Category: Uncategorized

  • Keyword: Aura

    Some objects carry the trace of everyone who’s cared about them, and it only happens in the analog world. Any issue of The Atlantic that arrives containing a piece by Caity Weaver is a treat to be gobbled up and then re-read and savored. She is a cornucopian writer, like Erasmus in the Dutch Renaissance, who delights…

  • A Cannes-terbury Tale

    Is the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity today’s holy pilgrimage?  Last night, after a blessedly dull 22-hour journey, I returned home to misty Portland from the scorching heat of Cannes on the Côte d’Azur in France. It was my first visit to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—the advertising celebration, not the film festival—even…

  • Higher Education’s “Napster Moment”

    Annals of Disruption: will a new initiative from Sal Khan change college forever? An April story about the new Khan TED Institute (KTI) had a moment then faded away. It deserves a second look. KTI is the brainchild of Sal Khan, creator of the Khan Academy, TED, and the Educational Testing Service (ETS), alongside what…

  • Adventures in Paris, a Claude Unlock

    Adventures in Paris La Profesora joined me in Paris for the RMN Europe Ascendant Boot Camp last week, which I programmed and hosted. After, we stuck around for the long weekend. The thing I love most about Paris is its excess of everyday aesthetics. A dozen years ago, I wrote “Paris as a Way of Seeing,” and…

  • Presidential Laughter

    Judd Apatow’s theory of presidential politics is that the funniest candidate wins, which isn’t a stretch for a comedy writer and director. I used to agree with this, but then Trump came along to complicate it. Trump never laughs. He doesn’t smile either. Instead, he has that bizarre grimace, a painted rictus. He has won…

  • Subject Line Style

    One of the few things about which La Profesora and I disagree is the purpose of writing. I contend that all writing is about persuasion—about getting your way. She disagrees. It’s likely that we disagree on the definition of “persuasion,” but we haven’t dug that deep. My mother, one of the other leading ladies in…

  • Keyword: Satisficing

    There’s a difference between making “good enough” decisions and always trying to make the best decision, which is exhausting. This article is the fifth in my keywords thread, but you don’t need to read anything else to understand this one. Barry Schwartz, author of the useful book The Paradox of Choice, recently appeared on The Happiness Lab podcast to talk…

  • Emotional Truths that Aren’t True

    Jonathan Haidt’s bestseller “The Anxious Generation” is a terrible book on which nobody should waste their money or attention. Last week I had the privilege and pleasure of joining Joey Dumont on an episode of his True Thirty podcast in which we debated the merits of Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling nonfiction book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring…

  • New Challenges for Facebook

    In junior high, I discovered that my school library had declined to carry a book. (I don’t remember the title.) Incensed, I went to the Headmaster (yes, I went to that kind of school) to confront him about censorship. To his credit, he didn’t respond, “get the hell out of my office!” Instead, he said, “Brad, if…

  • Overfocusing and Immersion

    The point of optical illusions like “Duck-Rabbit” and “Young Woman or Old Woman” isn’t that one of the options is correct. Instead, the point is that both are right even if you have to toggle back and forth, taking turns, to see each separately.  I have yet to find a good term to describe this…