I’ve read in many places to beware the grand sweeping explanation for all things; “A theory which explains everything explains nothing”. What I would propound is not a clean mathematical hypothesis which can be proven or disproven but, what is even worse, just a sense of any idea which exists as an underlying truth. It
Richard Dawkins describes how we have evolved to exist in what he calls “middle world”. The properties of immeasurably small and incomprehensibly large matter never came into play in terms of the survival of our ancestors and so, unlike the properties of matter in middle world, understanding their behavior is nearly impossible for us to
When Commodus explains to Marcus Aurelius that he has virtues, even if they are not the ones the emperor most values it makes me think of Springfield and its virtues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0AMz3G3FCA The holidays provide more opportunities than any other time of year to meet new people and get a feel for the zeitgeist, but I
One of the economists I enjoy listening to propounded an interesting idea last week; low interest rates not only encourage malinvestment in the economy but also take capital away from the important investments that need to be made. As I had surveyed NIRP and ZIRP and QE and NotQE I had thought of it more
We’ve had a great year. Having written those words I just realized that, nearing late December, it might indicate that my intention is to write some kind of “Year in Review”, but that is not at all my intention; it’s only that it feels as though we have found ourselves at a particularly calm moment
Perhaps there isn’t a line between delusion and aspiration; it’s just that there are those with enough good fortune that their delusional beliefs align with reality, and those unfortunate others whose beliefs don’t. It was unusual enough for me to spend three consecutive evenings going out with my wife, but what made it even more
When I bought this townhouse from the attorneys who had used it as a law office for the previous 25 years there were two or three “no-go” areas that I used for storage. The empty basement apartment had suffered the ravages of a burst pipe over a long weekend and so the lawyers put a
I was attending a concert in what was the lobby of the 2nd run movie theater in my neighborhood when I was growing up, the Bing, when I had one of those moments of clarity where a known fact seems to make material an idea or a concept. This is where I grew up. This
Spain’s history after the fall of the Roman Empire is so different from the rest of Europe that as I introduce students to the Renaissance or the Enlightenment I have to point out how those differences are manifest in its art and architecture. When I read articles, books, and blogposts on post war America I
I chose to raise my kids in a city. Not a superstar city, not a boutique city, not a city where most of the white middle class choose to do much of anything but leave. I took a lot of heat for that, and it wasn’t cast in “Minnesota Nice”; I was told by just