Opinion Forum

A Commitment to Uncovering Local Environmental Issues

December 8th, 2011

By Jan Barry The headlines in a recent newspaper series unveiled a shocking story: “DEP let poison flow for decades” … “North Jersey riddled with failed cleanups” … “Desperate to move, but bound to stay; Residents say homes in Superfund site are worthless.” Got your attention? That’s the intent of the “Toxic Landscape” series that [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: chemicals, environment, Garfield, New Jersey, Ringwood, superfund, toxic
Categories: Media, News, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Why Inspirational Talks Don’t Work

September 7th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Have you ever listened to an inspirational talk, for example, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch? Have you ever read an inspirational book such as Born to Run? Or watched an inspirational film like Hoosiers? How do you feel after? Well, inspired, right? What a great feeling! You’re fired up and [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: books, effectiveness, film, inner, inspiration, motivation, speeches
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Your Children Send Messages Too

August 11th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Though my focus in Your Children Are Listening is on how you can send healthy messages to your children, the message highway is not one way. Your children are constantly sending you messages that you may or may not be getting or interpreting correctly. Your ability to receive and understand those [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: behavior, children, emotions, maturity, messages, responses
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Are You Sending Bad Messages to Your Children?

August 4th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Of course, you love your children and want to send them the very healthiest messages so they internalize the most positive values, attitudes, and beliefs about themselves and the world. But, as many adult children know in looking back on their own parents and upbringing, “The road to hell is paved [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: children, conflicts, messages, negative, parenting, positive, temperament
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Arne and Bill’s Misguided Adventure: An Open Letter

August 1st, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Dear Arne and Bill, I really don’t understand you two, the U.S. Secretary of Education and the world’s second richest man and noted philanthropist. How can you possibly say that public education can be reformed without eliminating poverty? Let’s start with you, Arne. Here’s a quote from you: “When I was [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, education, free market, poverty, vouchers
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (3) | Home

Is Technology Stealing Our (Self) Identities?

July 27th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Our self-identities, that is, how we define and see ourselves as unique individuals, play a vital role in who we are and the direction that our lives take. The self-identity encompasses the totality of knowledge and understanding that we gain about ourselves as we develop including our personalities, aptitudes and capabilities, [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: external, identity, internal, self, social media, society, technology
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (2) | Home

The Best Messages to Send Your Children

July 21st, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor The most important thing that you can do to ensure that your children get the right messages is for you to know what those right messages. This understanding is not a given for all parents. To the contrary, many parents don’t give much thought to this level of their young children’s [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: children, conflicts, messages, parenting, priorities, styles, temperament
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Uncle Sam’s Dioxin Cover-Up

July 19th, 2011

By Jan Barry Vietnam and New Jersey, despite the vast distance between them, share a deadly link. Both places, lushly beautiful this time of year, were poisoned by United States government actions regarding one of the most toxic chemicals, dioxin. In Vietnam, dioxin was widely spread as a contaminant in forest-killing Agent Orange herbicides that [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: Agent Orange, dioxin, EPA, Ford, HBO, Mann, New Jersey, pollution, toxic
Categories: News, Politics, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Cognitive Biases Make Common Sense Neither

July 18th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor In a recent post, I argued that common sense was vastly over-rated as a tool for making sound judgments and that we need to engage in “reasoned sense” that includes both extensive direct experience and critical thinking. Taking steps that include the informal use of the scientific method can help us [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: behavior, cognitive bias, common sense, evolution, human, psychology
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Toxic Trails

July 15th, 2011

By Jan Barry Residents of a once-isolated mountain community in Ringwood, NJ have a bone-chilling tale to tell the rest of America. And HBO is offering its cable television services to help convey this story via a new documentary called Mann v. Ford. Highlighting the community’s fight against a plague of illness and deaths they [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: cancer, children, deaths, EPA, Ford, lawsuit, New Jersey, superfund, toxic
Categories: Media, News, Politics, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Set Your Children’s “Defaults” Early

July 13th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor For you to send the healthiest possible messages to your children requires that you fully buy into my notion that children become the messages they get the most. Though it seems to be a pretty intuitive and reasonable concept, I feel the need to thoroughly convince you of the profound value of [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: children, culture, defaults, habits, parenting, responses, society, values
Categories: Economics, Life, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Common Sense Is Neither Common nor Sense

July 12th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Common sense, defined as “sound judgment derived from experience rather than study,” is one of the most revered qualities in America. It evokes images of early and simpler times in which industrious men and women built our country into what it is today. People with common sense are seen as reasonable, [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: common sense, culture, experience, facts, fallacy, judgment, knowledge
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (5) | Home

Testing in Schools Isn’t Working

July 8th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Testing has become the end-all, be-all of the public education reform movement. The idea seems quite sensible, that holding students (and teachers) to certain objective standards incentivizes both of these stakeholders to work harder and achieve their goals. It also seems reasonable to use the results of those tests as measures [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: education, failure, NCLB, reform, schools, students, teachers, testing
Categories: Education, Politics, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Change Your Performance Mindset

July 6th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor When I work with businesspeople and companies, my first challenge is to convince them that profitability, whether individual or corporate, though important, should not be the primary focus. To persuade the often-resistant corporate brain trust, I introduce them to what I call the 3 Ps. Yes, at the top of the [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: business, complacent, fear, goals, performance, productivity, profitability
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Get Ready for Your Big Event

July 6th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor The Wimbledon Tennis Championships just concluded and the Women’s Soccer World Cup is under way. And then there’s you. You’ve worked hard in pursuit of your goals and, hopefully, you’ve achieved at least some of your competitive goals including qualifying for an upcoming big event. You may not be in the [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: attitude, competition, preparation, sports, strategy, tactics
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (0) | Home

Your Children Are Listening

July 2nd, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor Consider the toddler. Having made it through the year of infancy, a year of almost complete helplessness, young children are entering a radical new phase of life. They are learning to stand on their own (a nice metaphor, don’t you think?) and are on their way to taking their first steps. [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: development, growth, learning, messages, parenting
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Let Kids Be Kids

June 28th, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor I had three experiences recently that were real eye openers for me when it comes to raising children. I have to admit that I don’t have too many epiphanies these days, considering that I’ve worked with children for years, I’m the author of three parenting books (working on my fourth), and [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: birthday, children, games, parenting, parties, playing, toys
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (1) | Home

St. Al the Gore May Have Tried to One-up Me

June 25th, 2011

By Dan Miller In a satirical article, I recently suggested that the best and only sure way to prevent anthropomorphic climate change and the inconvenient truths of its attendant horrors is total abstinence from actual sex and reliance instead on virtual sex. I also suggested that former Congressman Weiner should show the way because of [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: anthropomorphic, babies, climate change, Gore, satire, sterilization, women
Categories: News, Politics, Science | Comments (6) | Home

Weiners and Tweeters Can End Anthropomorphic Climate Change by 2112

June 23rd, 2011

By Dan Miller Sí se puede! Forget about the Sun. It vanishes at night when we need it most, is about ninety-three million miles away and neither what it does nor doesn’t do significantly affects whether Mother Earth has a chill or a fever; the Sun doesn’t care whether She perspires or shivers. Even if [...]

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: anthropomorphic, change, children, climate, Gore, satire, warming
Categories: Humor, Politics, Science | Comments (1) | Home

Technology: Bad Decision Making 2.0

June 21st, 2011

By Dr. Jim Taylor There has been some egregiously bad decision making in the news lately, highlighted by the revelations around now-former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s ongoing sexually explicit Twitter conversations and photo sharing with six women. And just to show you that this post isn’t a partisan attack, let’s not forget the similarly bad decision [...]

Articles written by Dr. Jim Taylor
Tags: decision making, email, Facebook, internet, sex, technology, Twitter
Categories: Education, Life, Science | Comments (1) | Home