November 11, 2018 “The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.” … Read More »
June 15, 2018 We are in trouble. Actually, it’s double-trouble. We have trouble enough with the problems we have, but we also have problems with these problems. Don Scranton, in Learning to Die in the Antropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, published in 2015, reflects this concern: “The problem is that the problem is… Read More »
May 28, 2018 Artistic endeavors in all of their forms – especially literature, theater, and cinema – tell stories of people struggling with the problems in their lives. It is in this way that art most closely mirrors life. And since the most important problems in our lives are wicked, it is logical that art… Read More »
April 29, 2018 “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Hustler “You know, I gotta hunch, Fat Man,” says “Fast” Eddie Felson to Minnesota Fats, “I’ve gotta hunch it’s me from… Read More »
February 28, 2018 On the fifteenth of May, during the hottest time of the day in the Jungle of Nool, Horton, an elephant, is keeping cool by splashing in a pool of water. Suddenly, Horton hears a small noise – “a faint yelp – and becomes confused. There is no one is around… Read More »
January 30, 2018 “The eye can see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” Henri Bergson Several years ago, Robert Burton, M.D., Associate Chief of the Department of Neurosciences at the UCSF Center at Mount Zion Hospita, together with his wife and a small group of… Read More »
October 30, 2017 Problems come into existence in one of two ways. Either they make their presence known by disrupting our lives to such a degree that, unless we choose to deny what is happening, we have no choice but to deal with them. The second way is that we go looking for them.… Read More »
September 28, 2017 “1400 paying customers, one piano, no score. This is not the calculus for a successful concert.” “For One Night Only” BBC Radio 4 29 December 2011 On the afternoon of January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher were sitting in the… Read More »
July 30, 2017 Larry Tyler was discouraged. He was also depressed. Even though he had met his sales budget for the year – just barely – he was not among the elite group of Xerox salespeople in the Cleveland District who were planning to celebrate their successes at a company gala in Palm Springs… Read More »
June 11, 2017 It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. J. R. R. Tolkien Let a huge, repulsive, scaly, fire-breathing dragon stand in for your most worrisome and troublesome problem. And then imagine a herd of huge, repulsive, scaly and fire-breathing dragons that represent… Read More »