Category Archives: Uncategorized

(The things people say on Facebook should be among them.) Beginning Jan 1, 2014, I’ll have a new social media policy: Although my Facebook account will remain open, I’ll only be using it for broadcasting new articles and blog posts, and for private email correspondence. Twitter will also become a posting and listening station only. […]

There is no doubt that New York City is expensive. It is one of the most expensive cities in America, right alongside San Francisco. One things that these two cities share in common is that they have among the most tightly controlled housing markets in the country, and we consistently refuse to build enough housing […]

Flying in a plane, it’s hard not to recognize that you’re part of something larger than yourself. It’s not only the trust you must put into the hundreds of people who played their role in making you airborne — from the pilots, engineers and machinists, to the traffic controllers, maintenance crews and ticket sellers — […]

Bad speech is an invitation for listening, for compassion, for understanding, for better arguments and for better speech. When we hear hateful speech, our goal should be to help stop our fellow human beings from feeling such hatred. Not to get them to simply stop talking about it whenever we can hear them. This is […]

To those who observe Christmas, and to those who merely see it happening around them, here’s hoping you have a happy one. To help make the day even better than it might have been, here are a few of my recommendations for The Best Christmas Albums in the History of the Universe, from the December […]

All people were created equal. But nowhere is it written that they would remain that way. Nor should we expect them to. People come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with different aptitudes, interests, values and family histories. They are satisfied with different things, pursue different goals and choose different means of getting at them. […]

There once was a brilliant, Nobel prize-winning economist who said that the world runs on greed. “Do you know of any society that doesn’t run on greed?” he’d ask. He would often follow this up by joking: “What is greed, anyway? It’s never us who is greedy. It’s only the other guy who is ever […]