Two shoe salesmen board a ship to a far away island looking to develop new business. Once they dock, they hurry onto the island knowing the other is competing for the same business. Immediately they look at the islanders and both call their home offices. The first guy said “OMG no one on the island wears shoes. They are all … Read more
A wild animal that is domesticated gets use to food given that he loses his instinct to hunt. If the handout isn’t present he will starve. Strange but really we are not that different as we get so use to money coming in that we take it for granted. When it stops, we think God is against us, but is … Read more
Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, is a federal law aiming at public accounting firms who participate in audits passed in response to the 2001 Enron scandal. A staff of executives used accounting loopholes and poor financial reporting to hide billions of dollars in debt from failed deals and pressured it’s outside accounting firm to ignore the issues. As a result, top executives … Read more
When I just received my drivers license I ran out of gas in a terrible spot– a highway ramp connecting to another during rush hour. I so hate that feeling today I do not let my gas tank go below a quarter of a tank. Funny how the fear of running out can drive a decades old behavior. “On the … Read more
Our brains have two kinds of attention and magicians often prey on it. The first, called “top-down” or decision-making attention, is what you use when you decide to focus on a stimulus or task (such as this article). Top-down attention is controlled by the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. Second, we employ “bottom-up” or surprise attention when we quickly … Read more
We were recently looking to purchase some furniture and part of the discerning process was to say “if wasn’t still available for purchase a week later it must not have been meant to be”. If I really believe that God didn’t give it, then I must not need it; conversely, I must believe the opposite is true too– that if … Read more
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that … Read more
When George Dantzig’s was a graduate student at UC Berkeley in 1939 something amazing happened. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the two problems were a homework assignment and wrote them down. According to Dantzig, … Read more