New Year Resolutions Getting older has its advantages. I don’t just mean the older and wiser issue, though there is plenty of truth to that. What I really mean is that there is a degree of reality and truth that stems from a clarity that escapes us when we are younger. I’m sure there are people who cannot help but delude themselves in their dotage so as not to spend their waning moments wallowing in…
A Gap Year As we come up to the turn of the year, I find myself thinking about the new year and what it holds for us all. The year has a number of things in store that make it a potentially interesting year for us, but there is also an increasing sense I am getting that it may be one of those years that gets us from here to there without being a particularly…
The Royal Bot You may not have noticed it, but the world has changed. As you know, I teach an ethics course, so I think about the issue of what are the fundamental causes of ethical dilemmas. I started my list with the overwhelming cause of all ethical stuff, which is filthy lucre, money, do-re-me. You know that I’ve expanded the list well beyond just that, but let’s take a moment to consider money as…
Apocalyptic New Year Auld Lang Syne is one of those songs that we all know (sort of) and sing at the passing of things like the old to new year, but few of us have a clue as to what it means and what the song is really about. The song is about 250 years old and was a rewrite of an old Scottish folk song, done by the long-time national poet laureate of Scotland,…
Babylon Revisited After two days of raucous holiday festivities on the hilltop (22 in attendance on Christmas Eve and 14 in attendance on Christmas Day), by late afternoon we were ready to crash hard as the day wound down and the travelers hit the road for points known and unknown. We were left with Tom and Jenna and Kim and I with the added knowledge that Tom and Jenna would be leaving in the morning…
Leaving My Wingman As the sun comes up in the east and I can feel that graininess in my eyeballs that comes from insufficient sleep, I am comforted in knowing that at the other end of my house on the hilltop, my little baby boy (Thomas) is fast asleep with his fiancé, Jenna. How they got there only several hours ago is a story of holiday travel 2022 that I feel may be worth sharing.…
The Quantum of Life I have written in the past about string theory and ring theory, but doubt I could give you an elevator pitch on either. I think I am a reasonably intelligent guy, and I’m certainly well-educated by most standards. Nonetheless, I know a fair bit about my limits. I hit some of those limits ( a funny mathematical pun which gets me right to my “limit” when it comes to mathematics) as…
Wandering Through Caracas I spent my first four years of life in Caracas. I don’t think I really remember anything from Caracas even though I have a few mental images that could be a genuine recollection. Then I find an old black and white picture from those early days in Caracas and I realize that what I thought was a memory might have really been nothing more than my having seen the old photo. And…
The Enchanted Village Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and Kim gotta sing. Now that we live out here, Kim is singing with a choral ensemble called Encore. Technically they only have two big shows each year and one of those was last month in La Jolla, where she gave the Eleventh Hour solo, which was a big hit. Here we are a month later and Kim has volunteered with the group to sing in…
The Ethics of Ethics I am in a bit of an ethical funk at the moment and its about my ethics course, which I just finished and which I am preparing for next semester. For all the years I have been teaching (since 2007 to be precise), I have wanted to teach ethics at the graduate business school level. I suppose ethics in Kindergarten, Grade School, High School and Undergraduate is not so very different,…