As the 2021 pro football season kicks off, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will start at quarterback a man who by all standard measures is middle-aged. But if 44-year-old Tom Brady plays like he did last season, his team should do very well.   Even if you don’t follow sports this is an extraordinary story. Brady’s win in last year’s NFL Championship Game came 19 years after his first Super Bowl win in 2002. The most amazing thing is how little he has seemed to have changed—especially [...]

Image from Unsplash.com This coming Labor Day will be characterized by backyard barbecues, back-to-school sales, and many employees enjoying the federal holiday. But few people will stop to consider what this day represents in the transformation of what it means to be an average worker in America. And the tragic history that led to the basic workplace rules we tend to take for granted. Up to the Industrial Revolution (which peaked in the mid-1800s) most Americans worked on farms. It was hard and dangerous [...]

In his classic detective story The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allen Poe tells how an embarrassing letter has been stolen (purloined) from the French Queen to be used for blackmail. The authorities believe they know who took it, and order a thorough search of his apartment. The police detectives pull up the carpet, probe seat cushions with needles, and even look behind the wallpaper. But they fail to find the letter. In comes Poe’s protagonist, amateur detective August Dupin, who quickly finds the letter and turns it in to [...]

Tony Dungy, who is remarkable for winning a Super Bowl as a player and then doing it again as a head coach, has a simple philosophy for dealing with tough situations. "You can't always control circumstances," says Dungy. "However, you can always control your attitude, approach, and response." This way of thinking is what allowed him to stay calm and think clearly in times when it was tempting to respond emotionally. And it's also a mental discipline practiced by a group of ancient Greek philosophers known [...]

In April of 1862, the Confederate Army of the Mississippi attacked the Union Army of the Tennessee, resulting in what was to be known as the Battle of Shiloh. It proved to be the bloodiest engagement of the Civil War up to that point. The nearly 24,000 dead, wounded, captured, or missing totaled almost twice the casualties of any previous battle. Because the engagement was fought near the Tennessee/Mississippi state line, many of the Confederate dead were buried in Columbus, Mississippi. But some Union soldiers were [...]