Have you ever had to be the bearer of bad news?

I have had to perform that unenviable task several different times.

Like when my younger brother committed suicide, neither of my parents could bear to do it, so I had to go through their personal phone book and break the news to all of of their friends and relatives.

After the first few phone calls, I developed a delivery style that [more...]

Regular readers know that I love to sleep.

But, when I’m thinking about something, I have a hard time getting to sleep.

And an even harder time staying asleep all night.

One thing that helps me relax and get to sleep is to make a list of the things that I’m thinking about, so that my list will “remember” those thought for me — thus freeing up my brain from the burden of trying to [more...]

We’ve all been to school.

So we all have a pretty good idea of what to do to be a good student.

Take really good notes during class lectures.

If you’re taking several classes, study each topic separately.

And make sure that you [more...]

It’s too bad that they are constantly pressured to share their personal information with strangers on social networking sites.

Along with their private — or even intimate or embarrassing — photos.

And every detail about where they go, what they do, who they’re friends with, and much more.

But now, some teenagers are putting a whole new kind of pressure on each other. [more...]

Almost 26 years ago, in a research paper that I wrote about the future of education, I predicted that, in the future, people would connect computers to their brains.

One result would be quantum leaps in many fields, including education, entertainment, medicine, philosophy, arts, psychology and interpersonal communictions.

Regular readers know that, a couple of years ago, researchers finally [more...]

A few years ago, they were the unknown owners of a tiny boutique, selling snooty, overpriced fashion to snooty, overpaying customers.

Then one of them “accidentaly” released a sex tape.

And, all of a sudden, they became “a brand.”

With more [more...]

I used to keep a light-up pen on my bedside table, so that if I woke up from a dream that gave me an idea for a story or a song — or just a cool idea about life — I could immediately write it down.

I’ve had a lot of those types of dreams.

But I think I only had the presence of mind to write something down once.

Last night, I had a dream in which I was hanging out with former [more...]

If you knew that you were going to die soon, how would you spend your time?

Randy Pausch was a highly successful professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at prestigious Carnegie Mellon University.

But then he was told that that he was going to die of pancreatic cancer.

So he got his affairs in order.

Provided for his [more...]