Regular readers will know there is one mainstream writer for whom I have particular admiration, as a skilled wordsmith and a thoughtful humanist. Roger Ebert’s Journal is one of the finest opinion […]
"Mystified by the lack of indignation"
During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread […]
Coming to terms with everything
Ebert wrote about loneliness. Not romantic solitude or short-lived absence of friends but the withering emptiness of life untouched by loving companions. Ebert believes that lonely people have an affinity for the Internet although he warns it can be like, “Someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with companionship.”
Dying in increments, okay with that…
The article about Roger Ebert repeated here was first published in 2010. It came to mind when I was reading through old emails exchanged with an acquaintance who was facing a serious life challenge. None of us know how we will respond when facing the final threat to survival. Ebert was only 70 years old when he died in 2013. Despite years of serious illness, he was able to keep his life meaningful until the end.

Blair Fix at _Economics from the Top Down_ also wrote two very good papers on the converion of housing into…