I have a love/hate relationship with those giant water slides, especially the ones that go straight down. The hate side is easy. They’re terrifying. At 46, I’m too old to be up there, teetering on the edge, staring down a steep drop that makes my heart race and my palms sweat. Sitting on the top of the slide, ready to plunge, I question my sanity. What am I doing here? I could be relaxing by the pool, enjoying a cold drink, instead of subjecting myself to this self-inflicted torture.
I’m writing this in response to a d’var Torah I heard at shul. The speaker said, “I love going to shul and feeling this sense of beauty and love. But I don’t think I believe in God.” I felt bad for her. Something was keeping her from believing in God that didn’t need to be there. I talked to her afterward and told her the following story.
People aren’t blank slates. While the old idea, famously critiqued by Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate, suggested we start with empty minds, ready to be filled, that’s not quite right. Pinker argues that humans are born with inherent traits, instincts, and predispositions that significantly shape our learning and behavior. So, while our experiences influence us, they don’t write on an empty slate but rather interact with our inborn capacities.
It’s tempting to want something so bad that you believe you can will it to happen. Instead of examining risks and continually examining and reducing them, projects just forge ahead. This happens at work all the time. But most interestingly, there are some things that humans want so bad, like peace, that we also think that our prayers might make this happen, even when complete peace is impossible.
Royal art, with its grand portraits and stately sculptures, usually strikes a note of seriousness and tradition. Yet, hidden in the corners of museums and palaces are playful and childish works of creativity that show a lighter side of royalty. This post delves into the world where royal decorum meets whimsical mischief.
London, April 27, 2024, 7 PM
On an average day, when I pause to ask myself where I am and what time it is, I get back the following:
New York: 40°46’30.9″N latitude, 73°59’07.4″W longitude, with a time of GMT-5.
Those coordinates make my existence seem so random, so routine. But today was different. Today, we were heading to a place that felt like the very center of standardized space and time.
London, April 27, 2024, 7 PM
At first, I thought I was stepping into a world of high culture, of high tea, which many of us think of as posh and elite. But in reality, high tea is a working-class meal, hearty and robust, eaten at the end of the workday. It turns out I was going for afternoon tea. Afternoon tea is the high culture one. It’s all about elegance and light bites—think scones and tiny sandwiches, eaten in the late afternoon.
London, April 26, 2024, 7 PM
I enjoyed Stonehenge far more than I expected. When I first glimpsed it from the highway, it didn’t strike me as anything special—just a cluster of old stones set against the vast, open landscape of Salisbury Plain. But as I walked closer, my perspective shifted dramatically. The site wasn’t just a collection of rocks; it was a portal to a deep and ancient world.
I’ve just started to appreciate the genius of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I know, I know—I’m ridiculously late to the Curb party. This show, a cornerstone of experimental comedy, has been on the air for more than two decades, and here I am, just getting into it as it’s about to end its run. But I’m still taking advantage of experiencing this finale as a true fan. While it would have been nice to have followed the show all the way from the experimental beginning, I’m not going to let that take away from my experience of the ending.
In his book The Language Hoax, John McWhorter writes about one of the longstanding myths in linguistics: Language influences and defines the way that people things. Like his other books, McWhorter writes about how focusing too much on the differences in language is an excuse for the elite to look down upon others.
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