Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • Cool Optical Illusions

    I was doing some house cleaning in my “Brad Personal” folder and ran across these cool optical illusions. No doubt you’ve seen some of them before, but I like them collected in one place:

  • A New Role with the Kettering Foundation

    As many friends and colleagues know, I have enjoyed a long association with the Kettering Foundation. When I first came to know the Foundation while I was working at the Institute for Global Ethics, I felt I had discovered an intellectual and philosophical home. And I was right. Over the years, the good people at…

  • Some Contrarian Bullets

    Just a few contrarian bullets . . . thoughts, complaints, and predictions: When someone talks about their “personal brand,” I cringe. You have a reputation. You must manage it. But please don’t put on airs. You ain’t Pepsi. If someone trots out “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” one more time for grads, I’ll . . .…

  • Oh, D.E.A.R. — How to Respond to Crisis: Eat the Whole Bug

    I spent the last weekend, as I do a couple of times a year, leading ethics and leadership sessions at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s Candidate Training Program. This is a bipartisan, intensive boot-camp for new candidates, delivered within an ethics framework. It has been proven to work and numerous grads are now holding…

  • Would You Attend a Bootcamp to Get Online?

    Lately I have been considering developing a one-day (or perhaps half-day) “boot camp” for people who are interested in getting their online lives set up. This would be a session for people who have no online presence, or who have one but aren’t happy with it. At the end of the day, participants would have…

  • I Completed the P90X Fitness Program! Here Are My Thoughts.

    As many of my friends know, I have been diligently pursuing the P90X fitness program. This is an intense series of DVDs featuring trainer Tony Horton. It’s designed to get you into really, really good shape. For me, it has done exactly that. Many friends have been asking about my progress and I thought I…

  • Two Ways to Use Google Voice

    Google Voice is often referred to as the “one number to rule them all” service. That does not really describe what the service does — or can do. I have been a user of the service since it began (and used its predecessor, Grand Central, before that). Some of my friends have asked me about…

  • New Norms Needed For New Realities

    As my friends on Facebook know, I recently turned off the voicemail on our home telephone line. Even though I had a fairly stern outgoing message that informed people they should not expect a message to reach us timely, people were still leaving messages and getting miffed when we didn’t call back. But the thing…

  • Election Laws Coming for Facebook, Twitter

    The state I happen to live in is at the forefront of an interesting wave in public policy, one which is inevitable. The Maryland Board of Elections is considering taking actions to regulate the social media usage of candidates and campaigns. A quick scan shows that many candidates and campaigns have begun to tap into…