My Default Answer is No

by | Stress

I have a well defined mission in my life, so when acquaintances ask me to do something, my default answer is generally no (unlikely when my wife asks me to do something, where my defat answer is yes). Unfortunately, when some people are persistent enough, a yes...

For “Personal Reasons”

by | Healthcare Ethics

I am not Mr. Manners, but there is one thing I know: when someone says, “For personal reasons, I don’t want to do this,” what they are really saying is “It’s none of your business why I don’t want to do this.” Robert Heinlein wrote a book called Friday, in which the...

The Ethics of Retweeting

by | Twitter, Twitter Ethics

I ran across a tweet the other day which raised an interesting point about retweeting. Paraphrasing, it suggested that we shouldn’t just consider the content of the retweet, but the why of our retweeting. Keeping in mind that a retweet is always a form of...
My Three Top Books on The Craft of Writing

My Three Top Books on The Craft of Writing

by | Writing

Here are three books I reread at least once every year: The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.On Writing Well, by William Zinsser.Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark. Combined, they cover most of what I need to know to become a solid journeyman in...