I grew up in New England in the 1960s and 70s. My whole family was Republican. We supported John Chafee, Edmund Brooke, Eliot Richardson, and Nelson Rockefeller. Social liberals and fiscal conservatives. These types of Republicans are long gone. Nixon, then Reagan, and recently Trump discovered that courting southern whites could win elections. Social liberalism […]
I have always been fiscally conservative and socially liberal which, when I lived in New England, meant that I was a moderate Republican aligned with the likes of Edward Brooke, John Chafee, Eliot Richardson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Margaret Chase Smith. I was a fan of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton 1, and Obama — […]
Does location matter? It depends on what you are seeking. If economic opportunity is your yardstick, here are some interesting statistics. Greater New York City generated $1.5 trillion in GDP for 2014. Greater Los Angeles provided $0.8 trillion; greater Chicago $0.6 trillion; greater Houston and greater Washington, DC $0.5 trillion each; and greater Dallas, San […]
This blog has been on hold for 18 months as I have transitioned from Atlanta to Hoboken, the sixth borough of New York City. I retired from Georgia Institute of Technology and am now on the faculty of Stevens Institute of Technology. I am still immersed in enterprise transformation, focused on healthcare delivery, higher education […]
The organizers of the 3rd International Symposium on Engineering Systems asked me to provide a brief story of my journey to engineering systems — how I came to be at this Symposium on this June evening in Delft. The idea is to stimulate your thinking and perhaps motivate you to share your stories during dinner […]
I have been reading a lot of history lately, mostly U.S. history from 1620 to 1914, trying to understand the nature of changes that occurred in that period. The dominant businesses are interesting – cod fish in the Grand Banks, whales in Nantucket and New Bedford, ships for fishing and commerce (including slaves), textiles in […]
A year ago, I bought an iPhone. About six months ago, I switched from a PC to a Mac. A few months ago, I began to use texting and now frequently rely on this means of communication. Now, I am writing a blog. My colleagues think that I have a chance of actually making it […]
Last Wednesday, I was at the White Mountain School in Bethlehem, NH. The invited lecturer in earth sciences was Mariko Yamasaki of the USDA Northern Research Station at Bartlett, NH. She noted that all the forests in New England “from the notches south” have grown over the past 150 years. Before that, from 1620 to […]
