Early January, 2020, I got a Happy New Year email from an acquaintance in Milano. He, a well-known orthopedic surgeon and university professor. “Happy New Year, Stefano, and to your family. Have you heard, are you hearing about our new Chinese virus, exploding in Codogno? A COVID virus? Makes me wish I was a virologist, not a cutter.” Even just two months later, as the world would become intimately acquainted with the scourge of COVID 19, I...

Some experts and talking heads of all kinds, write, talk about, lecture, teach, wax philosophical, sell millions of CDs, about success. They urge everybody who listen, watch and read them, that would be many millions of people, to spend their money and follow their advice. And engage in every kind of behavior imaginable therefrom, thus, achieve the success they covet. Everything, starting with imagery to success, entirely war-like. If you...

The enormity of the holocaust, the most grotesque exhibit of perversity of mankind the boundless inhumanity of people. Fascism and ultimately Hitler, rose from the ashes of Germany’s total devastation and even more importantly humiliation after World War I. The victorious countries, including the United States, France and England, stripped Germany of its status in the world. And, again, more importantly the inbred pride and fierce nationalism...

The Holocaust has been on my mind, well, it is often. With Ukraine having been set ablaze by Putin—a legitimate 20th and 21st centuries competitor to Stalin, Mao and Hitler—my mind has been preoccupied a lot with it, perhaps accounting for some loss of sleep and occasional headaches therefrom. It is intellectually disingenuous to address the Holocaust, without addressing the Ukrainian Holocaust. The murder of one and a half million Jews, a...

From: The Big Man In The Khaki Shirt And Riding Boots With His Arm Up A Cow’s “Thing”       Then he started sweating and swearing. The man could keep a fierce string of swear words, sentences, phrases, paragraphs going for an hour. And he could do that in at least five languages. And he did that at a deafening level. Uncontested. Who dared stop The Big Man In The Starched-As-Plaster Khaki Shirt And Riding Boots when he got started? He started...

A brief rant on P.C. and its oft traveling companion, our culture of apology, and on situational ethics. Political correctness is a particularly insidious and ravenous cancer of the intellect. It has done more harm to all aspects of our society and our lives than any despot could have. Think horizontally and vertically of the devastating effects of P.C. on every aspect of our lives. From ordinary freedom of expression to the absurd: science and...

Success defies a universal definition. It is a complex paradigm. It is always defined both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is unique to individuals, people, groups of people, and populations. Regrettably, success or lack of it, is often dictated by necessity rather than choice. On a macro basis, definitions of success differ widely, based on a variety of factors: societal, station and chronology in life, ethnicities, economics,...

Two months ago, I was introduced to a wickedly smart, uber-cool, wonderfully articulate, super-successful podcaster (top 2.5% globally!!) and top-tier media brain. She also makes hyper-expensive stilettos paired with off-the-rack sweats look really good. It is a joy to chat away for hours with Denise Griffitts. She is a great introduction by another super-slick-in-all-ways-and-my-PR-guiding-light-and-conscience-lady, Devon Blaine. Hmm....

I always have and will always capitalize the word Holocaust. To not do so, would be an intellectual and moral failure. I grew up with the Holocaust, the German one, front-and-center in my then-recent history, and, consequently, upbringing and education. Both my parents were survivors of the camps. Very few of their extended families survived. They survived but never entirely overcame the scars. To this writing, I have not been able to explain...

A serious admonition, and a challenging aspiration. Also guiding principles in life, by your humble scribe, Steve Manning.      You can perish in the flames generated by the heat of your own passions. And, yet ...      A Life Without Passion Is Not A Life Worth Living. Now, to the perennial New Year’s dumb-as-owl-poop resolutions. This upcoming calendar-page-flip, for very few of you paper rather than digital, will bring about certain,...