Recently I had the opportunity to get my shoes shined in the Denver airport. The young man who shined my shoes was friendly as I got settled in the chair and respectful when I started to read e-mail on my phone. This was obviously not his first pair of shoes to shine, as he did a very thorough job. When I stepped down from the stand, he proudly asked, “What do you think?” I responded, “They look great. How much do I owe you?” He responded, “Whatever you want to pay. Pay me wh

Since we were kids we’ve been comparing ourselves to those around us. We have a great lunch, but the kid sitting next to us has a better lunch. We have nice clothes, but the kid next door has better clothes. We have a great backpack, but the kid across the aisle on the bus has a backpack just a little nicer than ours. It never seemed to matter what we had — someone always had something better. Even though we were told to never compare ourselves to others, I suppose nothing ha

Twice a year we follow this silly ritual of turning our clocks forward and backward. We follow this ridiculous ritual as a result of Congress. In 1966 the Uniform Time Act was enacted to provide the basic framework for switching between standard time and Daylight Saving Time. If you didn’t have a reason to dislike Congress before now, this should give you a good reason. Actually, most people don’t complain when we get to “fall back” as we did this past weekend. The extra hour