We repeat history because we cannot reverse it.
Sep 072023
Sep 062023
Complexity, randomness, inspiration, unconscious process — we bestow names as if they conferred understanding.
Sep 052023
Revolution is for an imagined future, and revolt, on which it depends, for an imagined past.
Sep 042023
To act requires a certain lack of imagination.
Sep 012023
The only way to escape the thrall of a philosopher is to read him.
Aug 312023
“I’m not concerned about short-term fluctuations”: I have lost some money
“I’m in this for the long haul”: I am determined to lose a lot of money
Aug 302023
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
“Market failure.”
Aug 292023
Every accomplished torturer serves a long apprenticeship, beginning on insects, proceeding, if he shows sufficient relish, to small animals, and only then moving up to human beings.
Aug 282023
I can no longer read of an academic conference without thinking of the scene in Love and Death when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton bring their village idiot to a village idiots’ convention, where they are greeted by a huge banner reading WELCOME IDIOTS.
Aug 252023
Genes are the privilege that dare not speak its name.