Good ol’ Ben sure managed to carry on and on in his opening sequence about working hard and not going into debt, using a lot of Poor Richard’s sayings to drive home the point. Frankly, I haven’t met a whole lot of people who can pay cash for everything they own. Even if [...]

As if this is any surprise, my post of yesterday segues nicely into the latest media “bombshell.” Let’s see, Iraq is a center of terrorism. Is this surprising? The Middle Eastern country goes from brutal dictatorship to an experiment in democracy with rival religious and ethnic factions ready to kill one another, and we’re shocked [...]

I teach a university class on popular American culture, which is of course a misnomer–it’s neither American nor culture, but it is popular. I’ts Michael Jordan wearing and schlepping Nikes so young kids with no money and impoverished parents can “be like Mike.” That phase has passed, but you get the point.
Now, we also cover [...]

I teach a university class on popular American culture, which is of course a misnomer–it’s neither American nor culture, but it is popular. I’ts Michael Jordan wearing and schlepping Nikes so young kids with no money and impoverished parents can “be like Mike.” That phase has passed, but you get the point.
Now, we also cover [...]

My Northern Chinese wife (I say northern because her hometown of Shenyang borders North Korea and many Korean expatriates reside there) became a U.S. citizen today in ceremonies in Los Angeles.
As we stood in line waiting to enter the convention center, redubbed a U.S. court for the ceremony, a gentleman mentioned that when his sister [...]

I came across the old refrain of “What have you done for me lately” yesterday, but not in an employment situation. Rather, it was in the usually routine process of getting a prescription refilled.
In this case, it didn’t involve my family physician but my eye doctor, who refused to renew the prescriptions by phone since [...]

Wouldn’t you know it? Mr. Unlucky strikes again. I went to the Web site containing the copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac that I was using, and I got the cursed “404″ notification! I guess Poor Richard has deserted me. What else is new? I’ll check back later to see if the site comes back up. [...]

I opened, on the Web, a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac to begin my journey of discovering wisdom old and, if possible, adding wisdom new to it. Now, wisdom by definition must be old and time-honored, so today what you have is repackaged wisdom, whereby the hucksters doling it out for the [...]

Some of you may have rejected my observation that those of you gainfully employed and thinking the horizon goes forever into a sunny retirement should realize, “You’re next.” Look at what’s happening at Ford Motor Co., which in its rosiest projections can’t predict a profit until 2009 or later. Ford’s remedy? “Lay ‘em off!” Some [...]

Some of you may have rejected my observation that those of you gainfully employed and thinking the horizon goes forever into a sunny retirement should realize, “You’re next.” Look at what’s happening at Ford Motor Co., which in its rosiest projections can’t predict a profit until 2009 or later. Ford’s remedy? “Lay ‘em off!” Some [...]