Category: writing

Once upon a time a lady who loved animals took a vacation at an upscale island hotel, part of a chain offering cheap promotional rates…

Definition 7: That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone. But…

In the last couple of decades drugstore chains (Duane Reade and CVS) and bookstore chains (Barnes & Noble and Borders) have taken over Manhattan. There…

One of the bugbears of my life is (other) people who behave inconsistently, who say, in effect, without batting an eyelash or turning a hair,…

This morning I walked up Columbus Ave on my way to work and passed a Danskin store that had a sign outside that said “Seized…

I was on an airplane yesterday and was reading the NYR of Books, where the personals are always amusing (Masculin-Feminin) and mostly unrealistic. I like…

The Great Wall The commander-in-chief?so you?ve heard?has begun a mission to fix the system, directly from his office, for us, the citizens in all the…

South Africa is multi-talented in the sporting field, from women’s 800m runners to football, and I have been catching up on the latest in the…

I had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles. If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning…

Cape Town, like all of South Africa, is in the throes of preparing for the World Cup in June. Everything is much more spruced up…

The Hemlock Society Updated Alexa Joel, according to newspapers in South Africa where I currently am (2009), tried to kill herself with an overdose of…

Talk delivered at Bloomberg on Tuesday Nov 24th, 2009: Fischer Black and the Financial Crisis: Rising Above The Noise I have been working for the…

A few years ago someone insisted to me in a conversation that “feelings” didn’t mean the same as “emotions”. I thought about this for a…

I was on a jury in 1980. At the start the judge cautioned everyone not to discuss the case with their family or friends each…

Nicholas Wade in the NY Times reviews Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, about evolution. The review is at www.nytimes.com…… Wade spends…

Prizes are just things handed out by a bunch of people, not by God. God’s ones don’t come with announcements, are harder to identify, even…

Enough with the bailout and Lehman. The papers keep writing about it but they have nothing more to say. Let me rather think about consumer…

Last night I held a panel at Columbia about the economic system and the principles that should govern it. One interesting question raised but not…

My first day back in NYC and at 1pm as I was about to reach CPW to go for a run in the park I…

I like Santa Fe but ? I can’t tell the difference between a JC Penney’s and The Church of JC Latter Day Saints. Everything looks…

Everyone is kicking the poor EMH now that it’s down, some of them quite eloquently and hard. But I’m always on the side of the…

I am flying to area code 212 To stab a Concorde into you, To plunge a sword into the gangrene. This is a poem about…

“So many riders in the Tour de France have been tossed out because of drugs, the overall leader is now a delivery guy from Empire…

I went to the doctor one day last week after a few weeks of feeling ill. My doctor is a very nice man. HIs nurse…

I used to be a fountain pen fetishist, craving pretentiously named (Dostoeyevsky, Mozart, Oscar Wilde, ?) limited editions of Mont Blancs that always ended up…

Last week I spent a day at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. It’s a sort of institute for advanced study devoted to theoretical physics,…