We live in a time and place of people fascinated by degrees, credentials, and man-made accolades, to the point that, when unimaginative employers look for people to fill the cubicles, they are more concerned with a person’s university background than they are with any ability to actually perform the work required. (As an aside, these same professional job recruiters, who…

When I returned home from work last week, there was a message from the bank on the answering machine: “Please give us a call at your earliest convenience.” That was it, and because of all the myriad of privacy laws protecting me from getting additional information — readily available to every government agency on the planet — about my financial…

Should you question authority? You bet. Generally I avoid words like “should,” “ought,” and “must,” because they are frequently misused to manipulate people into doing things that they don’t want to do, as in, “You should go to Sunday School.” “You ought to tithe regularly to your local church.” “You mustn’t question everything you’re told…

Recently, I spent an hour on the phone with a scam artist who was pushing an extremely expensive, vastly overrated SEO service onto an unsuspecting client of mine. A 30-second Internet search brought up four top stories about the questionable ethics of this organization. Nonetheless, the client wanted me to talk to the representative about the company blog —…

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