Every day each of us innumerable goods and services- to eat, to wear, to shelter us from the elements, or simply to enjoy. We take it for granted that they will be available when we want to buy them. We never stop to think how many people have played a part in one way or […]
Listen to the voices: “I’m stuck, in a rut.” “I have no life. I’m burned out- exhausted.” “No one really values or appreciates me. My boss doesn’t have a clue of all I’m capable of. “I don’t feel especially needed-not at work, not by my teenage and grown children, not by my neighbors and community, […]
Old Banzar, grim warrior of another day, stood guard at the passageway leading to the top of the ancient walls of Babylon. Up above, valiant defenders were battling to hold the walls. Upon them depended the future existence of this great city with its hundreds of thousands of citizens. Over the walls came the roar […]
In his 1961 story about the Sneetches, Dr. Seuss introduced us to two groups of Sneetches, one with stars on their bellies and the other with none. The ones without stars wanted desperately to get stars so they could feel like they fit in. They were willing to go to extreme lengths and pay larger […]
I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïve? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so […]
Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and scientist, proclaimed in a treatise written in 350 BC that women have fewer teeth than men. Today we know this is nonsense. But for almost 2,000 years, it was accepted wisdom in the Western World. Then one day, someone had the most revolutionary of ideas: let’s count! The scientific […]
How should Canada educate students to compete successfully in the business world? Some provincial governments think it is by teaching them business… Recent evidence suggests this approach is mistaken. We will produce better managers if we educate them first in traditional subjects in the arts and sciences. We may do best of all if we […]
This morning, people all over the planet got out of bed and got ready for work. Some headed out before dawn in high-end cars to claim high-rise offices with high-tech computers and highbrow clients. Some headed out before dawn to walk barefoot, wares on their head, to claim a choice spot in the dirt near […]
“Look, I know you don’t have enough information, but given the information you do have, what are you going to do”? “Ok, Jack, here you are at Matsushita. What are you going to do now? The professor and eighty-seven of Jack’s classmates anxiously await his reply to the cold call. Jack is prepared; he has […]
Taking the explication of experience as its object as well as its method, Marjorie Shostak’s Nisa: The Life and Words of a Kung Woman weaves together three narrative strands, and in doing so challenges the ethnographer’s penchant for the general and the anonymous. The first strand, the autobiographical details of a 50-year-old woman’s life among […]