No artist became a Renaissance master through a single piece of work, though now, half a millennium later, that may be how most of us identify them. Leonardo? Painter of the Mona Lisa. Michelangelo? Painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (or, perhaps, the sculptor of the most famous David, depending on your medium of choice). […]

Education is distinct from learning. Organized education is a form of indoctrination and certification. Sometimes it leads to learning, but not always. You can win at education by figuring out what’s on the test (or what the boss wants) and parroting it back. In fact, that’s the easiest way to do so. Learning is an […]

In Toronto, 7,000 singers participated in Choir Choir Choir’s tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, all taking part in a giant sing-along of “Paranoid.”  The first single on Black Sabbath’s second album (1970), “Paranoid” reached #4 in the UK market and put Sabbath on the map. The song also became an early heavy metal classic. Watch Sabbath […]

AI and LLMs pose a particularly visceral threat to the typing class. Writers, editors, poets, freelancers, marketing copywriters and others are voicing reasonable (and unreasonable) objections to the pace and impact of tools like Claude, Kimi and ChatGPT. I think we have two choices, particularly poignant on US Labor Day… The first is to walk […]

As the founding myth has it, the city of Rome was established by a man named Romulus, one of two orphaned twin brothers raised by a she-wolf on the banks of the Tiber river. The legend of Romulus and Remus, which involves the former’s fratricidal slaying of the latter, lends itself to striking imagery, though […]