It was a beautiful spring day in Washington when the two most powerful people in the free world held their first meeting. She sat primly on the striped couch, waiting. Her silver hair glistened in the sunlight; an active intelligence danced in her eyes. She’d been here before, in the presence of a succession of…
It’s been a hell of a year. The election didn’t turn out the way I expected or hoped. A lot of people that I admired have died. Facebook is full of angst and fake news stories. It is easy to despair. On a personal basis, I am now a year and half into the experiment of…
Donald Trump’s latest statements at the New York Times demonstrated an amazing “flexibility” (in other words, he changed long-held positions). If you were scared of Trump’s rhetoric, perhaps this encouraged you. But once you understand the dangers of negotiating in bad faith, your optimism will evaporate. What is bad faith? In a negotiation, each side…
Here are five ideas for my next book. Tell me which one you like best. Thinking Without Bullshit: Embracing the Discipline of Analytical Thinking Based on my 20 years as an analyst and my training in mathematics, I will describe the steps you need to take to think like an analyst. Will feature interviews and examples from…
Passive voice in opinion pieces is pernicious: it hides who actually is supposed to do stuff. Donald Trump’s choice for CIA director, Mike Pompeo, repeatedly used this technique in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. When you’re advocating surveillance and data collection, we want to know who’s doing it — but Pompeo uses passive misdirection to focus on terrorists…
The Trump Organization settled fraud suits against Trump University for $25 million, removing the trial from the President-elect’s schedule. But because a settlement is a negotiated solution, you can’t immediately tell who came out on top — maybe $25 million is a lot less than the plaintiffs could have gotten. That is, until you read…
United Airlines announced Basic Economy, a new class of travel that lets you pay less and suffer more. In their press release, it sounds like a win for travelers, but as a frequent traveler, I predict a very different outcome. And it raises a question: where are the limits of a PR person’s job of making…
Trump’s shifting positions, outlandish policies, and tweets criticizing the media that covers him have challenged organizations like The New York Times. After predicting Hillary Clinton would win the election, the Times is having an identity crisis. Now they’ve emailed their subscribers to say “Hey, we’re doing fine.” The letters communicate the exact opposite. The Times asks subscribers…
The problem of fake news on Facebook is now a news story. The last few days have seen tons of articles about it, most misleading or wrong. Ironically, these are exactly the kind of articles that spread virally, with misleading headlines. The headlines I show here are real, only the articles don’t match the headlines (yup, clickbait). None…