This is a very cool little story reported in the USA Today about how meditation, one the first social technologies, makes you a more rational, less emotional decision maker. When the researchers did MRI imaging of the Buddhist meditators brains, they found that they used different areas of their brain than other people when confronted with what could be construed …
America will get off oil…whether it wants to or not
James Howard Kunstler the author of what will likely go down as one of the most accurate forecasts of our time, The Long Emergency, posits that the fix of our “addiction to foreign oil” is inevitable…whether we like it or not. The central idea in Mr. Obama’s speech is that we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a …
Peter Klausler’s American Cargo Cult
I was just talking about the American mindset toward the future on an interview about How to Predict the Future and Win!!! It reminded me of the brief, brilliant piece by Peter Klausler, The American Cargo Cult: I. Ignorance is innocence Complicated explanations are suspect The world is simple, and there must be a simple explanation for everything. Certainty is …
The American Dream is shifting
Pollster John Zogby has a very cool summary of how he sees the American Dream evolving as we adjust to the ramifications of the Great Recession. Specifically, he talks of Baby Boomers giving up their obsession with financial success as a measure of happiness. People seem to be getting wise to the idea that the next gadget may be cool, …
The talent crunch: right on schedule
A few years back, Competitive Futures began reporting on a demographically-inevitable trend of talent leaving the workforce as the Baby Boom reached their sixties. Back in 2006, we figured that it would really become big news around 2011 or 2012. And here, on schedule, is a nice report about how public employees are rushing to retire as they see the …