Lists have always been a great way of organizing your thoughts but in this era of ever-shrinking attention spans they can also make an effective communication tool. Here are the top reasons why I think lists work so well: Lists force writers to organize their thoughts. The basic structure of a …
David Brooks of the NYT said it succinctly in a recent article on the BP mess: “If there is one thing we’ve learned, it is that humans are not great at measuring and responding to risk when placed in situations too complicated to understand.” Amen, brother!
In a recent commencement speech to the graduating class at Hampton University in Virginia, President Obama told students: “You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that …
I can be a bit of a procrastinator sometimes and the rapid pace of software development can occasionally leave me with a lot of old and/or corrupt files lying around. Normally, that isn’t such a big deal but every now and then there’s a pretty important file I’d like to …
Every now and then I’ll finish a big reporting project and the project lead will send me a follow-up comment like: “Here’s hoping everything’s perfect!” For some reason this always strikes me as a very weird thing to say. Of course it isn’t going to be perfect … it’s data. …
One of the first design principles I remember learning in architecture school was the acronym KISS or ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ The professor who said this phrase clearly intended it to serve as a warning to students not to bite off more than they could chew. Not exactly a vote …