During the summer of 1980, I spent my evenings working as a tutor for the University's athletic department and during the day, I was enrolled in two graduate-level American Lit. classes. It was the summer I sailed on the Pequod. One of my professors was electric and profound. The other was profoundly dull and his temperament, combined with the heat and humidity of an un-air conditioned Missouri summer was a dangerous combination. Except for one day.
The professor came into the classroom trailing dandruff and clouds of chalk dust with papers tumbling out of his moist, fleshy hands. And then he announced he would read to us an article that had just been published in The 
New Yorker. And he read to us every word of George W. S. Trow's article, The Context of No Context and the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight out and a chilly came over me. --This was the most profound piece of exposition I had ever been exposed to. After he finished reading to us, he handed out copies of the article. He had photocopied Trow's essay and carefully covered up all the ads and cartoons with blank pieces of paper so we wouldn't be distracted by them The columns of type ran here and there are on the pages. It must have taken him hours to put together this hand out, this gift to us.
1980 was the end of the summer of Mr. Shawn's reign at The New Yorker. I had been a reader for years and had become lost more than once in the Very Long Tales of Geology by Mr. McPhee. It was all brilliant but never exactly ... electric. Until Mr. Trow's essay appeared. --Nothing quite like that essay has ever appeared since. Anywhere. It was finally turned into a slight volume and I bought many copies and gave them all away to people I cherished as much as the essay.
And Mr. Trow remained a mystery. I found a few other articles and essays here and there, but not very much. He had bottled lightening once, and only once.
And then, in a recent issue of New York magazine, a article told us the rest of the story. And it isn't particularly flattering. You can read it here. But if you do read about the man behind the essay, you are obliged to read the essay itself. That's only fair.
Trow's essay references some items of popular culture that are but distant memories for some of us and completely opaque to our younger friends. Be that as it may, the essay's real power is that all of it is completely and obviously true. Trow notices that our culture and civilization was spiraling down into an abyss of irrelevancy -- and that this was a pity. And as sharp as his observations was his prose -- telegraphic epigrams, a long string of densely-packed firecrackers exploding onerightaftertheother on the page. The book makes me very sad for our culture, and very glad that someone can put together such as astute observation that touched me almost thirty years ago. And the inky fingerprints linger on and on. Amen.
You might have already heard about 
, so I did. Henry was the great grandson of President John Adams and, through his book, evidenced his own rare intellect. And so we wonder how much time Henry spent in his great-grandfather's library. How many rainy Boston afternoons were spent surrounded by the musty, well-used volumes that were a catalog of how to become ... someone. 
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excellent 
illustrious history as a recording facility in Fort Edward, NY.
Based on my experience, most public relations professionals have not studied the works of Jean Baudrillard, which is just an observation and not an accusation. However, most successful practitioners probably have an implicit understanding of his work. So we all owe him a debt. 
The McKinsey Quarterly has decided to make freely available an article from 2001 by Hugh Courtney entitled "Making the Most from Uncertainty." It's an excellent article, overall, and my favorite line from the article is this: "..."at higher levels of uncertainty,
hedging strategies are less desirable since it is difficult to
determine if all bases are covered." In other words, Just Do It. 
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