Ribbonfarm

There is a pattern to the most influential business writing, in The World is Flat league. Especially writing that CEOs seem to like enough to exhort their…

Divergentism is the idea that people are able to hear each other less as they age, and that information ubiquity paradoxically accelerates this process, so…

Imagine a person who is very lazy at work, yet whose customers are (along with everyone else concerned) quite satisfied. It could be a slow-talking rural shop…

A fully realized theory of management through the lens of The Office

We seem to be in the middle of a renaissance of rules for life. Not since Robert Fulghum's All I Really Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten (1987) and…

In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that…

I discovered something a couple of years ago: Almost all culture, old or new, is designed for consumption by people under 40. People between 40 and Ω (an…

Once upon a time I was reading a Popular Mechanics article, the title of which eludes me. Something about playing different music for different parts of a…

After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I've decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com…

The organizing principle of the modern world is pain. Avoiding it, yes. But also trading in it, taking refuge in it, and using it to justify our actions.…