Despite being surrounded by technology that enables and eases a variety of tasks, how many of us are as effective/productive as John Adams or Benjamin Franklin?
Setting the issue of genius aside, much of our technology is a distraction. Work tools have a habit of becoming toys and we live in an entertainment-saturated society.
If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweler.
- Warren Buffett
Enjoyed reading Volume I several years ago. The second volume is now late night reading. Very interesting. If you are a Churchill/British politics/World War II buff, check them out.
- The person who presides over the meeting or the one who will be writing the minutes?
- The car sales representative who closed the deal or the mechanic who will maintain the car?
- The executive secretary or the junior manager?
- The department director up on the stage or the silent supervisor in the back of the room who just winked to his crew?
- The business that can start work on the project in a couple of months or the one that can begin next week?
- The diplomat who threatens to pass a resolution or the general who can put boots on the ground?
- The associate who is great at winning arguments or the counterpart who is great at listening?
- The person who knows how to do a project or the one who knows whether to do it?
Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.
- John Adams
Michael Caine as Sherlock Holmes and Ben Kingsley as Dr. Watson.
You may find yourself in a world where missions gather dust, rules have the strength of cobwebs, procedures multiply and hop in all directions, standards are regarded as archaic, deadlines come with an eraser, laws are relegated to a dark corner, and problems are kicked down the road, but that doesn't mean you are supposed to applaud.
"What is right is right, even if no one is doing it. What is wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it." - Unknown
Writing in Commentary, Michael Rubin writes that the Sochi Paralympics had an anti-American tone:
When the Russian team entered the stadium for the Paralympic opening ceremony, organizers played “Goodbye America,” a 1985 song given a second wind in Russia in the 2000 anti-American crime thriller Brat-2, mixed with “For You, Homeland,” a song written a couple of years later expressing support for the Russian army. According toSvobodnaya Pressa—as related by the Open Source Center analysis—state media played the same “For You, Homeland” song during the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.
It should not be surprising that you can learn a great deal at John E. Smith's blog.
