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Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. In dealing with any audience, one of the things to learn is that you must make your technical material understandable and memorable.  I use the following as an example.  How does one teach the Metals Reactivity Series? If your first question is, “What is the metals reactivity series?” and your second is, “Who cares?” then you have come to the right place.  As an audience, you would be difficult to persuade because you have a.) limited knowledge of the subject, and b.) […]

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. In August, the high school where I teach will convert totally to iPads – each student possessing one and each student using one in class. I mentioned this innovation to several unrelated individuals.  Their reactions were apropos of the following: “The teachers will have a hard time with that.” “Oh that’s great.  Now the students will be texting while you’re trying to teach.” “How do you keep them from ‘Googling’ on a test?” “That certainly makes it easier for them to cheat

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. My eldest son and I drive to our “land.” It is in the hill country of Texas.  My wife discourages a more sophisticated moniker, explaining that a “ranch” must have cattle and a “farm” must have fields.  Ours has only a gravel road snaking through a juniper forest that, itself, climbs ever so steeply up the rocky hill and down to a pond that is only about as wide as it is deep.  Locals call the overhanging basalt a “cave,” but it

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. Last week, the governor of Texas made the following press release: AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry has appointed Lynwood Givens of Plano and reappointed Sharon Carr of Katy to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for terms to expire Sept. 28, 2017. The commission provides informational, library, archival and records management services to government agencies and individuals. Givens is a retired chief technology officer from the Raytheon Company, a consultant and investment analyst, and a published author. He is a member

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. Students graduate from college with the expectation that they will quickly land a high-paying job. Graduates of 2012 face challenges. For the past several years, most colleges have seen costs rise, donations decline, and assistance from state and federal governments shrink.  Few courses are removed from the catalog and even fewer professors terminated.  Attrition and flat salaries have been insufficient to stem the tide.  The burden is loaded onto the students.  Coming full circle, colleges work ever so hard to facilitate student-loans

This week was a busy one with a visit to the Dalquest Research Site maintained by Midwestern State University (MSU).  The site is adjacent to the Big Bend National Park that borders the Rio Grande’s southern boundary of Texas. I flew to Marfa, Texas with my friend, Charles Engelman, whose single-prop Beechcraft was a delight of sightseeing across western Texas.  One thing that astounded me was the number and extent of the turbine windmills.  From my count, there were a nominal 12 turbines per section as we crossed section after section of windy plains.  (A section is an area of land, one mile on each side, 640 acres).  The turbines are enormous, some 90-feet or so across. Marfa has fashioned itself into a tourist resort after the model of Santa Fe.  I intend to return when I have more time

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. When Marcus Tullius Cicero ran for the highest office in the Roman Republic in 64 BC, his younger brother, Quintus, sent him a 43-page letter outlining a campaign strategy.  The strategy must have worked because Marcus Cicero won the election and became the greatest orator that ancient Rome ever produced.  The letter is published this year as a Princeton University Press bilingual (Latin/English) book. The Wall Street Journal published a review of this book and subsequently compared the politics of the Roman

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. Since before the Renaissance, the Scientific Method has been the basis for science investigation.  When I queried high school students recently about the process, they unanimously responded that the scientific method started with the formation of an hypothesis.  Then, they said, test that hypothesis against data.  I disagreed.  It is a mistake of first magnitude to form an hypothesis in a vacuum or even with just some preliminary observations or thoughts.  Preconceived ideas and opinions can be misleading, distracting, and disastrous. When

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in their current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. In the summer of 64 BC, the 42 year old Marcus Tullius Cicero ran for the highest office in the Roman Republic. Marcus had a brother, Quintus, four years younger.  Both were born in Arpinum,  small town south of Rome.  Their father was a successful businessman, but not upper crust.  He sent his sons to Greece to receive the finest education money could buy. Thus, the candidate Marcus Cicero was an outsider to the city of Rome and not a member of

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas.  Now available in Kindle e-book.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone wanting a better job, desiring a raise in the current one, seeking investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.  College and High School students find it invaluable as they begin their careers. Last night, I was preparing a physics lesson for High School Juniors. The topic will be series and parallel electric circuits; today I am the guest speaker.  Now, if you recall your high school years, that particular physics class probably never made it to the yearbook, probably never nudged a neuron.  Why? It lacked two things – pertinence and impact. If you want to persuade others, you must convince them that what you have to say is pertinent to them.  Otherwise, they