Today, as I was brewing the green tea I generally drink at lunch, my thoughts wandered to Sir Thomas Lipton the tea magnate (although I was drinking a different brand). I remembered something that irritated me long, long ago, and I still remember it well enough to vent about it now.

In the early 20th Century, Thomas Lipton was among the most famous people in the world. He was one of the original “self-made men,” a Scotsman who spent time in America and learned American business ideas, which he put into practice in building a grocery empire in Great Britain. Then he shifted to the tea business, with even more success.

He was a prominent philanthropist and sportsman, and it was as a sportsman that he became a true celebrity. He loved yacht racing, and made repeated, expensive attempts to win the America’s Cup, failing each time. But his sunny good sportsmanship won him the affection of the American public, which did his tea sales no harm at all.

I wish I could remember the book or article about Lipton that got my dander up. I was pretty young at the time. I have the idea it was a biographical book I read a review of, but I can’t find the book listed anywhere. Maybe it was an article in Smithsonian or something. Continue reading "Be less authentic, if you don't mind." →

This is a good place to share things I don’t dare say in class, isn’t it?

Sure.

Part of the process of studying for your master’s degree online is discussions in forums on the school’s site. I’ve already established my reputation as a contrarian there, asking questions where other students just agree on how wonderful the assigned reading was. But I don’t say all I think, because it soon became clear that there’s something like a religious element to the course. We’re being taught the doctrines of the Church of the Enlightenment, Library diocese, and my plan is to mostly keep my head low when we touch on matters of dogma.

Anyway, one of our recent readings was a study whose author questioned whether it’s factually true that we’ve entered into an Information Age, as everybody keeps saying. He analyzes the studies usually appealed to in arguing for this societal change, and finds in them a lot of mushiness and fuzzy categories. Fair enough. He makes some excellent points. But I posed the question, could any real-world evidence actually satisfy his criteria? It seemed to me we could all be assimilated by the Borg, and this guy would still insist there wasn’t enough hard evidence to prove there’d been significant change.

What I didn’t say (though I may say it yet, if pushed), is that some time ago I spoke to a young missionary who’s involved with a project to provide open-source educational materials to Third World people in various cultures. The project faces many challenges, but distribution is not one of them. He said to me, “We’d been in all kinds of cultures – with cattle herders in the veldt, and jungle villages, and we noticed that wherever we went, everybody [that was the word he used, as I recall] has a cell phone, and they access the internet through it.”

My methodology may be sloppy, but that suggests to me that a major change has occurred in the world.

Excerpt: “The question March wants answered is what produces a dedicated murderer. Many stories depict the wages of hatred as murder. The loving husband, who worries over his troubled marriage, discovers his wife’s infidelity and distain for him, so in jealous rage he lashes out at her. Most people just walk out; some lose control.

“’You have heard that it was said to those of old,’ Jesus taught, ‘”You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council…’ (Matthew 5:21-22). This raises the bar very high, equating hatred with murder. Despite this warning, many of us still get angry with each other. Some of us hate certain people, even if we don’t actually kill them.”

My first Medium.com post is up. It’s on the second crime novel from one of our favorite authors, J. Mark Bertrand.