Present-Moment Awareness
Vietnamese-born monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh writes in The Path of Emancipation (1996): Do not lose yourself in the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. Do not get caught in your anger, worries or fears. Come back to the present moment and touch life deeply. This is mindfulness.
Filipino Nurses and Brain Drain
From a new paper by Paolo Abarcar and Caroline Theoharides, via Chris Blattman via Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution): We exploit changes in U.S. visa policies for nurses to measure brain drain versus gain. Combining data on all migrant departures and postsecondary institutions in the Philippines, we show that nursing enrollment and graduation increased substantially in […]
There is a System to Some Teachers’ Rigorous Training
Indian Hindustani classical musician and sarod exponent Ali Akbar Khan suffered strict parenting, especially by his father, the prominent Indian classical music teacher Baba Allauddin Khan. From Oliver Craske’s Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar (2020,) Ali Akbar was two years younger than Robu [later named Ravi Shankar], but a couple of […]
Warren Buffett Loves Focused Management
Warren Buffett on the cost of loss of focus on the main business at the 1996 Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting: I love focused management. If you read the Coca-Cola annual report, you will not get the idea that Roberto Goizueta is thinking about a whole lot of things other than Coca-Cola. And I have seen […]
Be As You Are
Vietnamese-born monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh writes in The Art of Power (2017): To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don’t try to be a magnolia flower. If you […]
Awakening
From T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, the fourth and final poem of Four Quartets, a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
Teachers Everywhere
Fast Company’s Alan Webber summarizes nuggets of wisdom from his Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009.) Rule #52: “Stay alert! There are teachers everywhere.” I’ve learned great rules from strangers sitting next to me on a short airplane ride—they just happened to say exactly what I needed […]
Signs of Lying: Inconsistent Details
Singapore’s Women’s Weekly identifies some telltale signs of lying: Lying at work is a quick way to distract from the truth and sometimes, get out of getting into trouble. One logical telltale sign is lying when a person lying to you is unable to give consistent details or accounts of whatever they’re lying about.
Horrid Fate of Animals and Animal Slaughter
Novelist Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle should instigate everyone who reads it to think twice about enjoying meat: One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe…. Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will […]
Displaying Many Variables at Once
from Stephen Few’s Show Me the Numbers (2012,) Graphs can be used to tell complex stories. When designed well, graphs can combine a host of data spread across multiple variables to make a complex message accessible. When designed poorly, graphs can bury even a simple message in a cloud of visual confusion. Excellent graph design […]