Observations
I call it the "Green Door" issue. You want to enter the Green Door because what is behind it would improve your life. But how would your entrance improve the lives of the people already there? If the answer is "It wouldn't", then why
Observations
Just because someone is your subordinate does not mean that they are your inferior.
Observations
Speaking from personal experience, I can attest that it is preferable to live life as a person succeeding as well as he can at being the person he thinks he ought to be rather than living life as a person perpetually failing to live up to the expectations of other
Observations
The thing about having had an ice cold childhood is that, as an adult, one clings to any place or person that was ever a source of warmth, even long after that warmth is gone, long after it is clear that it will never return, long after the clinging has
Observations
There was a guy on Usenet three decades ago who would boast of his self-perceived superiority over people who disagreed with him; a superiority that he would trace back to his supposedly having drunk deep of the philosophy of John Dewey. This guy would go on at great length
Observations
To believe in conspiracy theories is to make yourself dumber so you can feel like you're smarter.
Observations
One thing I was not warned about before I got older was how it would feel to watch once-universal memories become more narrowly and narrowly shared, and once common cultural references become more and more obscure. As I get older, I realize more acutely that something irreplaceable will die
Observations
It's a shame that the term “For Adults Only” has been claimed for so many decades by overaged adolescents. I'd like to see a weekly television program about public governance called “For Adults Only” that shows how tedious committee work, often performed by unpaid members of
On September 18, 1986, a student at Benicia High School in Benicia, California was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend after an on-campus quarrel. I was a high school sports reporter for the Benicia Herald in 1986-87, and wrote the following column for the newspaper, which it
When I was in junior high school in the early '80s, I had terrible insomnia. I used to lay awake at night and listen to the Giants game on KNBR, then listen to the Giants post-game show and the news. If I was still awake (it would be
Philosophy
The following reflection on the unknowable vastness of human knowledge was written 75 years ago: SpenglerEduard Meyer So wrote Will Durant, looking back at the 1920s. When we think of the unknowable—the almost unfathomable—depths of what human individuals in the aggregate know; and then think of what is
Philosophy
In Book II (369a-372d) of the Republic, Socrates reasons step-by-step through what would be required to create a simple and harmonious city, one in which the citizens "will live in peace and good health, and when they die at a ripe old age, they will bequeath