Alan Weiss' The Uncomfortable Truth

Well, is this a further step in the dehumanization of civilization, or a Jonestown Kool Aid romp, or another Y2K flop? When you put a variety of documents or fictional passages through the system, I find they are seldom improved and often seriously injured. In some cases, such as in instructions or directions, I think there is huge potential. But I examine in this podcast the downsides of people jumping on this latest “bandwagon” amid the pet rocks and hula hoops. Are we eager to “homogenize” writing? Or eager to duplicate with grammar what we’ve done with math, which only a few people seem to be able to do in their heads anymore. (I fall down laughing at people who can’t figure out a tip in a restaurant, so that the restaurants overcome this by suggesting percentages to tip and the amounts represented therein.) What does this mean for dissertations or term papers? What does it mean for book proposals or reviews? Are we going to live in a world of automated writing, automated math, autonomous cars, and sy

I’ve been staying at the Lotte Palace Hotel in New York City since it was solely “The Palace” and run by the legendary Leona Helmsley. It’s ideally situated on Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st, right across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and in easy walking distance to all Broadway plays and only about 300 good restaurants. Becky Hubbard has been the general manager for a dozen years amidst her 20 in the hospitality industry. We speak here about staffing and sustaining a highly supportive and polite work force; of the rebound since Covid; of international tourism rebounding; and of a day that had her walking home around eight at night, while her daughter tracks her location on her cell phone. She presides over a 900+ room, elite hotel which she calls her “inn” and has just overseen a $140 million renovation. We talk here about her preference for dealing directly with guests and the importance of the “first see, last see” front door staff. We discuss the dramatic rise in hotel charges to guests (in Fl

I recall walking out of a church in the twilight in San Diego and thinking it was horrible that store owners and residents had left their garbage on the sidewalks. As I came closer I realized these were homeless people who were being stepped over by pedestrians. There are almost 600,000 homeless people in the US according to 2022 statistics, and about 20 percent of them in California alone. They form communities for protection, but also suffer from crime, disease, addiction, and brutality. We have no cogent plan to deal with homelessness despite who is in political office. People buying homes in Los Angeles are often faced with the difficulty of finding one for a decent price with the reality that a few hundred yards away, beneath on overpass, are scores of homeless people, often violent and often ill. There are the mentally ill, who are protected from institutionalization by laws that actually place them in greater danger. There are the truly dispossessed, who have suffered from job loss, inflation, hous

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