Quickthink

Maria Konnikova offers a delightful article on why Conan Doyle could not kill off Sherlock Holmes. And in doing so, she succeeds in helping us understand ourselves.

Over the last month or so I have posted more than once on the value of resilience. It is a capacity that one can build by working on non-cognitive skills. I believe that individuals (me and you and them) benefit from putting this on our agendas. But while we do, we might consider another dimension of resiliency - on the institutional level.

Andrew Zolli writes about this for Good as a 21st century priority. He concludes this way

If we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats. We can design—and redesign—organizations, institutions, and systems to better absorb disruption, operate under a wider variety of conditions, and shift more fluidly from one circumstance to the next. To do that, we need to understand the emerging field of resilience.

An emerging field? Interesting idea.

Marion Cunningham passed away a while back and I think she deserves a bit of attention. Ye, she was behind the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Nice. More important, she was a force to get Americans back into their kitchens to have some fun. She was a people person, and I like that.

Kim Severson wrote a nice tribute and I especially liked this line from a poem by Dave Tanis dedicated to Marion on her 80′th birthday

7. James Beard always liked my cooking
But he added things when I wasn’t looking

Amen. Cooking is about fun. No more need be said. You get a sense of her personality watching Marion help Julia Child figure out how to make muffins and scones.