Popular Books are Quickly Forgotten

Love your beloved classics now—because even now, few people read them, for the most part, and fewer still love them. In a century, they’ll probably be forgotten by all but a few eccentrics.   If it makes you feel any better, all fiction, even the books people love and rush to buy in droves, is subject to entropy. Consider, for example, the bestselling fiction novels of the week I was born, which was not so long ago. I’ve bolded the ones my local library currently has in stock. Hawaii,...

 Children Come First

Savage: When somebody writes me a letter and says, “X happened, I’m thinking I should leave.” My first response is always, “Do you have children?” That’s going to color my advice because I think the needs of children and the damage they may experience has to be factored in, and maybe you should suck it up for your kids. Klein: The tension that’s emerged mostly since the 1950s is between doing what’s best for your kids versus your self-actualization. The therapy industry is p...

 International Environmental Year Project

We don't have a perfect understanding of Earth's systems and processes; it may be unachievable in the face of such complexity. However, we continue to develop imperfect but useful mathematical models, and we have beer able to isolate physical variables in the laboratory. We should celebrate our capacity to learn quickly about such things; and we need to continue funding the search for this vital information. We may need to commit to an International Environmental Year project similar to the I...