“Solitude and Leadership.” A lecture delivered at West Point in 2009 by William Deresiewicz. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. […]

I snapped a few process photos of a frame I built over the past couple of weekends. I already had the wood cut, assembled, and sanded before I thought about documenting anything, so these are mostly the complete frame laying around to dry. Most of my time is spent assembling pixels on a screen, so […]

How Doctors Die If I had my druthers I’d go out like Clint Eastwood at the end of Gran Torino, but I’d say doctors have things pretty well figured out, too. […] they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, […]