Over the last several years, Harvard economist Eric Maskin has been delivering a talk asking: “How Should We Elect Presidents?” Should the candidate with the most votes win? Not necessarily, according to Maskin. Maskin blames the U.S. system of plurality voting—whereby each voter casts their vote for one candidate and the candidate with the most […]
Month: May 2016
This post was originally published on May 26, 2014, but it’s still relevant today. Go ahead and celebrate today’s holiday with a grill and a swill or a trip to some big box store to buy discounted appliances. Unless you’re part of the other one percent — the tiny fraction of Americans who served in the military […]
May 23 – 27, 2016 Remember Erik’s argument that cultures have their own keywords/cyphers? Guest Sean Treacy says that the keyword for Italian culture is “bella,” beauty, to such an extent that the beautiful also defines the good. Think about that a minute. Every year since he was a kid, Erik’s gone on The Ride […]
This is the latest in a series in which science’s metaphors offer the explanations of and guidance for the most cryptic of life’s problems. A few weeks ago I was at a conference about galaxy evolution. In the titles of many talks was the puzzling phrase, “secular evolution.” Secular? as opposed to religious? so secular […]
A few months ago, in a dark club on the always-busy 6th Street in downtown Austin, there was a very odd party going on. To get in, you had to show a thin metal badge with a dancing woman etched into it. Projected onto the wall above the DJ playing house music there was a […]
I take painkillers. The kind with names that end with “done” and start with “oxy” or “hydro.” I’m not happy about it, but, like millions of others out there—actually about 100 million—I suffer from chronic pain, mine related in some way to my twisted gut and mixed-up immune system. I’ve seen all kinds of doctors, […]
On Friday, May 13, group of road bikers got together for the 44th annual Pacific Coast Century Ride. I guess that’s its name. Honestly, I have no idea what to call it. Ever since I was a kid, we just called it “The Ride.” It started back in the 70s with a guy named George Andrews, […]
For the better part of 30 years, my head was firmly stuck in English. But when I moved to Italy three years ago, I also started my first genuine effort at picking up a second language. My barely remembered high school Spanish prepared me for some things about Italian, like the gendered nouns and overwhelming […]
