• Arts Ted Lasso, Nate and Coach Beard

    Ted Lasso is the Empty Boat

    Probably the most surprising hit show of the last year is Ted Lasso, a concept that seems ridiculous. A hyper-optimistic American Division 2 football coach [&hellip

  • Arts Bill Evans Trio in Sweden 1970

    Bill Evans combo in Finland, 1970

    The great (but troubled, junkie) jazz pianist Bill Evans and his combo — Eddie Gomez and Martin Morrel — played at a gorgeous house overlooking [&hellip

  • Arts

    SymmyS Awards for Best New Palindromes

    As a favor to our friends over at The Palindromist Magazine, here are the results of the SymmyS Awards for Outstanding Palindromic Achievement in 2018. [&hellip

  • Deeper

    Is Daoism Chinese?

    Underlying many of the fierce arguments about whether Westerners are appropriating Daoism  is a basic question: is Daoism Chinese? If not, it’s hard to see [&hellip

  • Cultures

    The Tao of Queen Mary

    The Netflix series “The Crown” offers a very interesting bit of applied Daoism, spread across three episodes in Season 1. It’s always tempting to twist [&hellip

  • Arts

    You Forget Yourself

    In the Broadway smash hit “Hamilton,” our hero meets his future wife Eliza Schuyler by first hitting on her sister Angelica with a very bold [&hellip

  • Politics

    Bomb-Making Refugees

    I’m not a big meme guy, in part because it’s hard for them to get into any reasonable level of nuance. Now that I made [&hellip

  • Cultures

    Scientific Blinders

    A post last year looked at the ways in which even the best scientists — Albert Einstein, for example — are prone to disregarding empirical [&hellip

Arts

Ted Lasso, Nate and Coach Beard

Ted Lasso is the Empty Boat

April 15th, 2021 | by msalt

Probably the most surprising hit show of the last year is Ted Lasso, a concept that seems ridiculous. A hyper-optimistic [&hellip


Arts

Bill Evans Trio in Sweden 1970

Bill Evans combo in Finland, 1970

December 26th, 2020 | by msalt

The great (but troubled, junkie) jazz pianist Bill Evans and his combo — Eddie Gomez and Martin Morrel — played [&hellip


Arts

Let's Be Leonard with a cow

Let’s Be Leonard!

December 9th, 2020 | by msalt

I was listening to a band, live on some upstate New York radio station, and couldn’t shake the idea that [&hellip


Deeper

Is Daoism Chinese?

March 10th, 2018 | by msalt

Underlying many of the fierce arguments about whether Westerners are appropriating Daoism  is a basic question: is Daoism Chinese? If [&hellip


Cultures

The Tao of Queen Mary

January 19th, 2018 | by msalt

The Netflix series “The Crown” offers a very interesting bit of applied Daoism, spread across three episodes in Season 1. [&hellip


Arts

You Forget Yourself

November 26th, 2017 | by msalt

In the Broadway smash hit “Hamilton,” our hero meets his future wife Eliza Schuyler by first hitting on her sister [&hellip


Politics

Bomb-Making Refugees

January 31st, 2017 | by msalt

I’m not a big meme guy, in part because it’s hard for them to get into any reasonable level of [&hellip


Cultures

Scientific Blinders

July 9th, 2016 | by msalt

A post last year looked at the ways in which even the best scientists — Albert Einstein, for example — [&hellip


Arts

Bruce Lee and the Power of Water

April 20th, 2016 | by msalt

I just ran across a classic post at Maria Popova’s always worthwhile BrainPickings that illuminates the connection between martial arts [&hellip



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