General Essays

Of course the shell casings on the assassins bullets were not “trans ideology,” whatever the hell that is. From explanations I’ve seen on the web, the shooter’s cryptic messages seemed to be references to furries and video games, with a salute to an Italian song thrown in. And,

For most of my life, being an American has been a privileged position in the world. We have always had our own challenges — being one of the most violent societies on earth is nothing new — but there has always been a secure shell around even the worst circumstances, a sense

I had an interesting experience recently while creating a PowerPoint for a client. This client had delivered a speech to audiences in the past in a different language and he had me translate it into English, then sent along the deck he had used so I could update that as

I’m working on a theory that I introduced in my Stendhal wrap-up essays that I believe applies across my work. It goes something like this: Many of the most important decisions we make in life are ultimately inexplicable. They are driven by feelings, held deeply in our nervous system,

One of the interesting similarities between Montaigne, Shakespeare and Tolstoy is that all of them have flashes of romanticism — especially when speaking of youth — but then deeply unhappy descriptions of marriages, both in stories and personal reflections. Montaigne was often reticent to admit to having any romantic feelings at all.

Recently I did some work on my Stendhal project, pulled all the pieces together and wrote a front-piece connecting essay. I liked how that all turned out and mused elsewhere on this site that maybe I could go back to Stendhal and complete a book project on “On Love.” After