Stepping toward green-activist Dave Chameides' front door, I found myself hesitant to even ring the doorbell--it seemed a needless waste of electricity. It is hard not to check in with oneself on such matters after going over the background materials on Sustainable Dave's Web site. That's the online portal...

Here in Los Angeles, the city rang in the New Year by closing down all of its public access TV studios, signaling an end to homegrown, grass roots production of eclectic and often monumentally weird alternative programming. Cities in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana are also shutting down facilities, and if...

As an executive recruiter, it is my job to examine trends, gauge the needs of the marketplace and get my clients into jobs that will make the best use of their skill sets. When the process is firing on all cylinders, it is extremely rewarding. The client is happy, and...

"Music hath charms," so English poet William Congreve said it in 1697, "to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." I don't know about you, but given the recent official announcement of a recession (duh), my nerves have been rather like a knotted oak lately,...

If you have wandered into any of the nation's leading retail establishments lately, you have experienced first hand the lackluster, even fearful approach to consumer spending that has left your neighborhood Target or Circuit City resembling the decimated wasteland that is left after the demons in the Ark kill everyone...

Anyone who has ever had a job (which I assume includes most everybody reading this, unless my cousin Rudy -- who has been spending the past eight years thinking that reciting his poetry in coffeehouses to an audience of nine people, six of whom still wear berets on a regular...

Ah, the pre-election, winding-down death throes of a long political campaign and the guaranteed finger-pointing nastiness that ensues as each candidate tries to smear the other in a thick coating of "unsuitable for office." It's a delightful tradition, and one to which the general public has become inured, even as...

This month, U.S. News and World Report weighed in with some sobering news (as opposed to the side-splitting, laugh riot pieces they normally run): that only two percent of almost 1,200 surveyed graduating medical students said they want to work in primary care or internal medicine. Why? Because they did...

One thing you can say about Sarah Palin: she is certainly a conversation starter. I haven't had this much fodder for party banter since Don Imus revealed to the world that his future as a college basketball coach was limited. The left will argue that Palin's stands on key issues...

Sometimes, when the daily grind gets to me, I think back to my carefree days in pre-school, when they gave you a nice nap in the middle of the day. Alas, it's forty some-odd years later, and corporate America does not allow for naps. Even though sometimes, as the economy...

Shouldn't we all be working on Labor Day? It is a day that, in the words of the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site is designed to honor the American worker; a person who is "the creator of much of the nation's strength, freedom and leadership." And, I might add,...

Watching the Olympics always fills me with a series of complicated emotions -- a veritable frisson of admiration, pity and jealousy. Admiration because these competitors represent the pinnacle of achievement in all of their respective fields; whether they are a Decathlete gliding toward the finish line of a 1500 meter...

Psst. Hey, you. That's right, the one who's staring at your computer screen. Come over here. No, no, over here. I need a place where we can talk privately, because what I am about to tell you is so explosive, so potentially incendiary to the entire world order that I...

I think I know why legendary quarterback Brett Favre has struggled so mightily with the issue of his own his retirement. It's because over the last twenty-five years, since he's been putting on a helmet and shoulder pads, he forgot to learn another core competency to carry him into his...

Remember when the only thing chaining you to your computer was email? Oh, how I long for those days, the way a caveman must have gazed wistfully at the new invention called the wheel while grunting unintelligibly about how much simpler things were when his only concern was clubbing things...

Are we nuts? Why do we continue to put such effort into our careers when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are tanking faster than Ron Paul at a charisma contest? And the very names of these institutions don't exactly inspire confidence in their economic acumen. Smith-Barney, now that sounds like...

Some guy in Japan just bought the farm by working too hard. You heard right. He was 45, the lead engineer for a Toyota hybrid car division. While he was helping us reduce our dependence on oil, the poor guy ran out of gas. And he didn't even live as...

The only sensible thing to do when one is about to kick off a career column is to Google the word "career." Let's face it, we live in a world where if you don't do a little Googling before you put pen to paper (or keyboard to cyberspace) then you...