On Distractions
Widower Woodrow Wilson fell in love with Edith Galt in 1915. The President’s doorkeeper summarized the situation tersely:
“She’s a looker; he’s a goner.”
Widower Woodrow Wilson fell in love with Edith Galt in 1915. The President’s doorkeeper summarized the situation tersely:
“She’s a looker; he’s a goner.”
As we watch the newspaper industry die around us, we should reflect on just how important newspapers have been for American democracy. Thomas Jefferson certainly understood this. “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to…
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ [I’ve found it!], but ‘That’s funny.’ (Click here to view comments)
In a wonderful New Yorker article titled “The Hangover,” Nick Paumgarten writes about the strange mix of private and government forces that led to the Spanish fiscal crisis. In a wonderful sentence, he evokes one such force, the almost invisibility of debt: It is often hard to perceive an economic crisis. Debt doesn’t look like…
Friends and family are painfully aware of how obsessed I have become with Beethoven lately. My plan is to have 10 of his piano sonatas in my brain and fingertips at any one time, ready to play by memory on demand. I’ve been listening to his music, studying his scores, and even reading biographies. And…
Until I moved to North Carolina, it never struck me as odd that people talk about “April showers bring May flowers.” That nice little bit of rhyming doesn’t make sense down here in the south. Which made me think: but what would this phrase look like in different parts of the country? Here are my…
Steven Johnson was a rising star at the NordicWear Company, even before that brutal winter of 2002. But then, thanks to a rebate program he instituted for their new line of snow pants, he rocketed up the corporate ladder. His plan was brilliant in its simplicity. Late in the previous winter, he ran a series…