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Sneakers are better for running a marathon, but shoes are better for a wedding reception. This is the better of utility. Finding something that does the job it sets out to do. And then there is the better of taste. Yellow mustard might be better than Dijon mustard. Not for me, perhaps, but for you. […]
No important movie has ever been a solo project. While we can see a director’s point of view from movie to movie, the collaborative nature of the work is evident. Actors, cinematographers and musicians all change what we see. And because of the huge amount of time and money involved, compromise (and the resistance to […]
When a system becomes complex and our knowledge peters out, we’re tempted to assert, in the words of Gilbert Ryle, that there’s a ‘ghost in the machine.’ “How does the stoplight work?” “Well, it knows that there’s a break in the traffic so it switches from green to red.” Actually, it doesn’t ‘know’ anything. Professionals […]
Of course, we make strategic errors all the time. Not enough time. Incomplete information. A fast-changing system. Sooner or later, a significant strategic error occurs. Don’t beat yourself up. Now what? The real problems occur after the error is made. Don’t follow a strategic error with an investment error, or an effort error or a […]
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Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like classic rock radio has done for years—always sounds nonsensical. How can you just end “Breathe” on that final chord and not follow it with the analog drones of “On the Run”? How can you […]
The history of medicine is, for the most part, a history of dubious cures. Some were even worse than dubious: for example, the ingestion of antimony, which we now know to be a highly toxic metal. Though it may not occupy an exalted (or, for students in chemistry class, particularly memorable) place on the periodic […]
Sneakers are better for running a marathon, but shoes are better for a wedding reception. This is the better of utility. Finding something that does the job it sets out to do. And then there is the better of taste. Yellow mustard might be better than Dijon mustard. Not for me, perhaps, but for you. […]
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the service of the mind,” or to create what Jasper Johns once called the “field where language, thought and vision act on one another.” And that’s precisely what Duchamp’s 1926 avant-garde film Anémic Cinéma delivers. You can watch a restored […]
