Columbus Avenue and One Hundred Seventh Street. An Albanian restaurant serves red snapper with pineapple-mango salsa on a thirty dollar prix fixe. White Harlem, in the notable phrase of America’s Greatest Living Philosopher, who grew up here. George Carlin, I mean, who was awarded the AGLP title by the late Robert Anton Wilson, who should know. It was Wilson whom the … [Read More]

I write this close to 48 hours before the Indianapolis Colts New England Patriots game on Sunday. And I’m going out on a limb and predict a Patriot victory. Mind you, I would give a lot to be proved wrong. There is no more unpleasant bully and cheat that Bill Belichik, the New England coach. He knows as much about sportsmanship … [Read More]

Unlike Taki, I understand the fascination with the very rich. For the first time in 2007, all of the Forbes 400 richest persons in America are not just rich, but are billionaires to boot. In the world at large, Forbes calculates that there are exactly 891 billionaires. We are talking about a staggering amount of personal wealth. A billion dollars is … [Read More]

I have never understood the fascination of hoi polloi with the very rich. The moguls ones I’ve known have not been particularly interesting or even nice, for that matter. Gianni Agnelli, the Fiat supremo who died in 2003, was an exception because of his great charm and extremely agile mind. He could fake it even with intellectuals or scientists, such was … [Read More]

Around the second of November, I would like to avoid naming here the living, or rather to be concerned with them only insofar as they themselves are concerned with men who had already departed from life. A melancholy memory is not a simple dream, and nothing deep down is more useful to those who remain than the strong tenor of those … [Read More]

Another one of those important books which I have failed to read is Professor Francis Fukuyama’s End of History, and the Last Man, published in 1992, on the heels of the full-scale implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book was an amplification of his 1989 essay, “The End of History?” which appeared in the “neoconservative” journal, National Interest, founded … [Read More]