Let’s start a business! Who’s in? We can accept up to 31 partners, maybe more if we expand one day. It will take a few decades, but our venture will eventually be worth nearly $10 billion. How’s that for success? We’ll be rich! And admired and feared and begrudgingly respected. We’ll be winners! Mostly we’ll...
Readers of my books often ask me what I like to read when I’m not writing. And whenever I post a Thought lamenting our aesthetic culture’s descent into exalted mediocrity and irrelevance, the email correspondence usually includes queries like, “Well, if you don’t think Dan Brown is a good writer, who is, smarty pants?” I...
If you’re a betting man, someone who likes to play the odds, chances are you would wager against the proposition that a professional athlete will say something insightful, useful, enlightening, touching, or even partially intelligent in a post-game interview. Sure, million-to-one longshots occasionally pull through, but is it really worth spending a lifetime of ESPN...
Many tears were shed this past weekend in Los Angeles, and the lachrymal mourning wasn’t over starving Africans or bleeding Afghanis. The crying – and the whining and the righteous indignation – was inspired by a college football ranking system that kept the USC Trojans out of the putative national championship game, the Sugar Bowl,...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Alien invasion! Earth occupied by creatures far smarter than humans! Thousands of years of civilization rendered irrelevant! Cory Finley’s movie adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s novel Landscape with Invisible Hand accomplishes the impressive feat of being simultaneously incisive/critical/instructive and entertaining/funny/touching. While the film is ultimately a scathing indictment of colonialism, capitalism, and artificial intelligence, the action...
