Insights on Being Well-Read

What is the true point of a bookish life? Note I write “point,” not “goal.” The bookish life can have no goal: It is all means and no end. The point, I should say, is not to become immensely knowledgeable or clever, and certainly not to become learned. Montaigne, who more than five centuries ago established the modern essay, grasped the point when he wrote, “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally i...

 The Strategy of Releasing All Data

The response many organizations adopted then (and continue to pursue AF) is to provide overwhelming amounts of data to the public. This provided a two-fold defense. First, it allowed immediate deniability to any charge of withholding data. Second, the sheer volume of data available meant that almost any argument could be made or refuted with selective referencing and correlation to other publicly available information. This is a rapid, cheap response that puts the onus back on the accuser to ...