Articles 2024
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Misplacing the Blame for Our Troubles on 'Flat, Not Tall' Spaces
The anti-sprawl technocrats crave 'density,' which they believe is more efficient and more interesting.
Los Angeles Times, February 08, 1999
If Al Gore denounced soccer moms, told us everything was better in the good old days and demanded that we let his friends redesign our lives to fit their morality, you might think he'd gone over to the religious right. You'd be wrong, however. -
Rumor Mongers
"Neutral" technocrats sign on to anti-technology smear campaigns.
Reason, February 1999
If you want to hurt an upstart product, one of the most effective techniques is to start an unfounded rumor--to play on public suspicions and force the maker to prove its innocence. You can start spreading the word, for instance, that urine got into the beer or that the soda pop makes black men sterile. You can taint your target even among people who don't quite believe the allegations. Why, after all, should they take a chance?
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The Dilbert Doctrines: An Interview with Scott Adams
Reason, February 1999
Scott Adams is one of America's leading social critics: an astute observer of the follies and pains of corporate life in the age of the knowledge worker, downsizing, PowerPoint presentations, and endless management fads. Unlike most social commentators, however, Adams isn't looking to change government policy or re-engineer capitalism to suit his tastes. He's providing criticism from within--the sort of knowing commentary that can get stupid policies dropped before they're implemented. And, of course, he makes it funny
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How Has 'The Organization Man' Aged?
The New York Times, January 17, 1999
LOS ANGELES -- William H. Whyte, who died last week, lived long enough to achieve a paradoxical fate for a social critic: the world he once criticized had become the good old days.
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In Praise of Play
Bradley Lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, January 11, 1999
At the 1996 Republican National Convention, Newt Gingrich briefly ventured off-script. Before he started his formal remarks, he pulled Olympic gold medalist Kent Steffes on stage and celebrated Steffes' sport as an example of the unpredictable, inventive culture that makes America great. -
Party Poopers
Why the Republicans deserved to lose.
Reason, January 1999
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The Two Faces of Bill Clinton
Is the personal political?
Reason, December 1998
It has been the year's great mystery: How is it that Bill Clinton is holding at about 60 percent support in public opinion polls--a lot better than he has ever done in a presidential election--while the political establishment sees him as an utter disgrace, a problem that needs to be purged from American political life?
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Alone but Not Lonely
Forbes ASAP, November 29, 1998
Ann Landers recently published a letter from a woman pregnant with an anencephalic child, which means her baby will be born with only a brain stem and will die shortly after birth. Faced with the same sad circumstances, the overwhelming majority of women would opt for an abortion. But this woman is unusual: "I am proud to say in the U.S.A., a woman has the right to choose between pregnancy and abortion," she writes. "I choose to have my baby."
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Patchwork of Old and New
Forbes ASAP, November 29, 1998
IF YOU WANT TO SEE what progress really looks like, the best place to start is an 81-year-old telescope.
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Eco-contradictions
Forbes, November 29, 1998
IN OCTOBER ECO-TERRORISTS STRUCK in Colorado. Their target wasn't a traditional bad guy: not a logging operation, an oil rig, a dam or a whaling ship. It was a ski resort.