As you well know, I love TED Talks. I appreciate how they introduce me to new ideas and persons, and I value how they inspire me to think differently and to aspire to change…my ideas, my world, myself. All of this helps explain why I was so intrigued by this searing critique of TED Talks in a, well, TED Talk given by Benjamin Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. The core of his many concerns about TED Talks is their profound over-simplication of complex problems and potential solutions to those problems. He’s not against popularization, per se, but rather creating a false sense of...

I love New Year’s resolutions. They have this way of making you feel like anything is possible. Part of it is the wholly arbitrary and yet incredibly powerful event of the start of a new year itself. Even though we could conceivably start a new year on any day (February 1…or 28th, for that matter), once you choose to count from a certain place, it gives the impression of a new start. January 1st, of course, flows with absolutely no disconnect from December 31, but that’s beside the point. What matters is that we’ve decided to count 1/1 not simply as a continuation of 12/31 but as something new. The other delicious part of New...

It has been an unusually — and delightfully! — busy week-before-Christmas at the Lose household. And I know exactly why that is — because for the first time in fourteen years we are surrounded by family! Which meant time with my parents over my birthday and a trip to Longwood Gardens and then a trip north to see a niece participate in the New Jersey Ballet’s performance of the Nutcracker. What fun, all the way around! This has meant that I’ve missed a couple of posts of late, and yet it seems to me that a little more time to enjoy friends, family, and the holiday is a good trade. And so I’m going to leave...

When I think of crossword puzzles, I think almost immediately of two people. The first is my mother, who has delighted in doing crossword puzzles for as long as I can remember. (Which always came in handy when I was stumped for a Christmas gift for her. ) Whether sitting in the living room of our home or on the screened-in porch at the family cottage by Otsego Lake, my mom regularly has a book of crossword puzzles in hand. The second person I think of is my uncle, Franklin Fry, who worked late into the night, slept in each morning, and awoke to do the New York Times crossword…in pen. I suspect many of us know folks who loved the...