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Category Archives: Personal Observations

Happy, healthy, and a bright future

Monday, November 3, 2008

Last week my wife was able to assist some visiting Americans having difficulty conducting business in the local language here in Istanbul. In the subsequent conversation, they brought up the topic of the US presidential election and casting overseas ballots.
For some reason, one of them felt it was not only appropriate, but necessary, to ask [...]

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Creative collisions

Friday, October 31, 2008

In the midst of political campaigns – particularly long and arduous ones such as the presidential race now drawing to a close in the United States – it can become difficult to keep our perspective. We all know that similarly distorting and disorienting political dynamics can disturb our clarity at work, as well. . .

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Unenlightening assumptions

Friday, October 24, 2008

There has been a lot of talk lately about liberal and conservative personalities. A political analysis of the presidential race in the United States recently offered a map of the political cultures of whole states. How useful is that? And on what basis do they draw their conclusions – whether about individuals or states?

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Get smart

Friday, October 3, 2008

A physician once told me that the specialty he had entered was the elite of all medical fields – only the smartest doctors, he said, could get into it; the rest contented themselves with what was left. There are a lot of interesting things about this claim, but the one that initially attracted my attention was the presumption that any MD not in his specialty was not as smart as him. Many of us make such assumptions about one field or another, or about people in top positions. We think they’re not only smart, but smarter than other people – smarter than those who have not attained their visible marks of success. Do you think that’s true?

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The root of all evil

Friday, September 26, 2008

I’ve been waiting for someone to blame the current meltdown of the financial markets on global warming. It shouldn’t be long. A short while ago someone traced the present emergency to financial conditions unleashed by the loosening of credit by American regulators to calm fears after 9/11. It can’t be too big a step from there to Mideast oil exploitation and man-made global warming. Quite apart from the whatever truths there may be in the argument, doesn’t it seem a little peculiar . . .

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