Musings

NOTE: This 100th "Sunday Reads" is the last before a summer break. Please enjoy! An irregular roundup of thought-provoking reads. Most made me go “hmm…” QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" - T.S. Eliot Meet the oldest (and one of 11) Pearl Harbor survivors. Read the encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas.” “I have a Dream” speechwriter passed away. U.S. p

An essay on the decline of Michigan and the Mackinac Island Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Conference.

A collection of articles including the history of Memorial Day, highest paid US professions, Nixon's reading list and the history of colors.

A round up of current events ranging from China's economy to AI.

A reflection on "whistling past the graveyard."

A collection of news items ranging from mother's day to longevity.

Recalling when Bob Lutz took on cowardice at GM

Recalling when Alan Mulally took on Polite Dysfunction at Ford.

Ever walk past a cemetery late at night? That chill you feel is older than language itself. Fear. And somewhere in America's long love affair with optimism, someone decided the antidote was to whistle. Project confidence. Fake boldness until it became real. It worked well enough that the phrase stuck. Whistling past the graveyard. But the meaning quietly flipped. Somewhere along the line, the meaning changed. It stopped meaning "courage" and started meaning "denial.”

A reflection on how Michigan lost to Mississippi in reading.

In the early 2000s, Bob Lutz noticed something strange at General Motors. The presentations were world-class. PowerPoint Perfect. (And this was before AI.) The cars were not. Meetings ran on 80-slide decks. Market data. Cost curves. Focus groups. Everyone nodded. No one said the obvious. Which meant one thing: The slides were doing the talking. Not Reality. Inside GM, this had a name without being named: The “PowerPoint shield.” It let people sound smart without being

An irregular roundup of thought-provoking reads. Most made me go “hmm…” QUOTE OF THE DAY: “When a people lose their religion, they do not merely lose a set of beliefs; they lose the framework within which their whole life was lived, and they are left exposed to every wind of doctrine, every passing enthusiasm, and every tyranny that promises order.” - Hilaire Belloc DANGER: U.S. national debt over 100% of GDP. Memento mori : 60 Minutes brings us another must-watch Ben Sass

A reflection on how Nice Is Not Good

A day on local roads is instructive. Not the potholes (that’s another post). The gas prices. Or more precisely, the spread. Gas stations don’t gouge. That’s settled. Prices move with global oil prices, and here in Michigan, about 70 cents per gallon goes to taxes. The rest is local. So, why the gap from city to suburb? It isn’t the oil market. It’s the business environment. Costs are lower in the suburbs. Gas becomes cheaper. In the city, costs stack up: Taxes

A reflection on West Michigan Nice using an example that harms children.

A round-up of events from Federal Reserve trust to the history of the real Moby Dick.

A round-up from the world's most dangerous animals, to mental well-being studies.

An irregular roundup of thought-provoking reads. Most made me go “hmm…” QUOTE OF THE DAY : "When plunder becomes a way of life, men create a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Nate Silver documents the insanely incestous bubble that is “ social media .” Ari Fleischer notes how NATO is undoing itself. Phone - free dinning is on the rise . YES PLEASE: Apparently researchers can now regrow bone AND cartilage . N

A round-up that includes Easter, Iran and the evil of Islam along with the latest on Artemis II.

A round-up of current events including the evil deeds of Islam, oil production, value of hard work and why websites are getting worse.