Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • A Vision For 2009

    Through my friend Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, I discovered a great way to put together a vision to guide oneself. Just in time, too! Most years I spend New Year’s Day writing out my goals for the coming year. This year, for some reason, I did not do that and I have been hankering to get…

  • Location, Location, Object

    Through one of my Twitter contacts, I ran across an interesting article by Jyri Engeström about why some social networks work and others don’t. It has to do with the presence — or lack — of an “object.” In this case, that means a reason to connect with others. One example is Flickr, which has…

  • The Civic Implications of Student-Centered Education

    My friend John Creighton and I have been thinking together about what it might mean for education to become far more “student centered – a trend that has already begun. Education is one of those areas that so far has been sheltered from some of the more turbulent changes taking place in society. But we…

  • You Know?

    Ever since I was quoted as saying something along the lines of “there’s a lot of stuff out there” in an interview with the Toledo Blade, I have been aware of the usual policy of cleaning up quotations from interviews to best represent what the subject was saying. We all pepper our speech with ums…

  • Late Nights And Pacing Yourself

    I’ve gone through a number of “work phases” in my life so far and reading about the new workstyle shift people are expecting to see in the Obama White House got me thinking about them. The Obama White House is expected to be much different than the Bush White House: Bush famously arrives at the…

  • Gas Stations And Whalesongs

    A couple days ago, I mentioned an essay of my old high school friend Charlie Burleigh. That got me to thinking and I dug around in my old files and I found the essay in question. I want to share it because I think it is one of the best essays I’ve ever read. He…

  • The Power Of Music

    My friend Caryn Martinez has this interesting story about subliminal advertising. Seems that when hearing French music, more shoppers purchased French wine. During German oompah music, it’s all Piesporters and Rieslings. The kicker: in post-purchase surveys, only a handful ever mentioned the music when saying why they bought what they did. Such is the secret…

  • I'm Here. I'm Here.

    The other night, a close friend was ill. The next day, recovered, we discussed an interesting thought that kept going through their mind. Every few moments, with some change in symptoms or worsening of feeling, they felt compelled to describe it to themselves in the lingo of a status update: “X is lying in bed,”…