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The Power of Gratitude
Like most parents, I drilled my young kids on the importance of saying “thank you” to others. Nagged them, really. After all, words of gratitude are an important social convention, a way of letting others
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The paradox of green cred
My office shares a floor with the Sierra Club. So oftentimes the shared men’s room on the floor is dark when I enter it. The lights have been turned off, either as an act of
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Casting light on cheating and greed
Louis Brandeis was already one of America’s most famous lawyers when Woodrow Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1916. He was a tireless and prescient critic of big investment banks—including bankers’ excessive bonuses—an
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An angry voter is an ignorant voter
Imagine this scenario: You lost your job at the lumber yard early in 2009. Nobody is building new homes these days, and this slowdown has trickled down to suppliers all over the country. What’s worse
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The perils of small talk
The Greek philosopher Socrates famously claimed that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” to which the 20th-century American philosopher Daniel Dennett replied: “The overly examined life is nothing to write home about either.” Fair
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The Mind of a Misanthrope
I become misanthropic every February. I avoid social gatherings, and really just want to hole up at home. I always assumed it was the dark evenings and slippery sidewalks and general misery of venturing outside.
