I often hear people throw around words like “moral” and “immoral”. What does this mean? Does morality change or is morality something that is always true and unshifting through the sands of time? Words mean something so I have to identify what it is to be “moral”. That means we need to frame the parameters.…
Seventy five years ago, Saudi Arabia had little, if any, global significance. Oil had been discovered in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and “the Kingdom”, as it would come to be known, had been largely overlooked having only recently been founded in 1932 after Abdul Aziz bin Saud battled rival tribes for twenty fives years and…
There is a scene in the final moments of Meet Joe Black in which Anthony Hopkin’s character, William Parrish, knowing that he will face death in a few short hours, gives a speech to those attending his 65th birthday party. “I thought I was going to sneak away tonight. What a glorious night. Every face I…
In 2005, Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University after surviving his first fight with pancreatic cancer. There were four lessons that really spoke to me in his message. These are: Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to make the big choices in life because…
In an interview called “JK Rowling: A Year in Her Life”, that covered the period during the last year when she finished the final Harry Potter book, the interviewer asked Rowling, “How would you like to be remembered?”. Her response was poignant. As someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.…
There is something to be said for the concept of having a tangible, physical representation of your “body of work”. Take J.K. Rowling. Her entire fortune and career have been built upon 4,175 pages – each of which started out completely blank and that she filled with ideas – spanning seven books. It has been…
What man has done, man may do. – Proverb On May 6th, 1954, at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track, Roger Bannister became the first recorded man in history to run a mile – exactly 5,280 feet – in less than 4 minutes. His time, 3:59:04, was thought unachievable. Men had tried countless times and failed.…
I really enjoy paradox, especially in areas of science, religion and philosophy. There are all kinds of paradoxes in life – some are paradoxes of logic, some of self-reference, some of mathematics, some of statistics, some of probability, some of decision theory, some of physics. The world is full of paradoxes. [mainbodyad] What do I…
Three weeks ago, Dylan sent me a message and asked the following (see below). This is my response. I’ve been meaning for a long time to ask what you specifically think someone in my position- a young person just leaving high school and entering college- should do to end up in a position similar to…
Intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, discernment and good temperament are five distinct attributes a man or woman can possess. It is a common mistake to believe that they are interchangeable. They are not. Although they tend to be related, it is possible to have one without the others. How they interact with one another can determine the…
