Posted on May 11, 2012 by Robert Ringer — Comments (3)
Sadly, my longtime friend, Vidal Sassoon, died Wednesday at the age of eighty-four. Vidal, who grew up in poverty in London, changed the entire beauty-salon industry with his ultra-short and easy to manage hairstyles. He later became a business mogul when he developed a line of shampoos and hairstyling products, and also built a chain […]
Posted on January 30, 2012 by Robert Ringer — Comments (1)
Most men speak of their mothers as angels, and in that regard I guess I’m not unique. Some would probably argue that my mother was not unique either, that she was merely one of millions of moms from the greatest generation. Modern-day feminists would have been horrified by Mom’s lifestyle. Her day-to-day world consisted primarily […]
Posted on December 28, 2011 by Robert Ringer — Comments (1)
As I was enjoying the Christmas weekend, I was struck by the onslaught of tragedies that flashed across my television screen. A helicopter carrying a heart surgeon and procurement technician crashed in Florida, killing both men and the pilot of the aircraft. An Afghanistan war veteran was shot in the neck during a welcome-home party […]
Posted on October 10, 2011 by Robert Ringer — Comments (1)
Whenever someone famous died, my dad used to say, “The Grim Reaper just keeps mowing ‘em down, one by one.” Simply put, but accurate. And this past week, the Grim Reaper was working overtime. In a harsh one-two combination, he took the lives of two living legends, Steve Jobs and Al Davis. What was eerie […]
Posted on January 4, 2009 by Robert Ringer — Comments (2)
My approach to life is to plan carefully, then relentlessly focus on execution. I don’t mean to sound stuffy, but to me impulsiveness is a sign of irresponsible behavior. That’s why those who know me best would lay 100-to-1 odds that I would never make a spur-of-the-moment decision to hop on a train and head […]
Posted on April 30, 2008 by Robert Ringer — Comments (9)
Too bad it wasn’t mandatory for every American to watch the segment 60 Minutes recently did on David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. Walker heads up the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, which acts on behalf of taxpayers to assure a nonpartisan, honest assessment of government operations — especially government spending. Walker bluntly […]
Posted on April 12, 2008 by Robert Ringer — Comments (3)
I’ve often referred to the airlines as “hiccup businesses.” Meaning that if an airline has a cash-flow dip (read, “hiccup”) for one or two months, it’s in serious trouble. And if it’s a big hiccup and drags on for three or four months, the airline may find itself in bankruptcy. What makes a company qualify […]
Posted on March 1, 2008 by Robert Ringer — Comments (2)
If I’ve learned anything at all about life, it’s that disasters really do happen. I’ve always been amazed at how most people live their lives on the assumption that worst-case scenarios haven’t yet been invented. Students of human behavior refer to this mind-set as “normalcy bias.” The recent rash of tornadoes are perfect examples of […]
Posted on September 21, 2007 by Robert Ringer — Comments (3)
If being a contrarian is conducive to success, you can learn something valuable from the Politically Correct Dark Ages that has all but swallowed the remnants of Western civilization. It used to be that everyone knew there were just a handful of subjects that you simply avoided and opinions that were best kept to yourself. […]
Posted on July 30, 2007 by Robert Ringer — Comments (1)
Recovered memory syndrome (RMS) is a phenomenon whereby a questioner “helps” someone remember events that may be fictional by asking leading questions. The reason such questioning works — in bogus molestation cases, for example — is because the mind is very susceptible to suggestion. But RMS is just one aspect of a much broader problem […]
