Traditionally, tours were a means of promoting a record. Today, the record promotes the tour.

The fact that industries wax and wane is a reality of any economic system that wants to remain dynamic and responsive to people's changing tastes.

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.

Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility; and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong.

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.