notice, saying he was in a bad car accident and his child had to be taken to...
View ArticleThe Modern World Is Making Us All Neurotic
I had a meeting the other day. Not just any meeting; an important one. I was really worried about it. So worried that I had trouble concentrating or focusing on anything else. It even kept me up at...
View ArticleApple v. FBI: Before You Rush to Judgement, Learn the Facts
Few of us are paid to have an opinion, but that never stopped us from weighing in on anything and everything, whether we know what the heck we’re talking about or not. I’ve gone on record saying that...
View ArticleYou Have Zero Privacy — Get Over It
Narcissism. Voyeurism. Exhibitionism. Hypocrisy. I’m sure we can all agree these are not the greatest qualities. And yet, they appear to be more common aspects of the human condition than any of us...
View ArticleWhen Your Ego Writes Checks That Reality Can’t Cash
Branding has a branding problem. The advent of “personal branding” and broad substitution of the word “brands” for “companies” have diluted the meaning of this critically important principle for...
View ArticleGrow a Pair. You’ll Go Far in Life.
If you actually have the courage to say what you mean, mean what you say, and stand up for your principles, even when that flies in the face of prevailing cultural norms, will it ever come back to...
View ArticleWe’re Becoming a Paint-By-Numbers Culture
When I was a little kid growing up in New York City, my brother and I were out playing one day and came upon a construction site. Maybe it was a demolished building, I can’t remember. Anyway, there...
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