From time to time, readers ask me what books have made the biggest difference in my life. I am not sure how to answer that question because the books that happened to set me off in a particular direction at a particular time may have no special message for others --...
My annual list of books to recommend as Christmas presents is led by the clearest front-runner in years: "1776" by David McCullough. There was a time when the very mention of 1776 struck a responsive chord in Americans, as the year in which their country's independent...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Bumper sticker in Berkeley: "Animals are little people in fur coats." My tastes must be behind the times. When I see women in "before" and "after" advertisements, I often think they looked better before. What enables ex-President...
People have always sought distinctions but the ways they have tried to distinguish themselves have varied widely. Some have let their achievements speak for them but others have let their clothes, their tattoos, their pierced body parts, or just their loud and...
"The New White Flight" was the title of an eye-opening article in the November 20th issue of the Wall Street Journal. It was about a high school in Cupertino, California, where a growing Asian American student population is causing rising academic standards -- and...
Some people seem to see nothing between zero and infinity. Things are either categorically all right or they are categorically off-limits. This kind of reasoning -- if it can be called reasoning -- is reflected in the stampede to ban torture by Congressional...
I first became aware of the law of gravity as a small child when I pedalled by tricycle off the porch and crashed into the yard. Gravity was of course operating all along, whether I was aware of it or not. Economics is a lot like that. Many people who are completely...
A newspaper headline -- "Lawmakers Struggle to Define Gasoline Price 'Gouging'" -- shows how phony the current Congressional jihad against the oil companies is. "Price gouging" is one of those phrases that evoke strong emotions but have no definition. Where particular...
Many people are blaming the riots in France on the high unemployment rate among young Muslim men living in the ghettoes around Paris and elsewhere. Some are blaming both the unemployment and the ghettoization on discrimination by the French. Plausible as these...
Riots that began on the outskirts of Paris have spread into the center of the French capital and to other communities in other parts of the country. Thousands of cars have been set on fire and the police and even medical personnel have been shot at. Like many other...
While giving my office at home an overdue cleaning up -- "operation Augean stable," as my wife and I call it -- I uncovered in the paper jungle a 2005 calendar. Since there was not a lot of 2005 left, I was about to throw it out when I read its title: "2005 Republican...
We have been hearing for a long time what a terrible thing it is to reveal the name of a covert C.I.A. agent -- and it is a terrible thing because that can be a life-and-death situation for the agent exposed and a devastating setback for this country's ability to get...
The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Neither the depth of despondency nor the height of euphoria tells you how long either will last. We are so easily deceived that many people think that the Senate Judiciary Committee is acting nicely if the Senators wear a genial...
The idea that what I want overrides what you want has increasingly become part of our thinking, our policies and even our laws. There is literally a federal case before the Supreme Court over the fact that many colleges and universities refuse to allow military...
An editorial in a recent issue of the National Geographic's "Traveler" magazine complained that kayakers in Maine found "residential development" near national parks and urged its readers to use their "influence" to prevent such things. "You are the stakeholders in...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Different people have different ideas about humility. One man said: "I don't think I'm half as good as I know I really am." What can we be certain of from history? That human beings have been wrong innumerable times, by vast...
One of the things that happens when you get old is that what seems like news to others can look like a re-run of something you have already seen before. It is like watching an old movie for the fifth or sixth time. A headline in the September 14th issue of the New...
Whatever later investigation may turn up about the mistakes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in New Orleans, it is unlikely to show the shrill charges of "racism" to be anything other than reckless political rhetoric. FEMA has bungled other...
During my first semester of teaching, many years ago, I was surprised to encounter the philosophy that the brightest students did not need much help from the teacher because "they can get it anyway" and that my efforts should be directed toward the slower or...
The physical devastation caused by hurricane Katrina has painfully revealed the moral devastation of our times that has led to mass looting in New Orleans, assaults on people in shelters, the raping of girls, and shots being fired at helicopters that are trying to...
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