An Existentialist Private Eye Writes His Memoirs
Steve Vender is a tough, daring private investigator. It feels strangely right that the book most important to him is Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death.
Society & Culture
You Think You Can Recognize Evil?
“Genetics loads the gun. Personality and psychology aim it. And experiences pull the trigger.”
Everyday Olympics
The Paris Olympics tell the human story: ambition, aspiration, discipline, hard work, luck, serendipity, glory, limelight, and then the biggest dream of all, and with a half-inch miss, catastrophe.
Only Good People Can Be True Friends
Friends are trampolines, waiting to bounce you back up if you fall from the heights. With a real friend, Cicero says, “you are strong even when you are weak.”
Breaking Joins the Olympics—a St. Louis BBoy’s Take
Olympic judges, take note: the stylistic elements in breaking are what give a person room to be innovative, and that is where the creativity lives. So does the musicality, at which which St. Louis bboys (and the handful of bgirls) excel.
A Raised Fist Can Pack a Punch
Try to imagine Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, or either of the George Bushes making a clenched fist their symbol. You cannot.
The Purpose of Your Life Is to Change How Others Feel
“It is so hard to make someone else feel anything other than pain,” Nilay Patel remarked.“Christ,” Ezra Klein exclaimed. “That’s the darkest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Tell Those Angels to Stop Dancing!
Aquinas thought women easily corrupted: “When a soul is vehemently moved to wickedness, as occurs mostly in little old women…” He had paved the way for witch-burning. Plus he spent an awfully long time figuring out how male and female demons had sex.
Matching Style for Style in Politics
What I have been wondering—as I have for years—is why Dems cannot seem to counter crude schoolyard putdowns and the verbose, word-cloud attack called the Gish Gallop.
Invent a New Kind of Femininity
“Thinking about what aging means for the trans child,” Miranda July jotted in a writing notebook. “…. And how the physical changes of middle age/old age out anyone who is living as more feminine than they were born.”