What do artists want? Fame, fame, more fame and then more of it after that. Otherwise, how to account for the hordes of eager artists willing to stand in line merely to have a shot at being on the new reality TV show (not yet named) about contemporary artists, being produced by Sarah Jessica Parker for Bravo TV? Perhaps actors longing for fame will do this sort of thing, but artists? Aren’t they supposed to be different? Aren’t they the ones who avoid the limelight in favor of hunkering down, all alone in their studios, to do their work?

A few years back, I watched an episode of “Artstar,” an earlier attempt at a reality TV show about contemporary artists. That show, which fell as flat as a blown-out tire (it was on one of those 4-digit channels that had about twelve viewers), confirmed for me my worst suspicions about artists. They’re more adept than used car salesmen at whipping up, a...

No sooner did I digest the news that 40 percent of American babies are now born out of wedlock (the fathers are now quaintly known in newspaper announcements as “fiancés”) than along comes an article by Sandra Tsing Loh in the current Atlantic revealing that she’s getting divorced. It turns out she’s unhappy with her otherwise happy marriage because of her sex life. With a hefty dose of pissed-offedness, the author excoriates the institution of marriage for failing to sustain romantic and sexual love. (Ultimately, to mix metaphors, she had to go off the ranch to get her ashes properly hauled.) Ms. Tsing Loh offers what she considers the stunning insight that traditional marriage is outdated and tells the rest of us—in considerably more words than Dorothy Parker needed to convey the same message—never to get married....

“Why so gloomy, mice?”

In this post, I’m going to go about as far outside my “area of expertise” as I can possibly go. In fact, I write with no qualifications to speak about the subject — a matter of economics — whatsoever. The only thing I bring to the table is that like most reasonably fair-minded people, I recognize a gross injustice when I see it.

Admitted econo-ignoramus that I am, I still consider the unpredicted economic meltdown (that is, save for a few prescient souls, like Paul Krugman, who saw it coming) we experienced this past year to be strong empirical evidence that economics deserves its reputation as the “dismal science.” Complicated as economics is, however, it’s not hard to grasp that Goldman Sachs is about to make a startling announcement. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Goldman will report tomorrow that they have achieved “blowout profits” (the phrase ...

Of all the blogs that fill the universe, Andrew Revkin’s New York Times Dot Earth is arguably the most important. While the rest of us fret endlessly over matters like whether or not abortion is murder, or what to do about global warming (at least most scientifically-informed people finally agree that it’s happening), or whether the burqa ought to be banned in France, or whether the painter Francis Bacon is great or not (most of these topics have been subject to my own public ruminations), Revkin calmly reports on what’s going on with our planet Earth. Probably the most disturbing news he’s delivered of late is news that hardly made the news at all: By 2050, the population of the world is expected to reach 9 billion people.

To help...

Francis Bacon (British, 1909–1992) Head VI, 1949 Oil on canvas; 36 11/16 × 30 1/8 in. (93.2 × 76.5 cm) Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © 2009 The Estate of Francis Bacon / ARS, New York / DACS, London

Broadly speaking, the Irish-born painter Francis Bacon was an expressionist, although that hardly begins to describe his often violent and always difficult paintings. The subject of a large exhibition at the Met (running through August 16), Bacon, who died in 1992, lived an anguished life. Looking at his paintings evokes pain and even fear — probably not nearly the pain and fear he himself experienced as an artist — and some people literally can’t look at them.

Years ago, for example, I was with my sister, who had always struggled with mental...

As any American school child should know, the American Revolution began on July 4, 1776. It ended up being a thoroughly bloody revolution, but not nearly as bloody as that of the French or the Russians — nor as viciously vengeful. We chucked a monarch and we changed regimes, but we didn’t kill a monarch or attempt to change the social order.

Instead, the Declaration of Independence opened up far more radical territory than mere regicide or class warfare. It began with words expressing carefully thought out ideas — ideas that would be next to impossible to put forth, or rigorously defend, were people as smart as Thomas Jefferson to try to say them today.

The Declaration of Independence begins with an appeal to natural law — i.e., law outside of, or beyond, civil law. It asserts that there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” which we Americans, in starting a revolution, ...

The Poky Little Puppy (a wonderful string of words to say out loud) begins with one of the most powerful sentences ever constructed in the English language: “Five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide world.” This pretty much sums up experience, and as a plot, it’s the basis for a lot of great literature.

Written by Janette Sebring Lowrey and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren, the book was first published by Simon and Schuster in their Little Golden Books series that came out in 1942. By 2001, The Poky Little Puppy had sold 15 million copies, and topped the best-seller list of hardcover children’s books in English. Perhaps it’s slipped since then — could be, especially with the ascendance of such brilliant writers and illustrators of children’s books as Maurice Sendak and Shel Silverstein. Yet somehow the poky little...

Get ready, human beings, to drink the brew now simmering in the kettles of neuroscience. Last night’s 60 Minutes, narrated by Leslie Stahl, reported on the work going on at a couple of neuroscience labs. In case you haven’t been paying attention, neuroscience has come a long way from playing around with twitching frog legs. Now, using computers and MRI’s, neuroscientists can precisely locate the multiple parts in the brain where thoughts are occurring and are moving toward understanding how to predict them.

At Carnegie Mellon, for example, researchers Marcel Just and Tom Mitchell conducted what Just cheerily identified as “thought identification” research. “Our brain is a biological thinking machine,” he said to a clearly worried Stahl.

In their experiments, Just and Mitchell ...

NOTE: Thanks to a reader for pointing out that I wrote “Adirondacks” instead of “Appalachian Trail.” The error has been corrected.

Ever since yesterday’s tearful confession by Governor Mark Sanford that no, actually he hadn’t run off without notice to go hiking alone on the Appalachian Trail but instead had gone to Argentina to end his affair, a panoply of experts in psychology, sex addiction, marriage counseling, and politics — on television, in the papers, and in the blogs — has been earnestly inquiring why a man who’s such a rising star in the galaxy of Republican governors, who is married to such “a lovely wife” and has “four wonderful kids,” would do such a thing.

What planet do these “experts” live on? As far as I can see, sex is barely controllable by society, no matter the strictness of the laws or customs in place. Plenty of people holding deeply held principles about ...

Photo by Flickr user Tinou Bao

Tucked into a speech to the French parliament that concentrated on the French economic mess, President Sarkozy of France said yesterday that the French are opposed to women wearing burqas (the garment worn by some Muslim women that fully covers their face and body save for a tiny space for the eyes) in France. He didn’t flinch from using strong words. The burqa is “against French values,” he said, adding that the French “cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.” He said the burqa “is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement. I want to say it solemnly: It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” Sarkozy thereby gave his backing to a multi-party initiative, by several...