Emotional leadership

Positing individual leadership

Creating Cash

Rigging the dice
From nearly the beginning, we have struggled to understand how the world around us works. But for all that we have a naturally inquisitive nature, this has never been about artless curiosity or pure research – we want to discover the mechanisms driving cause to effect. We want access to the levers of the former, and to be less at the mercy of the latter. We want to be in control. At the very least, we want to feel like we can comprehend the landscape, and safely navigate our way through it. Inevitably, as we posit this or that model for explaining this mysterious and frightening universe that daily reveals our utter misapprehension of and witless dependence on it, we turn

A particle off the old block
As we saw last week, quantum physicists can be pretty strange folk – every bit, perhaps, as weird as the models they posit for how the physical world really works. One of them is unshakably convinced of the validity of, essentially, the whole of the science. He declares his faith in this as yet highly speculative, unproven modeling with a remarkable reference to a fascinating feature of it called quantum entanglement. Briefly, this describes a phenomenon in which two independent particles, separated by anything from a few inches to the breadth of the universe, nevertheless display characteristics that render them describable as nothing less than perfect replicas of each other. I

Book Review: Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market
Sramana Mitra has plotted out a series of books on various aspects of entrepreneurial activity with regard to its effects on management and on the general economy. They all are formed around interviews with entrepreneurs whose experiences illustrate the main theme of each volume. The first was an overview of the elements of the entrepreneurial process. The next, “Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction,” reviewed here, was targeted at

Atomizers
The author of a popular book on modern developments in physics is a true believer in the validity of quantum mechanics. This remains a highly speculative theory, however. On the one hand, it is strongly supported by powerful evidence from mathematics. In fact, it is worth remembering that many researchers into the theory and its spinoffs do little more in an entire career than mathematical model-building and manipulation. But on the other, the further one ventures into the peculiar corners one is driven to by this highly theoretical logic, the less evidence from actual observation can be found. In fact, some quantum physicists even argue that the ongoing problems encountered by th

Shoulders of giants
Today marks the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It is an occasion for Marines to honor those who have built the legendary reputation of the Corps with their blood and spirit, and for those in uniform today to contemplate their role in bearing its brilliant battle flags aloft into the future. It also often is an occasion for the rest of us to wonder at this magnificent band of brothers – its incomparable combat record, its fierce loyalty and irresistible esprit de corps, its unrelentingly focused dynamism and invention. How do they do that? Generation after generation? In particular, how do such young Americans, so many still in their teens, shoulder