One of my favorite observations by David Foster Wallace is about television, which he describes as essentially “watching furniture.”  As a recovered-TV-junkie (20+ years clean), I have long appreciated the sentiment; however, by contrast, the detachment involved in old-school TV viewing may be healthier for some than the two-way mirrors we use in our wired lives. Our screens of many ...

“Use the new technologies for the old purposes.” Addressing the 2013 graduating class of Brandeis University, New Republic literary editor Leon Wiesseltier offered a beautiful and timely defense of humanism, the purpose of seeking knowledge, and the arts and humanities.  His speech is reprinted at the New Republic site here under the title “Perhaps Culture is New the Counterculture.” It’s ...

A new Twitter follower is an Indian media & tech lawyer named Nandita Saikia, who offers this blog about certain kinds of exploitative pornography and free speech.  As a non-lawyer, I won’t comment on any of the case law she cites in the post, but the central theme is instructive with regard to how arguments that appear to support an ...

When my wife and I were first starting out in Seattle, we both got retail jobs, and she worked in the Eddie Bauer basement where everything was discounted due to overstocks, minor flaws, or seasonal obsolescence.  Still, she had customers who approached her daily insisting that they were entitled to some further reduction from the marked price because, “See, this ...

I’m probably about to anger a few friends, but I’ll state at the outset that of all the things I’m concerned about in this world (and there are many), the PRISM program doesn’t even get on my radar.  No, I do not think Ed Snowden is a particularly heroic whistleblower, and I am not alone in that belief, but bear ...