Newsletter Archive

In continuing with the reflection theme of the past couple pieces, I will begin this week’s with another lesson learned from this past year of Becoming Polymathic. Fair warning, it is nothing earth shattering. There are few universal themes in life. I can hear the “no shit” comments ringing in my ears. The genesis of…

My current role is the second consulting one I’ve had. It’s going well, much better than my first foray and failure in early 2020. A minor reason for that failure was the global pandemic. The major reason was my inexperience navigating the politics of consulting. My assumption was anybody who hired a consultant was seeking…

“Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one,” said some crass old man I encountered. Medium aside, the message is sound. We’ll examine the nuances of developing opinions in another piece. As for this one, we’re going to discuss the equally important process of developing taste. You‘ve Already Started Developing Taste Whether you realize it or…

This August marks two meaningful milestones – one year of Becoming Polymathic and a completed first draft of my novel Forward, A Madison Story, which was finished on Wednesday, August 7, 2024. By no means are these ventures complete, but as I’ve stated previously, it’s important to reflect upon these intermittent markers to not lose…

If you were to type the title of this piece into a search engine, the results would be a series of triggered bloggers and columnists bloviating about how the cost of a four-year degree has made it undesirable. I’m not here to further disturb them; that topic is an entire history in of itself. I’m…

Writing is exploring. Sometimes it’s easy and predictable, sometimes it’s misguided and unsuccessful, and sometimes, rarely, it’s unexpectedly fruitful. This week’s piece falls under that last category. What started as an article about celebrity obsession saved to my bookmarks last year has evolved into a deep dive into parasocial interactions, vagal tone, and how modern…

Like many of you, I took a break the past few weeks. Though not much was produced, it was far from unproductive. In fact, these times often yield many great ideas for current and future pursuits, and this break was no exception. During idea generation periods, it’s important to not discriminate where inspiration comes from;…

The fifth and final edition of the History of Time series begins a mere decade after the International Meridian Conference. Little did they know at the time, but the contributions of Henri Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Ernest Rutherford to the discovery of radioactivity would set the stage for the final standardization of our…

In contrast to the History of Time Series’ first four parts, this installment will only cover 200 years. We begin in the year 1676 with the first efforts to standardize global time. Greenwich and Global Time After some effective persuasion from John Flamsteed, King Charles II initiated construction of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, completing it…

In past pieces we’ve demonstrated the iterative nature of human evolution; the notion it is not our ideas which constrain our advancement, but rather the limitations of existing technology. The adoption of the mechanical clock, the focus of this History of Time piece, is consistent with this idea. The Iterative Evolution of Material and Water…