April 2022 In an article in The Atlantic, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Jonathan Haidt mentions James Madison’s recognition that democratic societies can suffer from “the turbulence and weakness of unruly passions.” Haidt points out that to create a “sustainable republic” is to “build in mechanisms to slow things down”… Continue reading

April 2022 The title is a quote from the Cate Le Bon song Pompeii. It’s from the album of the same name. Le Bon’s music is spare, simple, and yet far more evocative than it at first appears. It can be pretty difficult, for me, at least, to figure out what some of her work is really… Continue reading

May, 2022 Sometimes there’s a technology that captures our minds so much that it becomes a metaphor for practically everything. The universe — and the mind — seemed like an infinitely complex clockwork back in the days when the mechanisms inside clocks were new and fascinating. The “clockwork universe” showed up around the 1400s, and… Continue reading

May 2022 I recently attended a military ritual — it was a group of veterans honoring one particular veteran. The power of it, like the power of any ritual, came from the repetition of the same series of actions. Probably because it was a military ritual, the repetition was precise, and the people involved were… Continue reading

It’s a funny thing about repetition — it’s great, but sometimes it can quite suddenly cross a threshold and become “too much.” The pulse of loud music is a good example; I can be enjoying it and then for some reason, I’ve had enough. I seldom see the threshold approaching. Maybe there isn’t anything approaching… Continue reading

Math is not what you think Math is not what you think it is. I think that holds for everybody, even real mathematicians, whose understanding of it is vastly beyond what the rest of us can muster. Math is not just a different thing to different people; I think it’s even a different thing to… Continue reading

You feel intense rage. There isn’t anything you can do with it. It’s not directed at a particular person, although people are part of it. It’s not about any given company or organization or institution, although all of those contribute to it. You want—need—to express something. You imagine if you could just find the right… Continue reading