Tag archives: epigrams
In all the history of Technology, I know of no more exciting story than that of Guglielmo Marconi, the young Italian who discovered how to send messages, not by sight or sound, and not through wires, but through empty air. At first – i.e. from about 1895, and for many years after – the messages […]
I have always been surprised by how many people are willing to pay for bottled water when perfectly drinkable water, certified by local inspectors, is available from their own home faucets (which of course they already pay for as a public utility). Somehow, a very good selling job has been done by the bottled water industry […]
One of the saddest songs I know is called “The Last Time I saw Paris.” It came out in 1940, after France had been defeated, and Paris occupied, by the Nazis. Paris had been a favorite haunt of Americans. But the war was still going on (although the U.S. had not yet entered it) and […]
There are many different kinds of duty, but one thing they all have in common is a sense of obligation, which often attaches to a particular role or job. It can also be an amount owed to a government, or to some other authority, especially as a form of tax, in connection with imports and […]
In the mental economics of our species, there is a slow but steady demand for Information – but the market for Ignorance has become increasingly busy. The plain fact is that most people do not want the Truth. Why? Because it’s too inaccessible, too incomprehensible, and too likely to be unpleasant. Of course, you and […]
It used to be called “worry” or “anxiety.” Now, I gather, the fashionable term is “stress” – and I seem to have lately been gathering plenty of it. But what is there really in life worth having such feelings about? It’s all in the mind, I think. That’s what keeps psychiatrists in business. Those professional […]
In this age of ever-advancing technology, we have become accustomed to non-human contrivances doing things which used to be done by humans (if they were done at all). Along with this, there has been the process of seeing everything in mechanical terms. Our bodies are machines; our homes (as Le Corbusier called them) are “machines […]
One of the books that most influenced me when I was growing up was written by a man whose career had been based on helping people to sell things. His name was Dale Carnegie, and the book (a best-seller) was How to Win Friends and Influence People. One good thing about it was that its […]
Although I have done my share of things I regret, sometimes my misdeeds have brought their own penalty. Two of those occasions involved the theft of books, which, at the time, I justified to myself because, being a poor college student, I couldn’t always buy the books I wanted. One episode took place in the […]
One of the strangest sights I ever saw was something I discovered one day when bicycling in the English countryside. In what might otherwise have been open farmland, a new business had apparently opened up. It might just possibly have been a used-car lot – but no, this was a place where what they were […]
In the now-almost-forgotten days when many of us regularly watched an early evening network newscast, Walter Cronkite, who was then recognized as the Dean of American Newsmen (there were very few newswomen), used to sign off his report with the words, “And that’s the way it is…” To me, and perhaps to many other members […]
Yes, let’s leave Love out of it. The word is too loaded. Saying “Like” is, in most cases, much easier and safer, and probably more accurate. There are too many songs about Love, and too few about Like. But aren’t we really talking about Friendship? True, there aren’t many songs about that either. But it […]
What is Mind? No matter. What is Matter? Never mind. There’s nothing original about that. But I have been asked to write about “Mental Health,” and it was the first matter that came to my mind. Actually, mental health is harder to contemplate than mental illness. Psychiatrists and other specialists no doubt have their own […]
Despite all the sentimental claptrap about “Home,” still in circulation, there are many good reasons why that word is virtually meaningless, if not actually offensive, to many people, in various situations. I personally can remember a time (in the prosperous years after World War II, when the “American Empire” seemed to be about to replace […]
The play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, was first performed in 1947, and has become a classic. But how many of the people who hear about it for the first time know what that title means? For one thing, streetcars (“trolleys”), which used to be the major urban provider of public transportation, are […]
You may not remember Tom Lehrer, who performed his own satirical songs, very successfully, in the 1960s – but his offerings included a song satirizing the whole idea of National Brotherhood Week. The last stanza began: “It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise.” The foil for this frivolity was a genuine decades-long effort to […]
For many of us, this little prayer was the first – and possibly the only – one we ever learned: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. There were several lessons contained therein: […]
Have you ever asked yourself “Who Am I?” Probably not – or at least, not very often. Identity is one of the few things we are all pretty sure of. We may wonder WHAT we are, and WHY we are – but WHO we are is a question that hardly troubles us. After all, we […]
Two women greatly affected my life in the world of business: my mother and my wife. From age five to seven, I lived in my mother’s hometown of Toronto, Canada. There, her father and several other of my relatives were in what was called the “second-hand” business. Their merchandise was mostly used goods. They had […]
Crossing oceans has been a feature of my family background. My mother’s parents, a poor English couple, started the trend by moving from London to Toronto, where my mother was born (one of five) and grew up as Amelia Adler (quite a good-looking girl, if the photos are any indication). Ocean travel was then still […]
