Is It Time to Drop the Penny?
That tiny copper disc has become irrelevant, an annoyance, yet one with a rich history. Does it still have a point to make?
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Retirement Should Be Festive
Go look for soulmates in Paris, as Martha Gellhorn did. Loosen lifelong inhibitions in Tahiti. Retire in Mexico.
Pixelborn as an Evil Robin Hood
Pixelborn was created by Bulgarian software engineer Pavel Kolev, entirely on his own. People have loved it in the way they love Disney characters and stories—which is to say wildly—and it had 50,000 users last fall. However, using Disney “intellectual property,” as the lawyers like to say, was always inviting trouble.
Breakthrough Research Connects Genes, Personality, and Health
Only now is it clear that genes network like busybodies, responding to every possible influence and turning one another on and off as the situation demands.
Five Years Since Scott Walker’s Gone
The story of Scott Walker is the story not of making it big, but making it big the right way across an entire career, including even the long breaks in between.
Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend is the Reincarnation of My Dead Best Friend
I just listened to “Enchanted.” Taylor Swift did not yet know or love Travis Kelce when she wrote this song, and I have not met the man or wanted to do so, but I can now relate to the lyrics differently as someone who has seen his dead best friend come back to life in another man’s smiling face.
Marriage is an Institution for the Rich
While most proponents of marriage frame the problem correctly—as if it was not already obvious that married people are less likely to be lonely—they grab this thorny dilemma by the wrong end of the stick.
Who Speaks Here? Ourselves or Our Machines?
The marketing around these technologies will continue to insist that they are miraculous little machines, helpful tools that allow us to accomplish more of what we want to do. Flawed-but-perfectible calculators for language. As they work their way into more of our speech, we will struggle to say the things we want to say. Then, we will struggle to think of things we want to say. And, then, we will not really be sure who is doing the saying.
Notes on Black Americans, Jews, and Israel
People are always trying to find ways to get out from under their guilt. Is the Palestinian simply a tool for Europe, for guilty White westerners, to get out from under the guilt they feel about their persecution of the Jews? If that is true, it is too bad for Palestinians and worse for Jews. Neither is human in this scenario. Blacks, because of our experience, should bear that in mind even more so than other Americans might.
St. Louis’s Native Past Comes Alive
“The U.S. Constitution was derived from the Iroquois [Haudenosaunee] Confederacy,” he points out, and surreptitiously, I jot a note. How did I not know that?