It’s your zip code, not your education, that leads to success.

A few years ago, I was researching the value of bachelor’s degrees and discovered a research study from the Department of Education called Baccalaureate and Beyond (Cataldi, Siegel, Shepherd and Cooney 2014).

It is a longitudinal survey — one…

I would have stayed in Oregon.

Oregon is a great place to be if you want to be cold. It’s dreary and rainy most of the year, always damp, even in the summer, and never really dries out. And it smells. Not a bad smell, really. More like wet dirt. And Cedar trees.

That’s because the dirt is usually wet and cedar trees like wet dirt.

I grew up…

We have to spend eternity with them?

I had a rather disappointing thought today while I was contemplating the nature of the universe.

Specifically I was thinking about what happens to us after we die.

I don’t have any firm beliefs about life after death. The idea of a heaven or life after death has always seemed unlikely. Consciousness — that sense of individual identity express as “I” or “me” ceases to exist…

Life is like a journey through a funnel.

As we get older a funny thing happens…

It seems like the world in which we live gets smaller and offers diminishing opportunities. …

But that’s what we like to think.

Every four years we go through a Presidential election.

You can’t miss it.

Every newscast leads with an election story, talking heads go on incessantly, true believers scream at each other and after a few weeks we all get sick of it.

We can’t escape it.

We rarely see it…

Like everyone else, I have been following the upheaval at school board meetings across the country. Parents are confronting school boards over a wide variety of issues like Critical Race Theory, transgender bathroom issues and events at sports games.

I think these parents are missing the boat.

School boards are bureaucracies. That’s what makes them so aggravating. But…

What is the sense in turning away willing workers with good skills, education and work histories?

This has to be the most frustrating employment rejection any employer ever invented. It flies in the face of everything common sense and HR consultants tell you:

“Go to school!”

“Put your best foot forward!”

“Showcase your skills and abilities”

“Let the employer know you don’t mind taking a modest…

I was chatting with a friend who owns an auto repair shop the on a recent Friday afternoon when a customer came in to pick up a car.

“Don’t say a word about politics or Trump in front of this guy”, my friend warned. …