I love hearing about creative solutions to difficult problems. Chronic absenteeism is one of the biggest problems facing America's low-income schools. According to NPR, some six million kids miss at least 15 days a year, setting them back academically and burdening the system overall. There are many reasons why kids miss school: sickness, lack of interest, … Continue reading How Whirlpool Dramatically Improved School Attendance →

Our family was talking about our favorite movies the other night, and there have been so many great movies that it was hard to pick some as favorites. As I started naming some of my favorites, others would come to mind that I had forgotten about. So I thought it might be helpful if I … Continue reading My Favorite Movies →

I just came across this great TED talk, even though it is over five years old (the video of the talk is embedded below). Here is the description of the video: In a moving and madly viral video last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. He talks … Continue reading Creativity, the Power of Community, and Virtual Choirs →

Cellar door. Yes, you read that correctly, cellar door is the most beautiful phrase in the English language. In my wildest imagination, that phrase would have never come to mind. If you showed me a list of 10 phrases, one of which was cellar door, it's highly unlikely that I would have chosen cellar door … Continue reading What’s the Most Beautiful Word or Phrase in the English Language? →

Last year, I wrote a post titled, "Three Questions That Can Change Your Life". The post looked at the concept of “life planning”, an approach to financial planning developed by the The Kinder Institute that is based on the premise that advisors should first discover a client’s most essential goals in life before formulating a financial plan, so … Continue reading Seven Key Questions about Money You Need to Think About →

One of my pet peeves is bad form design. How hard would it be for the person designing a form to actually fill it out themselves and see if it works? I was filling out a form similar to the one shown below (I don't want to pick on the actual company whose form I … Continue reading Bad Form Is Everywhere! →

This story would qualify for a Ripley's Believe It or Not. Apparently back in the early 1900s, it was perfectly legal to send children through the mail using USPS. As long as the child weighed less than 50 pounds and was less than eighty-four inches in combined length and girth, the child qualified as a parcel … Continue reading Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night nor CRANKY KIDS?? →

I was rummaging through some boxes of memorabilia and came across the results of my Kuder Occupational Interest Survey test from my senior year of high school, shown above. The survey shows results both for occupations and college majors that align most closely with the responses I gave to the survey questions. When I look … Continue reading High School Career Survey Turns Out Surprisingly Accurate 40 Years Later →

Residents of Philadelphia take note! Consumption of soda and other sugary drinks fell by 21% in low-income neighborhoods of Berkeley after the California city became the first in the U.S. to introduce a special tax last year of a penny per ounce, according to a study published this past Tuesday. At the same time, soft and … Continue reading Soda Tax in Berkeley Leads to Drop in Consumption →