On Advertising
“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H.G. Wells
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“Advertising is legalized lying.” – H.G. Wells
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Lyndon Johnson’s advisers were worried. They were drafting a Medicare proposal, a major component of Johnson’s war on poverty. But the cost of this program was turning out to be much larger than expected. By their estimates, in the first year alone, they would face $400 million more in expenditures than they had budgeted for….
“There are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when…
Followers of this blog, and I mean both of you, know by now that I am a fan of getting the word out about good writing. Here’s a nice example from the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It is from the cover article, titled “We Will Never Run Out Of Oil.” The whole article…
Interesting take on the Bay of Pigs thinking in the Kennedy administration, as summarized in Jim Newton’s book on the Eisenhower Presidency: “The entire enterprise depended on an intelligence assumption that proved false, namely, that the Cuban people would greet the invasion force as liberators and turn against Castro.” Sounds eerily familiar to the Bush…
In a wonderful article on deep cave exploration, Burkhard Bilger shows how powerful comparison can be in putting an unfamiliar topic into context. He is describing the arduous work involved in deep cave exploration. He is describing the risks of being far, far inside the cave when a heavy rain on the surface begins to…
People often show an amazing ability to emotionally recover from difficult circumstances. I devoted my second book, You’re Stronger Than You Think, to this topic. Now comes some really cool research, showing that people’s ability to bounce back from adversity depends, not all that surprisingly, on their underlying personality traits. Although this result is not…