Category Archives: Commentary

Opinion or analysis concerning whatever’s on my mind.

One-One-Twenty-Twenty

Posted on January 30, 2020 by JMN

At nine PM on New Year’s Day 2020, it’s quiet in my neighborhood. Two earsplitting reports in quick succession rip the peace: POP-POP. A second or two of silence, then one more: POP. I recall an old cartoon in which … Continue reading →

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Onboarding HNWI’s in Hacked States

Posted on January 24, 2020 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/jeff-bezos-phone-hack.html … Christopher Pierson… founded BlackCloak, a cybersecurity company for high-net-worth and high-profile individuals — executives, celebrities and billionaires. According to Mr. Pierson, few people take their digital lives as seriously as they should. “The majority of clients we onboard … Continue reading →

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Getting Itself Done

Posted on January 20, 2020 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/opinion/uk-election-labour.html … The mines of County Durham, the pottery workshops of Staffordshire and the textile factories of Lancashire… Onetime Labour strongholds stretching from West Bromwich on the outskirts of Birmingham to Blyth Valley near the Scottish border… Bolsover in the … Continue reading →

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Spilt Pith

Posted on January 20, 2020 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/opinion/walt-whitman-nytimes-2020.html Such was [Walt] Whitman’s description of [President] Lincoln in a March 1863 letter to two New York friends. The president, wrote Whitman, had a face “like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange … Continue reading →

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Art Wins, Artists Lose

Posted on January 18, 2020 by JMN

Among the biggest losers in the current system are artists themselves. With art now considered an asset class to equities and commodities, collectors are forever on the lookout for rising stars whose work can be bought at bargain prices and … Continue reading →

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“Pretty Ugly”

Posted on January 16, 2020 by JMN

This tweet contrasts so starkly with the seriousness of the actual situation with Iran,” said Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama. “We are in the midst of a roiling crisis with Iran that is largely … Continue reading →

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Intellectual Disarmament

Posted on January 15, 2020 by JMN

Ross Douthat writes that when he was an undergraduate at Harvard University “our so-called ‘core’ curriculum promised to teach us ‘approaches to knowledge’ rather than the thing itself.”  It was, and remains, an insane view for humanists to take, a … Continue reading →

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Vija Celmins

Posted on January 13, 2020 by JMN

Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ja SELL-mins) was born in 1938 in Riga, capital of Latvia. Fleeing the Soviet invasion of 1944, her family immigrated to the United States in 1948. She earned an undergraduate art degree in Indiana and an M.F.A … Continue reading →

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Therianthropes

Posted on January 12, 2020 by JMN

In December 2017, an Indonesian archaeologist discovered a cave painting on the island of Sulawesi that dates back at least 43,900 years — “the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.” In the story … Continue reading →

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“The Self-Defeating Rage of the Old”

Posted on January 11, 2020 by JMN

The young people of England, like those in the rest of Britain, … understand we need liberation from the practices of Westminster and Whitehall, not Brussels, and from the self-defeating rage of the old. David Edgerton, a British historian, writes: … Continue reading →

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