I became fascinated with culture later in life. Early in life, I think our understanding of culture is a lot like that aphorism about the two young fish swimming past the older fish, who casually says, "How's the water, boys?" And they swim on and then one young fish...

This is hard. I'm going to have to deliver some very uncomfortable truths about life that I had thought were self-evident, but it's apparent that they're not. This is likely to bum out a lot of Americans...which makes me happy, in a wonderfully Grinchy kind of way....

I hate even writing about the San Bernadino shootings, but it's impossible to ignore. First, It's going to be overcovered. Second, the political Right is going to turn it into Pearl Harbor and it will be used to justify every possible invasion of our civil rights (see...

In a previous post on government regulation, I promised to tell a rather interesting experience I've had with science, government regulation, and fraud. I've tried repeatedly to write this but for a host of reasons, I just can't seem to tell it as a narrative...

I had something else on my mind this week, but terrorism rears its ugly head and I feel compelled to recount a conversation I had not two weeks ago. I was in Boston, Massachusetts, for work and found myself in a nice hotel restaurant talking with a rather educated...