As I was thinking about to write about today, I came across two articles about leadership. One article, by Margarita Mayo, If Humble People Make the Best Leaders, Why Do We Fall for Charismatic Narcissists?, looks at why humble people make the best leaders, but we often fall for the charisma of a narcissistic leader instead. … Continue reading Forget About Leadership, This Is What We Need More Of
My wife and I were fortunate to be guests at a house concert featuring The Clarks last night. I have to admit that neither one of us were familiar with The Clarks before being invited to the concert, but I did a little bit of prep work before the show by watching some videos on … Continue reading A Remarkable House Concert with The Clarks
Today was the semi-annual Villanova School of Business Bartley BriefCase Challenge. The event is held each semester for our junior business majors and involves their analysis of a Harvard Business School case. This past Wednesday, over 200 students were split into 48 teams, each with four or five students. It was at that time that … Continue reading The Bartley BriefCase Challenge
In their recent paper, "Mortality and morbidity in the 21st century,” Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton show that while midlife mortality rates continue to fall among all education classes in most of the rich world, middle-aged non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less have experienced increasing midlife mortality since the … Continue reading The Sad Reality of “Deaths of Despair”
Alex DeCasien, a doctoral student in biological anthropology at New York University, recently published the results of a research study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, which found that the only factor that seemed to predict which species of primates had larger brains was whether their diets were primarily leaves or fruit, Apparently the nutrients from leaves … Continue reading Scientific Proof That Green Smoothies Are the Ultimate Brain Food?
For the past 10 years, someone has been going around Bristol, England in the middle of the night, and fixing signs that contain poor punctuation. His journey began when he scratched out an extraneous apostrophe on a sign. His methods now are a bit more sophisticated. He has built an “apostrophiser” – a long-handled device … Continue reading The Grammar Vigilante
Georgia’s legislature passed a bill last Friday that would allow individuals over the age of 21 with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun on public college and university campuses. The bill has been sent to Gov. Nathan Deal, who vetoed a similar law last year. I'm hoping he does so again. When I read … Continue reading Concealed Handguns on College Campuses? Just Say No
You know that phrase, if you want something done, give it to a busy person? Well President Trump seems intent on testing the accuracy of such a saying. There was a segment on the news tonight about Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers. I have to admit that I don't … Continue reading Talk about Multitasking!
April Fools' Day - it's one of my favorite days of the year, and I try to celebrate it by pulling off a prank that may trick a few people. Last year I tried to convince my students that Anna Kendrick and Ben Affleck were coming to Villanova to film a scene for the movie, … Continue reading April Fools’ Day, 2017
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story today, Grasping Giant Numbers Is Far From Second Nature, by Jo Craven McGinty. The thrust of the article is that we have trouble fully grasping big numbers, and our lack of comprehension compromises our ability to judge information about things like government budgets, scientific findings, the economy, and other … Continue reading While Some Numbers May Seem Insignificant, Their Impact Could Be Life Changing
Borden's Blather 