Near Enemies
Emotions in disguise
You may have had the pleasure of reading the novels of Louise Penny. Her mysteries provide great opportunities to be entranced, not only by the solving of a convoluted murder but by powerful insights into what makes us tick, some of us more exotically than others.
She has a repertory...
Conversations over Computations
I recently had the pleasure of finishing Robert Harris’s Pompeii, a terrific novel set in 79 AD. The plot covers engineering, physics, politics, corruption, love and redemption. In the final pages, Pliny ―an historical figure and famous observer of natural history―is engulfed by the pyrostatic surge from Vesuvius. A rigorously logical scientist, he’s perplexed...
Goal Tending
I once asked him [William Raspberry] how he worked. Did he have some kind of system? Choose his topics in advance? Stockpile “evergreen” columns, unrelated to the day’s news, for mornings when inspiration missed its scheduled appointment?
Not really, he replied. He just came into the office, thought for a while and...
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