Briefly
Black Magic and Scientism
Magic has fascinated me since I learned that the high watermark of magic was the Renaissance. The cutting-edge Renaissance thinkers were magicians. Magic and science were intertwined, its practitioners flitting between the two practices (arts) in their attempt to understand and, ultimately, control/manipulate the world, unaware that they are
Why Gardening Matters
Hemispheres in the Garden
The left hemisphere plans, incidentally. The right hemisphere flows.
Carol Deppe draws an autobiographical distinction in The Tao of Vegetable Gardening between "Planning Carol" and "Doing Carol." PC lays out elaborate plans that DC later disregards as she gardens. I can relate . . . big-time. Deppe's
The Cell Phone is a Monkey Trap for the Left Hemisphere
The Left Hemisphere Thwarts Focus: On Art Appreciation
Attention, attention, attention.
Everyone is starved for it . . . their own, not others. People want to be able to focus again.
Madison Avenue purposefully kills it:
The legal scholar Tim Wu, in his book “The Attention Merchants,” notes, “Without express consent, most of us have passively opened ourselves up to the
The World of Wine Collecting
It's a combination of pretension, mystery, investment, viticulture, vinification, historical appreciation, and fraud.
The world of wine collecting. The world of the 1%. Scratch that. The 1/10th of one percent.
It sounds like oenophiles work with vintners to create a buzz about a new wine, one that
Pragmatism and the Saints
"Pragmatism" and "practicality" aren't the same things. When a person says, "I'm just being practical," he's probably being highly impractical.
It normally means he's just thinking rationally: with the certitude of his left hemisphere, which excludes
Sam Kriss: Drug Aficionado and Master Essayist
I don't know whether I'm impressed or appalled, and I can't tell if the writer is confessing or bragging.
But boy, Sam Kriss, a "British writer and dilettante," has written the most enjoyable essay of the year. The agnostic Kriss ("[m]
