Want More Proof That Correlation Is Overrated?

In the book review section of the New York Times, Andrew Solomon poses a reflection on Adam Lanza, the deranged elementary school shooter in Connecticut: “If we want to stem violence, we need to begin by stemming despair.” How we will stem either of these problems I don’t know.  But what a great sentence!

Ever been talking to someone when they all of a sudden said: “To be perfectly honest . . .” I don’t know about you, but I don’t find that phrase reassuring.  In fact, it kind of makes me wonder how honest you were being with me before you said that!  

Oscar Wilde is one of the most quotable people in history of the English language. He even had ideas about robots, many decades before people had any idea what robots could achieve. And in typical Wildean fashion, he provocatively tied it together with his attitudes on the advantages of slavery: “Unless there are slaves to…

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…