Books

Since the invention of the printing press, which has always been an unwieldy machine beyond the practical means of most authors, you either obtained your own press – like Benjamin Franklin, for example, who proudly self-identified as a printer even after he’d gained world renown as an American Revolutionary statesman – or your work had to...

Squirrels don’t talk much but have a lot to teach us about protecting our data. Their compulsive scatter hoarding behaviors don’t seem to accomplish much because they don’t, really. Their value is in what they prevent. Just as no squirrel ever went hungry for lack of midwinter snacks, so no one who keeps media discipline need ever sit alone with...

What can the practical philosophy of the ancients teach us about how to live well in the modern world? Technological change affects how we learn and how we do things but does not change what we must learn and what we must do to meet our basic needs or those of our loved ones. Lacking modern technology, the ancients understood the world in ways...

As in walking we learn to harmonize with the law of gravity, so in living we learn to harmonize with the natural order. By this understanding of the term, one must develop a certain mastery of Taoism in order to remain alive. “What departs the Way is already doomed,” posits Lao, thus validating this understanding of Taoism. More generally, we...