As the Super Bowl approached and passed, it seemed that one faction of Americans was accusing Taylor Swift of practicing witchcraft on the NFL while another was slagging her for the carbon output of her private jet—reportedly about 8,300 tonnes of CO2e in 2022. And although it is fair to expect owners of private aircraft to fly responsibly, I must ...

Democracy dies in darkness according to the motto of the Washington Post, and this is, of course, just one of many phrases reciting the axiomatic theme that credible and responsibly reported information is the blood of a democratic society like the United States. If true, then why has the “information age” brought democracy itself to the brink of destruction?  There ...

By now, many people who pay attention to artists’ rights have read the David Segal New York Times story published on January 13 about the amateur folk duo Bad Dog discovering their songs on major streaming platforms, but with different titles and attributed to a different creator. In what should be a surprise to nobody, it is easy to game ...

There is a quote attributed to French revolutionary Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, which says, “There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.” The irony may be cited to describe the state of political leadership in the U.S. these days; and after my own party botched the budget/Speaker crisis so badly, I wonder whether ...

I think music is the purest artform because it is uniquely capable of provoking strong emotional responses without necessarily conveying meaning or information. Yes, one could say the same thing about abstract visual art, but I think the brain is hardwired to at least try to read meaning in visual expression and that this is not so with instrumental music. ...

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