Let's Smell the Roses (originally posted November 16, 2010) I was with my spouse today at a professional place of business, waiting to be seen. Inside a television set was showing CNN, and the many other clients were busying themselves watching television, checking their Blackberries, chatting or otherwise engaged. I looked out the picture window and noticed that the entire front sidewalk, parallel to the building, was lined with roses of the "Knock Out" variety. I don't know that much about roses, but apparently this is a hearty one. We planted one Knock Out bush in in our yard a few months back, and it flourished without much care from us at all. The 30 or so bushes we saw today were doing equally well. Keep in mind, today is November 16th, and we live in Nebraska. While this winter has been far milder than last year's (so far), we've still had a few hard freezes overnight and a rapid-fire wet snowfall last Friday n...
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Finding Hope In High School Papers (originally posted March 1, 2011) Through one of my volunteer associations, I've been asked to judge papers for the 2011 National History Day . This year, the theme is "Debate and Diplomacy: Successes, Failures, and Consequences." The first challenge for me in judging the work of high-schoolers is this: I am not a teacher. I have been telling myself that some portion of my second career in public service should involve teaching, but the fact of the matter is that I have never taught for a living. The exercise of sorting through the writings of students reminds me that teachers, though much-maligned of late, have a pretty tough job. And by the way, reading the voluntary works of willing students is probably one of the activities a professional teacher would actually relish. There are plenty of less-than-pleasant daily tasks in which teachers must engage. I must ...
Wishfulness and Yesmanship (originally posted January 4, 2011) I just finished reading "Operation Mincemeat" by Ben Macintyre, an extremely entertaining book about a British intelligence coup that fooled the Germans during WWII. The plot involved planting a corpse, in a Royal Marine uniform, off the coast of Spain. The supposedly top secret documents carried by the dead man indicated an Allied invasion of Greece, instead of Sicily, in July 1943. The Germans were duped into believing in the veracity of the documents, and so failed to reinforce the site of the invasion. But what's this ancient history have to do with us? Macintyre lays out in fine detail how the Germans were fooled by an elaborate plot because of two common intelligence failures: "wishfulness and yesmanship." People analyzing a situation wish for facts to be favorable to their preconceived notions. And even if they have doubts, they are unwilling to stand up to a...
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