The day that didn’t repeat
Popular culture demands that you live every day as if it were your last and turn an ordinary Tuesday into an event. Every day really is the only one of…
A Calling at the Intersection
Good work is often found at the intersection of four things: what a person finds interesting, what he is able to do well, what people will pay for, and what…
When There Are Too Many Men, or Too Many Women
Scarcity is the best marketer. — Modern aphorism The birth of a son can change a family budget twenty years before his wedding. In China, parents of boys in regions…
A market that is not quite a market
If you have to be a thing, there is one consolation — being an expensive thing, a very expensive one. — A. N. Ostrovsky, “Without a Dowry” In the evening…
Improving on Silence
Society rewards visibility and readily mistakes silence for an absence of thought. So the wish to speak often arrives before the content of the remark does. We talk to fill…
Not Competing with Biographies
Social conversation is often arranged as a quiet auction: someone else’s trip gets topped with a longer one, a purchase with a more expensive one, a hardship with a heavier…