Category: Uncategorized

Did you stop frivolous spending last week? Of course not. Your training still holds true.  It feels too good to buy that new sound system or cute handbag.  There’s no real benefit to building an emergency fund. Most people would rather feel the pain of having too little than know the satisfaction of always having enough.…

Raise the Roof Dr. Walter Greason Norristown Times Herald 7 August 2013 Twenty years ago, Eric B and Rakim advised their audience to “know the ledge.” It was a clever way to encourage people to be both street smart and book smart. A great story over an amazing beat, packaged in the soundtrack for a popular…

The 300 richest individuals on Earth now hold more wealth than the poorest 3 billion people.  This stark disparity challenges the claims that a rising tide lifts all boats.  The tide may indeed rise, but some sections of the ocean ride the crest of a tsunami, while everyone else risks being swept away. The two most…

How do cities grow?  Why do cities fail? With Detroit filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history last week, these questions gained new importance.  Set aside for the moment the partisan politics at the root of the Motor City’s situation.  One of the best examples of American industrialization in the twentieth century has…

We don’t see much blood anymore. In life, most people only see blood in movies, television shows, videogames, or first aid commercials.  Soldiers, police officers, first responders, crime victims, and human rights activists see too much blood. It was not always this way.  Before the rise of nonviolent protest in the middle of the twentieth century, most…

In the 1998 film “What Dreams May Come,” Robin Williams, Annabella Sciorra, and Cuba Gooding perform in a vision of the afterlife where our will shapes our experiences.  It is an extraordinary gift to discover our selves through life then celebrate the joys of those discoveries throughout eternity.  Hope springs from this expansive view of…

Workfare, as President Bill Clinton designed it, has failed.  Poverty is more resilient in the United States than it has been since the Great Depression.  The reforms collectively understood as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) have swollen the ranks of the working poor and cannot address the needs of the lower middle class since…

Invincible NorristownTimes Herald Dr.Walter Greason 2 June2013 —- America was a simpler nation sixty years ago. Right was right, and wrong was wrong. The mythology from those decades continues to prove profitable today.  Iron Man 3 tops the box office returns worldwide as film series featuring Captain America, Batman, and Superman continue to draw billions of audience…

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s speeches at Morehouse College and Bowie State University caused some controversy, especially among black academics, recently.  The debate made apparent some rifts between the politicians and entertainers concerned with these issues and the dynamic, growing group of race scholars who have leveraged the Internet to influence public…

Did you understand the 1999 film, “The Matrix?” Millions of people left the theaters confused by its premise, its execution, and its implications.  Many of its fundamental philosophical questions have been dismissed over the last fourteen years in a haze of fascination with its technical brilliance and scholarly debate about the appropriateness of the form for…