The vicious circle that is Apple. Here Apple Park, headquarters of the computer giant in Cupertino, California. Photograph by Daniel L. Lu.
Show of hands on how many of you have visited an Apple store recently and gotten out in oh, say, less than a half-hour?
I can’t see you, of course, but I bet not many hands are raised. Going to an Apple store is like the Luis Bunuel film “The Exterminating Angel,” in which the guests can’t leave a party. (Since this is mainly a cultural blog, I should point out that it was made into an opera.)
Read MoreThe Kentucky Derby, the Run for the Roses, still features Stephen Foster’s poignant “My Old Kentucky Home” albeit with some changes to the lyrics. Courtesy kentuckytourism.com.
My cousin-hosts served up an intense political discussion along with delicious herb-crusted lamb chops for Easter dinner. As with most American families, mine is made up of Democrats and Republicans, Trumpettes and never-Trumpers. Me, I’m a moderate-independent, although I caucus with the Dems, so to speak.
About the only thing we all agree on is that we’re lifelong Yankee fans. So what did I, they wondered, think of the New York Yankees banning Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” because she sang a song about “darkies” that Paul Robeson, the great African-American actor-singer, also sang?
Read MoreNotre-Dame de Paris as seen on May 24, 2012. Photograph by Peter K. Burian.
In a week in which we’ve “rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are (April 15, tax day, having coincided with the beginning of Holy Week, whose end in turn coincided with Passover) — we also continued our discussion of the language and literature of leadership.
Read More“The Battle of Agincourt” from Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s “Chronique de France.” (circa 1495), manuscript on parchment.
“Game of Thrones” has returned, but I gave up on it after the first season. I found it sexist and misogynistic. If you’re going to show female nudity, then you have to show male nudity, as HBO did on “Rome.”
In any event, “GOT” had nothing on the Plantagenets, the Rolls-Royce of English royal families.
Read MoreJean-Simon Berthélemy’s “Alexander Cuts the Gordian Knot” (1767), oil on canvas. École nationale superiéure des Beaux-Arts. Some say Alexander the Great saw where the knot was pinned and so released it; others, that he impatiently cut it with his sword. Either way, he fulfilled the prophecy that whoever unraveled the knot would become lord of Asia. Where’s an Alexander now to solve the United Kingdom’s tangled Brexit crisis?
Brexit Day is now Oct. 31, the European Union granting the United Kingdom yet another stay of Brexit-cution, which was supposed to have taken place March 29 and then April 12. Let’s leave aside that Oct. 31 is Halloween. I don’t think the E.U. is ironic enough to have chosen that day for its gallows humor. And indeed Nov. 1 is the day the new president of the European Commission is set to take office, so presumably the E.U. needs to have this resolved by then. But will it be resolved?
Read MoreThis lintel from the ancient city of Yaxchilán in what is now the state of Chiapas, Mexico conveys the richness and sophistication of Mayan civilization. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de México.
If you were to ask me what is the greatest crisis facing the modern world — apart from the failure of education — I would say the lack and perversion of leadership. On the one hand, we have the strongmen — Donald J. Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, Nicolas Maduro and Rodrigo Duterte. On the other, the besieged rationalists — Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel.
To Merkel, we must add a number of other female leaders who’ve emerged on the world stage — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, playing a tricky hand brilliantly through the government shutdown-showdown, her encounters with her fractious caucus, the disheartening release of the Mueller report and now the latest attack on Obamacare; New Zealand’s Jacinda Adhern, who’s been a magnificent example of grace in the face of the white supremacist attack on the Muslims of her nation; Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, a steadying hand on the till as she guides her country through the rough waters of Brexit; and now Slovakiia’s first woman president, Zuzana Čaputová, who ran on the platform “Stand Up to Evil.”
In the March 31 edition of The New York Times, Tina Brown wonders if women might not be better leaders than men.
Read MoreIn “The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of truth.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation — which has thus far only been released in a redacted version by Attorney General William P. Barr — raises more questions than it answers.
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