Truth in advertising, in a literal sense, doesn’t exist. Advertising exists to inform, persuade, entertain, and all with an ulterior motive to cause a specific action. To separate your money from you. That’s a bit simplistic but at a basic level it’s quite true. Here’s a case in point. Fast internet access. A recent study … Read More »

Television promised to revolutionize the world. It did. If 500 channels of mediocrity is a revolution. What happened? Lowest. Common. Denominator. The path of least resistance. The original promise of television was education, information; the combination of audio and video in a medium without bounds. Everyone could learn anything by watching TV. What we learned … Read More »

Back in 1992, Richard Saul Wurman’s Follow The Yellow Brick Roadhit the best seller charts. I bought it and never read it. I can’t. Why? I don’t know. Since that day about 20 years ago, I’ve bought and read dozens of books, but only one other book by Richard Saul Wurman. I didn’t read that … Read More »

From the middle 1970′s and for over 20 years following, the Daily Dose of Doonesbury was required reading for this and many other maturing baby boomers. A few years ago I noticed that the Daily Dose was almost always Dilbert, and seldom Doonesbury (relegated to the Sunday paper). What happened? Everyone in and arround Doonesbury … Read More »

In general, economists in the U.S. insist there is no real inflation. How do they explain the price gouging going on at the corner gasoline station? Prices fluctuate for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is wholesale cost of goods. If gasoline has a wholesale price of $3.50, and a retail price … Read More »

My parents bought a set of World Book encyclopedias when I was a child. Today’s kids have Wikipedia. What’s wrong with that? Wikipedia is an internet encyclopedia in which anyone, almost everyone, can edit the content. That being the case, Wikipedia ends up with thousands and thousands of editors. Not bad for a product that … Read More »