popular culture politics society

To err is human: how do we keep our feet out of our mouths in the first place?

Diane Levin
November 20, 2008 09:49

Last week, legal marketing guru Larry Bodine put his foot in it with a blog post describing the “Best ‘Elevator Pitch’ Ever…?”, courtesy of a “silver-haired senior-most litigator” who relies on a cheap joke about the Holocaust to woo business...

Judaism, media literacy and U.S. elections: reflections on the Jewish New Year

Diane Levin
September 30, 2008 11:27

Last night marked the start of the celebration of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. In anticipation, several days earlier, I began rereading a book I’d acquired several years ago, Nothing Sacred, a controversial work by media critic Douglas Rushkoff that seeks 21st century meaning in the...

Expose yourself to controversial ideas: celebrate Banned Books Week

Diane Levin
September 30, 2008 08:10

As negotiators and mediators know from experience, knowledge and information are power. That’s true for all of the negotiations in life we face — the political, the transactional, and the personal. What better way to celebrate access to information than by honoring Banned Books Week,...

Envision word peace with Wordle, a word cloud generator

Diane Levin
September 10, 2008 10:45

I was fascinated last week by the word clouds — graphic depictions — of the convention speeches of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain that appeared on so many web sites and blogs. Word clouds are visual representations of words. The larger the word in the image, the more frequently...

Judgment call: everyone benefits when decision making is improved

Diane Levin
September 09, 2008 10:15

In a recently published paper, experts in decision making Dolly Chugh, Katherine L. Milkman, and Max Bazerman asked an important question, “How Can Decision Making Be Improved?” (PDF): We propose that the time has come to move the study of biases in judgment and decision making beyond...