We fight wars from progressively great heights and distances, the blessings of technology steadily removing the personal human element from what was historically an extremely personal experience.

From the moment America went full-on industrial, it seems like it's been a steady path towards people never having to be physically present in order to satisfy their needs.

The flaw in, say, austerity, is that its success is predicated on the relative exactitude of math rather than the shifting, liquid imperfection of peoples lives.

Meaning and value depend on human mind space and the commitment of time and energy by very smart people to a creative enterprise. And the time, energy, and brain power of smart, creative people are not abundant. These are the things that are scare, and in some sense they become scarcer as the demand for these talents increases in proportion to the amount of abundant computing power available.

The guard rails on a highway may restrict some folks from driving the way they want, but those rules mostly end up saving the lives of those other drivers who understand that living in a society means behaving in a commonly beneficial way.

What's hard, it seems, is living up to the words spoken by Jesus Christ, who preached naught but love and mercy and justice and humility.

The spectacle of insensitivity that is the gun lobby and its outspoken, out-of-their-mind apparatchiks, is the apotheosis of what the Republican Party has allowed itself to become.