Author Archives: Douglas R. Satterfield
[December 8, 2024] From my earliest memory as a child, I remember my dad kicking the tires on our old car. “Why do you do that, Dad,” I asked, completely clueless. “Well,” he said, “that’s how you check to make sure the tires don’t fall off when driving.” Dads are always right, of course, so that’s always what… Read More »
[December 7, 2024] We see, published today, many obligatory articles about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, occurring almost a century ago, 83 years. The attack was an operational masterstroke, given that the country of Japan could send six aircraft carriers 4,000 miles undetected, execute an air attack, and return home unmolested. As brilliant as this operation was,… Read More »
[December 6, 2024] I’d planned to write about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, but Miranda Devine has done a job better than I could do. I’ll highlight her article here with comment. Note, that the title of her NY Post online article – a Pardon Palooza – harks back to Biden’s entire term of failure… Read More »
[December 5, 2024] A crucial skill for any leader to possess is the ability to judge the character of others. Leaders are looking for specific traits that predict successful mission completion or are obstacles to teamwork. Sadly, we often see inexperienced leaders who misjudge character, leading to unforeseen problems. I wrote these words in January 2021 after looking… Read More »
[December 4, 2024] There have been some serious discussions in academia, particularly among psychologists, that we see our lives through stories. We can say, with some certainty, that those stories have undergone inspection and reinforcement by people who were part of that story and significant others in our lives. This helps ensure that any particular story is believable,… Read More »
[December 3, 2024] With Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Secretary of Defense by President-elect Donald Trump, an age-old argument about women serving in combat is back in the public eye. In an interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, November 7, Hegseth made it clear that he believed, “We should not have women in combat roles!”* What he said previously… Read More »
[December 2, 2024] This is the story of an abandoned dog, lost in a forest, and luckily, he was found by a kind young woman. An interesting point I want to make is that my most-read articles involve pets, and it’s because folks love their pets. For some reason, we have a strong bond between us and our… Read More »
[December 1, 2024] As we speed toward the end of 2024, most of us might look back and think how bizarre the year turned out to be. It’s easy to be pulled downward into the grip of pessimism and negativity. A strong belief in the goodness of people is the medicine that moves us toward a cure. One… Read More »
[November 30, 2024] Throughout the 1960s, there was a credible belief that the expanding world population would drive global starvation and other catastrophic consequences. In response to a request from the U.S. Population Council, Frederick Jaffe wrote a memorandum outlining then-current ideas for population control (reducing total population numbers and growth). At the time, Jaffe was the vice… Read More »
[November 29, 2024] In the 1960s, there was a popular idea circulating in academia that the world’s population growth was rapidly exceeding its environmental and technical limits to support itself. The results would be widespread starvation, affecting mostly children in poor nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of southwest Asia. Ideas behind this thinking started in the… Read More »