Magnificent Octopus

For a recent MOOC, On Strategy: What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers , the final exam asked us to respond to Francis Bacon's ...

Why, I briefly wondered as I took a seat on the sofa, did everyone but me seem to find caffeinated beverages more conducive than alcohol to ...

The kid and I went to Montreal Comiccon the other week. I'd never been to a comiccon. In past years I've been in the area of the con...

The Guardian calls Emmanuel Carrère " the most important French writer you've never heard of ," and I quite agree. (Except for...

Norway, 2001 Spain, 2010 Sweden, 2014 I've posted all of these separately to Google+ over the last few weeks, and I'm sure ...

I'm reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation . Classic of science fiction, blah, blah, epic and political, I never had any interest. Plus i...

I had some trouble finding my groove with Robert Walser's Berlin Stories , because they're not really stories. They are vignettes, s...

I recently acquired The Poetry of Rilke , translated by Edward Snow and with an introduction by Adam Zagajewski ( excerpt ), a volume I'...

I don't watch a lot of TV, hence I don't see many commercials, so forgive me if you've been overexposed to this ad, but I coul...

A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside e...

I recently completed a MOOC on neuroeconomics . Basically, the study of decision-making. It's a little more exacting than other courses ...

Why is there something instead of nothing? That's the question — along with some variations ("What banged? Why did it bang? And wha...

I've been a bit irritable this week. There was a bit of stress in getting the kid back to school — her supplies, our routine — but not e...

Importance of names — Most appellations appear to displease them; they would prefer not to be discussed at all, I believe. The expression ...

Park air welcomes me; the many thousand green leaves of the lofty trees are lips that wish me good morning: So you're up already too? In...

If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your w...

There are some notable exceptions to the generally accepted truth that a book is better than its movie adaptation. Jaws comes to mind. Chil...

She's gone now, for a week. But she left me this picture on the whiteboard.

It happened far too often. Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leadin...

The kid's been out at my mother-in-law's off and on for the last little while. I guess the subject of her upcoming flight to visit m...