He’s a three-star General. President Obama selected him as Secretary of Defense Hagel’s senior military advisor. The Abrams tank is named after his father. As a young soldier, his nickname was “the natural-born killer.” He has two brothers; both are generals. When the Iraqi insurgency exploded in Sadr City in 2004, Abrams commanded three thousand troops at the center of the fight, just as his dad Creighton Abrams commanded American soldiers in the Vietnam War. You could say Lieutenant General Robert Abrams has a […]

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Remember “girl push-ups?” Survivors of American public school physical education may remember that “girl push-ups” are performed on the knees while the more challenging “boy push-ups” are performed on the feet. Even a generation ago, “girl push-ups” were artifacts of an older, more openly sexist era. I recall girls doing more pull-ups than all the boys in our elementary school’s presidential physical fitness tests. Sure, the girls were gymnasts, but the boys were athletes, too. If girls can do strict pull-ups, they can do “boy” […]

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On September 16, Peter Thiel published “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.” It quickly reached the #1 New York Times bestseller spot. No surprise – Thiel co-founded PayPal and Palantir, and was the first outside investor at Facebook. The HBO show “Silicon Valley” even based its “Peter Gregory” character off him. Zero to One is pragmatic, yet ideologically contrarian. Contrary to conventional economic theory, Thiel claims that “capitalism and competition are opposites.” Rather, the key to business is building a monopoly. And that […]

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