A verb avalanche is a highly engaging description that causes you to see, hear, and feel action all around you. You dodge each tumbling word-boulder only to leap, jump, roll and scramble to dodge the mountainside of word-boulders that follow close behind it. causes, see, hear, feel, dodge, tumbling, leap, jump, roll, scramble, dodge, follow […]
Isaac Newton discovered that force – impact – is the result of mass x acceleration. This is why the impact of any statement you make = the size of the idea x the speed of successfully transferring it from your mind to the mind of your customer. Newton also discovered, “For every action there is […]
Edwin Twitmyer failed to close a loophole and it cost him the Nobel Prize. Twitmyer was working on his doctorate in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was on The Effect of Emotions on the Patellar Reflex, or Knee Jerk. To make his research possible, Twitmyer built an elevated chair with a remote-controlled […]
My friend Brian Scudamore shared a story with me last week. Today I’m sharing it with you. Ted Leonsis was on a little commuter airplane that lost the ability to use its wing flaps and landing gear. Face-to-face with the possibility of imminent death, Ted wrote a list of 101 things that he promised himself […]
Bad marketing is about you, your company, your product, your service. “I, me, my, we, our…” Good marketing is about the customer, and how your product or service can elevate their happiness. “You, you, you, you, your…” With every purchase we make, we shout to the world who we are. We are attracted to products […]
Peter Raible was born in 1929 and he died in 2004. Of all the interesting things he said, this is perhaps my favorite: “We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves by fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not […]
It is 3AM on a Thursday morning and I haven’t yet written the MondayMorningMemo. In fact, I haven’t even started it. The fact that you are reading it right now means that I did, in the end, get it done, such as it is. Reading is a form of transportation that takes you to a […]
You choose a frame every time you look through the lens of a camera, sketch an image with a pencil, or write words with a pen. But today you’re going to start choosing your frames consciously, rather than unconsciously. The job of the ad writer is to introduce a new perspective and trigger a new […]
A small chapel was built in Spain in the year 1150. Its name translates into English as, “Our Lady of the High Grasses,” because a religious icon was lost and then found in the high grasses or “tocha” nearby. For nearly 1,000 years, this chapel of Nuestra Señora de Atocha has been standing in the center […]
Your ability to speak and understand words is a function of the logical, rational, sequential, deductive-reasoning left hemisphere of your brain. Your left-brain hungers for accuracy and seeks to forecast a result.1 But the other half of your brain – the wordless right hemisphere – is wired for pattern recognition.2 The right hemisphere has no morals, […]
My friend Brian Scudamore said something so insightful that Starbucks printed it on 10 million coffee cups: “It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let […]
You lead the world in client attraction, client acquisition, and client retention. A prospective client has made an appointment with you. I am invited to watch and take notes. These are those notes: In your first meeting with a prospective client, always have a white board or a pad of those giant “stickie notes” to […]
At the bottom of last week’s Monday Morning Memo, I asked, “Does it surprise you that the multibillion-dollar investment funds that used to buy manufacturing companies and mortgages are now bidding to buy successful home service companies at record-setting prices?” Immediately following my publishing of that comment, a client of my partner Ryan Chute asked […]
Have you noticed that 2-day deliveries are taking 4 to 5 days to arrive? Shipping companies can’t hire enough warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Have you noticed how long it takes to get the food you ordered? Restaurants can’t hire enough kitchen workers and wait-staff to serve their customers. Service companies nationwide are seeing just […]
An overwhelming force enters the marketplace. A train is coming. You wish it wasn’t. 1. Will you stand on the track with your back to the train and deny its existence? This business owner is saying, “Their customer is not our customer. They will not affect us.” He is doomed by his delusion. 2. Will you denounce […]
Information can be objectively true but have no relevance to you personally. This is the difference between objective reality and perceptual reality. The opposite is true, as well. You can perceive a person to be beautiful when that person is objectively average. You can also perceive information to be important when in truth, it is […]
“Don’t look where you don’t want to go.” Every mountain climber knows this rule, and I want you to know it, too. Your mind has conscious and unconscious power over your actions. When you imagine something, you begin bringing it to pass. What is the mountain you’re trying to climb? If you want a happy […]
Your assumptions about the intelligence of your customer will colorize and slant your ad writing in ways of which you are not even aware. Is the customer stupid? The writer of the 139th Psalm did not believe that customers are stupid. He said to God, “I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully […]
When a person assumes they have superior wisdom, they will offer you their advice. This is an unmistakable sign they think you are an idiot. I smile when a person says to me, “Can I offer you some friendly advice?” They instinctively use the word “friendly” as a qualifier because, deep in their guts, they […]
Bad ads waddle like a porcupine and make lots of little points. Good ads charge like a rhinoceros and make a single point powerfully. This is true regardless of your choice of media. Ad budgets are like that, too. When universities ask me to address their Advertising & Marketing majors just prior to graduation, I […]
Brian, good thoughts! The Neuroscience of Behavior Change link you sent was a great explanation of what Dr. Alan Baddeley calls “Procedural Memory.” You will recall this from The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy. Working Memory is consciousness, imagination, the thought you are thinking NOW. Semantic Declarative Memory contains things you can remember, but you cannot remember […]
1492: An Italian, funded by the Queen of Spain, sailed west to find the east, discovered a small island in the Caribbean, decided it was India, and sailed home to share the happy news. Ponce de León, Balboa, Cordoba, Cortés, Coronado and 24 other conquistadors were sent from Spain to bring home whatever they could find. […]
Hollywood has been feeding us romanticized history ever since Birth of a Nation splattered across the silver screen in 1915. Romanticized history is a lie. People will always believe lies that reinforce their worldview. Hollywood feeds us romanticized history because we love it, and the fictions we love best are those heroic stories of pioneers and […]
They did not do it because they thought it would be funny. Four members of the Jamaica Defense Force did it as a statement of pride and determination. Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Caswell Allen traveled from their tropical island to snowy Canada hoping to make it into the 1988 Winter Olympics. Miraculously, they qualified. When […]
“Giving a microphone to every human being is the worst mistake we have made in human history.” ME: Are you saying social media was a mistake? “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” – Dale […]
We were sitting in my backyard sharing a $600 bottle of wine he had brought. He said, “I got all 250 of my employees together on a Zoom call and told them, ‘You can disagree passionately and share your opinion while we are in the discussion phase, but when a decision has been made, you […]
If one were to assume that a blank sheet of paper – complete freedom – is the best way to coax maximum creativity from the human mind, one would be wrong. The highest levels of creativity are launched from the tightest constraints. Consider this request made a couple of weeks ago by a student in […]
I have long been fascinated by twilight. In fact, I often use that word to describe flavors that are complex and muted. But what is twilight, really? “Twilight is the illumination of the lower atmosphere when the Sun is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Twilight is produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, illuminating the lower atmosphere so that Earth’s […]
The 2021 we’ve been waiting for has not yet begun. I was reminded of this when I received a meme from a friend. It said, “Omg, what’s the first thing you’re gonna do when YOU get the vaccine shot?? You’re gonna go back home, wait a month, get your second shot, go back home, wait […]
We live in a nation that has mistaken pleasure for happiness. Pleasure can be pursued directly, but not happiness. Think of the times you have felt truly happy. In each of those moments, you were feeling grateful for something; a special moment with a special person, a beautiful sunset, the arrival of good news… Happiness is […]
INDY BEAGLE’S DAY OFF A Story by Indy Beagle, Written in 3 Chapters CHAPTER ONE Spraytan and Boxwine arrived in a white Cadillac convertible fringed in blondes. Boxwine slid out the passenger door and reached for the nozzle while I was filling up my new Hudson pickup on the other side of the pump. I […]
Reading the title of this essay, “What Would You Have Me Do?” might cause you to imagine me defending myself, saying in effect, “I had no choice.” But I want you to hear those words in an entirely different tone of voice. “What would you have me do?” is a quiet question that I often […]
“In a bombing run over Kassel, Germany, Elmer Bendiner’s B-17 bomber was barraged by 20-millimeter shells which resulted in direct hits on their gas tanks. But none of the shells exploded. The next day, the maintenance chief found 11 shells inside the gas tanks, any one of which should have taken the plane down. When […]
Do you have a deep-seated belief, but you’re not sure where it came from? I have passionately rejected the idea of goalsetting for more than 50 years, but I’ve never understood why I felt so deeply about it until just a moment ago. Welcome to Sunday morning, November 29, 2020. The word “goal” has a […]
The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in 1979 happened because of a burned-out lightbulb. When a particular safety system was malfunctioning, that bulb would light up and the technician would alertly take care of the problem. No one anticipated a burned-out bulb. Their mistake, according to my partner Cedric, is that […]
Works of art are made by people who have tasted one or more of the nine juices of life and they want you to taste the juice, too. This was the belief of a teacher who lived in India 2,000 years ago. His thoughts were chronicled in the Natya Shastra of the Hindus. According to […]
This is what good marketers see when they close their eyes: Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind of the customer will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided. We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and announce to the world around us – who we […]
Every beginning starts with an ending. This is one of the principles of Pendulum theory. And the middle is always in the middle. When our fight with King George ended in 1783, thirteen powerless colonies became “The United States.” This was the beginning of the first America; 3 million citizens clinging to the eastern edge […]
Dr. Seuss had 1. the courage to make up new words, 2. the confidence that his readers would understand what these new words meant, and 3. he was a master of meter, the rhythm that is created when you arrange your words so that the stressed and unstressed syllables fall into patterns. There are a […]
Jacques Cousteau, the man who made the world care about the ocean, said, “A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.” But he was French. Not being French, I don’t see each day’s work as a choice between attacking or love-making. I see the future unfurl each morning as a fork […]
The economy, commerce, business, the stock market and free trade: all of these were built on our ability to sell things to each other. This is why the job of the ad writer is incredibly important. Television and radio, newspapers and magazines, direct mail and email, word-of-mouth and live chat, social media and outdoor, telephone […]
Seinfeld was “a show about nothing,” but we couldn’t get enough of it because each of us knew a George, an Elaine, and a Kramer. Rebecca Solnit’s book, The Faraway Nearby, reminds me of Seinfeld. I love this book, but I can’t really explain what it’s about. Solnit can write about nothing and keep you […]
If you are going to communicate effectively with a person, you need to know something about their beliefs. Most writers assume their readers see and believe as they do. And when they knowingly write to people who believe differently, their writing often takes the tone of an argument, leaning heavily on evidence and examples, with undertones of […]
Every book is an island that exists only in the mind of its writer, and the hope of every writer is that you will visit their island and be glad you did. But in The Faraway Nearby, her book about how we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, narrative […]
I was 24 and Phil was 60 and he was a most unusual man. Articulate but quiet, passionate but calm, and possibly the world’s greatest listener. By the age of 60, Phil had traveled to more than 40 countries, published stories, articles, and poems in more than 50 magazines, and assembled a personal library of […]
I sit with a bag of popcorn and watch the frantic climbers of the ladder of success. The climbers who capture my interest are the ones who consider themselves to be “clever.” But look closely and you’ll see their only “cleverness” is that they are uncommitted and disloyal. Every person is a steppingstone for them […]
These are the basic principles of Chaotic Ad Writing as taught by Wizard Academy: 1. Approach your subject from an unexpected angle. 2. Tell two stories at once, using the relationship between two things as a pattern to reveal the relationship between two other things. 3. Allow the listener to arrive at their own conclusion. In the New […]
Robert Frost died when I was four, so we never met face to face, but throughout my formative years I spent an hour with him every night before I fell asleep. Robert Frost taught me how to write. If you will write like Robert Frost, you must approach your subject from an unexpected angle. Few […]
Above ground, in the sunlight, grain silos provide much of our daily sustenance. Below ground, in the darkness, hides another kind of silo. But it is not the missile silo that is killing us. People are disappearing into the bone-dry quicksand of grain silos in less than 5 seconds. “Once entrapment begins, it happens very […]
You are flying your small airplane on a beautiful day. There is a tiny speck on your windshield. Like the North Star, it doesn’t move. This is why it escapes your notice. Had that speck begun moving across your windshield, you would have recognized it as another airplane. The fact that it doesn’t move means […]
Few things are as annoying as unsolicited advice, for within it lies the assumption of superior wisdom. (So when you tell a person your PLAN for what THEY should do, always be aware that they secretly want to punch you in the mouth.) Uh-oh. Did I just give you some unsolicited advice? Heavyweight Champion Mike […]
Notice that title. It does not say, “How to Write Scripts for TV Ads,” but, “How I Write…” I have my own weird way of doing it. TV writers use a split-page approach: Camera instructions in the left column. Audio in the right column. I chose not to do it that way. Back when the world was […]
457 BC – In the 7th chapter of the Old Testament Book of Ezra, King Artaxerxes of Persia issues a decree to rebuild Jerusalem which results in the rebuilding of that city under Nehemiah. Go west from Jerusalem across the Mediterranean, west across the Atlantic, then halfway across the landmass of North America and you’re in Central Texas. […]
Every Wall Street investor walks tip-toe on the ice above an ocean of data. Some of them will tell you they are ice-skating on that data, but don’t let them fool you. Misinterpretation of the data is the ever-present danger facing investors AND marketers. Every business owner is a marketer. Misinterpreted data creates a faulty […]
I lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma for 3 years before Merle Haggard released his hit song, “I’m Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.” Even though I was only 12 at the time, I realized Brother Haggard’s song contained more corn than the whole state of Iowa. I laugh about being an Okie, but in truth, […]
When it is time to write an ad, and there is no felt need in the heart of the customer to which you can speak, make a paper cigar. Teddy Roosevelt was a man of improvisation. He knew his paper cigars. This allowed him to explain the process of making them in the fewest possible […]
The generation of male Okies to which I belong has the inexplicable tradition of mercilessly teasing their friends. It’s a dumb tradition, I know, but these are the rules: We tease only our closest friends. To say to strangers the sorts of things that we say to our friends would be to invite a fistfight. […]
When James Madison drafted the First Amendment, “the press” referred to the newspapers of our nation, such as the Pennsylvania Gazette owned by Benjamin Franklin, the most popular paper in the 13 colonies. Things rocked along swimmingly for about 200 years, then one day we walked outside to get the newspaper, sat down to read it, and […]
Two weeks ago, I appeared onscreen during a business symposium in Montreal to answer a series of questions about, “How to Advertise Effectively.” Toward the end of my hour with them, a person in the audience asked, “What do you consider to be the top 3 books about Advertising?” The moderator smiled and said, “I […]
You’ve heard it all your life: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.” This seems to be a worthy admonition on the surface. But let’s not stop at the surface. Let’s look into the heart of it. Those seven words, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well,” assume that one has the ability to do […]
The junkyard dogs of the business community are those misfits and mavericks, renegades and rebels, innovators and improvisors who know that traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom. Lee Iacocca was a junkyard dog. The son of an immigrant hot-dog vendor, Iacocca was the visionary who gave us the Ford Mustang. He was later […]
The beagle who lives in the right hemisphere of your brain has an entirely different set of skills than the nerd who lives next door. The beagle in my brain is named Indy. What is the name of the beagle in yours? Your beagle gives you impulsive intuition and instinctive insight. Your beagle gives you romping recklessness, […]
Three friends, who have never met each other, all sent me the same advice last week. What makes this convergence particularly interesting is that there was no common trigger. Each of the three messages I received was prompted by something different. The essence of those messages? You’ve got to leave things out. Genius is rarely […]
Jaguars and leopards are classified as “Big Cats” (Pantherinae) because they have a U-shaped hyoid apparatus in their throats which gives them the ability to roar. Cheetahs and pumas are just as big as jaguars and leopards, but they are classified as “Small Cats” (Felinae) because their ossified hyoid bones prohibit them from roaring. Among cats, […]
Q: What do Jesus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus have in common? A: Grown-ups told us stories about them when we were children. And then one day we realized the grown-ups had been lying. Yes, they did it because they loved us and they wanted us to be happy, but […]
Admiral Boulevard is the margin of the page in Tulsa. It is that place where a person can do well while doing no good. It is where discipline encounters temptation and good fortune meets bad luck. Admiral Boulevard is the margin Johnny Cash sings about in “I Walk the Line.” The Outsiders – both the […]
In recent days, you and I have spent more time at home than usual. Bart Giamatti was a professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. In less than 3 minutes, Giamatti caused me to understand “home” in a new way. I believe his thoughts on the subject are […]
A few years ago, Yvon Chouinard was asked, “How do you know if you’re making the right move? He said, “It’s a lot of gut instinct. If you study something to death, if you wait for the customer to tell you what he wants, you’re going to be too late, especially for an entrepreneurial company. That […]
Meats and vegetables are ordinary, but put them on a stick and it’s Shish Kabob. Frozen Kool-Aid is frozen Kool-Aid; put it on a stick and it’s a popsicle. A marshmallow is one thing, but a marshmallow on a stick means a campfire. A frankfurter is a weenie, but a frankfurter on a stick is […]
Before we examine the blind spot, let’s stare into the face of the truth for a moment: People don’t bond with a company. People bond with a personality. Apple didn’t wait until they were category-dominant to develop a personality. They had personality in 1984 when they aired their famous SuperBowl ad. They had personality in […]
The content of your heart is what your heart contains. Are you content? Same spelling, different meaning. We distinguish these words only by the syllable we stress. Words are amazing, don’t you think? If you are content, (satisfied, happy, at peace,) it is because of the content of your heart. If the content of your […]
We shall pass through this time of uncertainty and emerge as happier people. We will enjoy a renewed sense of the importance of relationships. Our priorities will be altered. Optimism is about staying focused on positive outcomes. I don’t know Andy Bounds but he’s a good friend of Doug Burdon and Doug is a friend […]
NOTE FROM INDY BEAGLE – After the wizard recorded today’s MMMemo, he recorded a video called Advertising in a Time of Crisis. You should watch it. Now here is today’s memo… One of my heroes, John Steinbeck, twice followed in the footsteps of another of my heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson. Travels with a Donkey in […]
Perhaps you’ve noticed that fewer couples are choosing to get married. This decline in the marriage rate has been slow, but it is a cultural shift that makes me uneasy. The first reason for my uneasiness is that I believe marriage is more than a piece of paper. Something wonderful happens when a couple embraces […]
A contrast of opposites is the foundation of effective communication. A thing cannot exist without its opposite. But opposites aren’t always easy to detect. As an example, the opposite of “freedom” isn’t really “slavery,” because slavery no longer exists in our society like it did 160 years ago. We need to contrast freedom with something […]
Twenty-one years ago I got a phone call from my publisher, Ray Bard. “Roy, a man in Denver just bought 350 copies of your book from a bookstore in Denver and then faxed the receipt to my office with a question scribbled on it.” “What was the question?” I asked. “He wrote, ‘Is this enough […]
Richard Kessler built one of the most famous stores in America. You might remember his name from the Monday Morning Memo about origin stories published on March 20, 2017. Here is Kessler’s origin story in a 60-second radio ad: My Dad was a house painter. He taught me to sand and scrape paint until my fingers […]
My friend has been important to me for 6 or 7 years. I had no idea that he had any money until about 3 years ago. My friend is a professional gambler. No, he doesn’t gamble on green felt tables with cards or dice. He gambles on NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. “Oh, […]
The first obelisk was a stone pillar with a tapered top created by the ancient Egyptians to honor the sun god. It is a finger, pointing to the sky. The Roman army carried Egyptian obelisks back to Rome as a sign of their power over that nation. The Vatican uncovered a buried Egyptian obelisk five hundred years […]
It takes four people to make a world. One person wants acceptance. They hope to save the relationship. Under pressure, they acquiesce. One person wants accuracy. They hope to save face. Under pressure, they avoid. One person wants applause. They hope to save effort. Under pressure, they attack. One person wants accomplishment. They hope to […]
Thomas Mann, the winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature, said, “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” I agree with Thomas Mann. Having logged more than 39,000 hours of writing during the past 30 years, I can say with confidence that no sane person […]
Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions. Bad decisions aren’t made because a person is stupid. Bad decisions are often the result of logic. The first thing experience will teach you is, “Not everything logical is true.” Logic among advertising professionals says, “Always target the right customer.” But if you embrace that […]
My most successful ads in 2019 were the ones where I refrained from using logic, but chose instead to speak to the unconscious mind. Advertise your product to the conscious mind of a customer and you will likely be met with doubt, disinterest, and suspicion. But the unconscious mind greets you with none of these. […]
1: You are the product of your genetic code, hardwired to behave in certain ways. 2: You are the product of your environment, the sum total of your influences. 3: You are the product of your choices. It is your preferences, not your surroundings, that define you. I believe it is a mistake to cling too […]
Just click the link below and download the PDF if you know how. (I only know how to do it on my own computer.) There is a single, blank page following the cover. Don’t panic. The book isn’t blank. 🙂 This is the 2020 PDF of the 2012 book, Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our […]
I want you to be in Austin on May 2nd if you can. The Princess has chosen the perfect location for The House of Bilbo Baggins, and there’s a chance we may have something for you to see when you get here. We have also begun construction on The Village of the Lost Boys and […]
When you begin to write, the words and phrases that leap into your mind will be the ones you hear most often. Go ahead and write them down. The best writers begin by just blurting it out. A willingness to write badly is the key to writing well. After winning the Pulitzer prize for fiction, […]
An unhappy person who talks about “the way things ought to” be has a decision to make. They need to take action, or They need to shut up and get on with their life. I’m sorry if that sounded cold and harsh. Allow me to explain. “The Way Things Ought to Be” is a fantasy […]
What is the canvas of your artistic expression? “Pen and ink,” says the writer. “Wet clay” says a sculptor, “Wood” says another, “Stone” says a third. And then the painters chime in, singing, “Oils,” “Pencils,” “Charcoal,” and “Acrylic” in 4-part harmony. “Film” shouts a cinematographer, “Pixels” shouts another, and the photographers beat a steady rhythm […]
My business partners meet twice a year to spend a few days together. A transcription of their discussions during these meetings could easily become a bestselling book. A number of my partners have grown far beyond anything I ever taught them, which makes answering their questions a lot easier for me. I employ a mildly […]
People need your encouragement more than they need your advice. A little encouragement at a pivotal time makes all the difference. I am giving you a Christmas gift: When you have opened it, you will become the right person, doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. To open your gift, […]
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used for measuring departmental performance within a company. The goal of KPIs is continual improvement. The subtle danger of KPIs is that they can lead us to prioritize efficiency over effectiveness, and short-term objectives over long-term. A Police Chief told his officers to prioritize burglaries of multiple-occupancy households because the system […]
Symbolic thought is commonly expressed through similes, metaphors, and music, allowing us to communicate the unknown and unfamiliar by relating it to the known and familiar. Symbols happen when one thing stands for another. Symbolism plays a role in identity reinforcement. Brands, hobbies, artistic expressions, event attendance, and social connections are symbolic ways of saying, […]
“The word ‘artist’ is not applied to writers as readily as to musicians or sculptors or painters, because the medium in which they work – our language – is used by everyone without any particular thought or regard for economy or form. Language is the common drudge of every sort of experience and it does […]
“The rest of my life has passed quite suddenly. Around ten or twelve I fell into the inevitable logarithms of time. It seems to go faster and faster. I wonder now why we have to have Christmas so often.” – Kary Mullis Our friend Kary Mullis died on Aug. 7, 2019, at the age of […]
Each of us creates our own reality from our interpretations of the things we observe. A systematic pattern of interpretations is called a cognitive bias. This is how a cognitive bias works: If you believe that elves cause rain, then every occurrence of rain is proof of elves. Cognitive biases can be miniscule or massive. […]
Karl Marx famously said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” No, let’s be more accurate. What he actually said was, “Die religion ist das opium des volkes.” Before I continue, let me say that my belief in God is a choice not based on argument or evidence. I freely admit that I choose to believe. […]
(A.) “It was hot outside.” (B.) “The angry sun glared down at me.” Which of those sentences do you feel was more interesting? Personification is a technique used by writers and speakers to excite the imaginations of their readers and listeners. Personification gives human attributes to non-human things. Twenty-five years ago I wrote, “As Edmund Hillary surveyed […]
I grew up believing that everyone had equal opportunity, and what we made of that opportunity was up to us. I believed I was the product of my choices, and you were the product of yours. People struggled only because they made bad choices. I continue to believe in the vital importance of individual choice. […]
We are feeling unsettled again. And when I say we, I don’t mean me, I mean all of us. Unsettled feelings are ominous. We are acting as though we have heard the four notes of the Dies irae, that ominous musical phrase* that has signaled impending tragedy for the past 800 years. Being thus unsettled, […]
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