Pete Seger: Turn Turn Turn

RIP Pete Seeger (3 May 1919 – 27 Jan 2014). He turned Ecclesiastes 3 into Turn Turn Turn. At this concert when he was 93, he said his wife Toshi had made up a few extra verses for their children. Like the rest of the song, they contain matching and contrasting words: work – play […]

Eric Berne: Games People Play

A seminal, very useful book is turning 50 this coming year. Published in 1964, and the best selling non-fiction book of the 1960s, Games People Play by Dr. Eric Berne introduced Transactional Analysis, which looked closely at human relationships. He opted to study interaction as transaction, since he said we communicate to get something out […]

Nationwide protest

The acquittal of George Zimmerman, self-appointed neighborhood watchman, who followed and killed Trayvon Martin inside his own gated community (!) is a blatant example of racism. As has been said repeatedly, if a white 29 year old man had come up to a gated community and gunned down a 17-year old white boy, all hell […]

When you become a whistleblower

Yesterday Edward Snowden came forward and outed himself as the whistleblower who leaked information about Boundless Informant. This system developed by the NSA with major corporations, enables raw data to be analyzed and processed in the cloud, including IP addresses, so sender and recipient information can be tracked to rough location. I’m not going to […]

Presidents R Us

The Washington Post (my hometown paper) presents the White House Correspondents’ dinner, one of the biggest social events in the calendar where the presidents get to show their communication skills to the max. A nice guide to self-deprecation and humor, US-style.

Intercultural incident? A kiss on the cheek

A Ukrainian reporter caused a scene in Moscow when, as one of a crowd, he asked Will Smith for a hug. WS obliged and gave him a “man hug” (patting him on the back). The reporter responded by trying to give him kisses on both cheeks, almost kissing him on the mouth. Will Smith reacted […]

Gabby Giffords

Gabbi Giffords’ moving speech for gun control on Jan 30 (link to her handwritten notes): Before the shooting (speaking here after a Tea Party attack on her office, 25 March 2010): Her recovery (great husband!):