A few thoughts and postulations.
What is authentic? This is the question, among others, that occupied my mind when I decided to enter the forests, prairies, valleys and waterfalls of Charleston Falls Preserve in January of 2013. I went in without any tangible idea of what I was doing or what I would discover. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, a specific desire, in fact the reason I endeavored to enter Charleston Falls, did walk through the entrance with me.
Modern social safety nets—such as public pensions, healthcare systems, and unemployment insurance—rest on a simple premise: today’s workers fund the benefits of today’s retirees and vulnerable populations. This pay-as-you-go structure has proven resilient in many countries, but it carries a built-in dependency: the system requires a steady stream of working-age taxpayers to sustain it. Without demographic renewal, the tax base erodes, the fiscal burden rises, and the viability of social welfare programs comes under strain.
Yet fertility rates across the developed world have fallen below replacement level (2.1 children per woman), creating a demographic imbalance that threatens the long-term solvency of these programs. Governments have attempted to address this through child tax credits, childcare subsidies, and parental leave, but these incentives tend to be temporary, ending once children reach adulthood. The flaw in this approach is that the public value of children—as future taxpayers—endures for decades, while the fiscal recognition of parenthood expires far too early.
This essay argues for a structural reform: a permanent, lifelong tax reduction regimen for parents, scaled by the number of children they raise to adulthood. Such a policy would directly align individual incentives with the collective need for demographic renewal, while addressing the free rider problem inherent in the current welfare state.
Few sports occupy as unique a place in the American landscape as college football. It blends tradition, pageantry, regional pride, and fierce competition into a spectacle unlike any other. At the heart of what makes college football special is the weight of the regular season. Unlike professional leagues where teams can afford multiple losses and still secure playoff spots, college football has historically demanded near-perfection. Every game matters; a single loss can upend an entire season.
Yet the sport faces a challenge in balancing this defining feature with the modern push for expanded playoff access. Fans and stakeholders recognize that the four-team playoff, while an improvement over the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), often excludes worthy contenders. Calls for expansion have grown louder—but expansion must not undermine the intensity of the regular season. The optimal solution lies in an 8-team playoff with tiered byes, a format that increases opportunity while protecting the essence of the sport.
Philosophy is often presented as timeless—its truths available to anyone willing to read carefully and think deeply. Yet in practice, many philosophical traditions only become intelligible, or at least experientially real, when a person has lived long enough to provide them with context. The same aphorism that strikes a teenager as cryptic can, decades later, feel like it describes one’s life perfectly. This suggests that philosophy is not simply a static body of knowledge but a set of interpretive frameworks that “fit” differently at different stages of human development. To borrow a psychological term, philosophy is stage-appropriate: it resonates most when the challenges it addresses align with the challenges of one’s life.
A compelling way to trace this stage-appropriateness is through a three-part progression: Transcendentalism (especially in a more immediate, experiential “Gonzo” form) for youth and early adulthood; Stoicism for the middle decades of responsibility; and Zen Buddhism for later life, when impermanence and release become central concerns. Each philosophy answers the psychological question most alive in its season: how to discover, how to endure, and how to let go.
Egyptian records from the late 13th to early 12th centuries BCE list several groups—Sherden (Shardana), Shekelesh, Lukka, Denyen, Tjeker, Peleset, Teresh, Ekwesh—under the umbrella modern scholars call the “Sea Peoples.” Modern treatments often read these names as compact, state-like ethnonyms. Yet that assumption reflects the perspective of a palace society (Egypt) more than the social realities of every group named. Sardinia’s Nuragic world, organized not as a single kingdom but as a landscape of many autonomous communities, offers a different model. If the Sherden correspond to one Nuragic confederation, it is plausible that other Egyptian names could reflect other Nuragic tribal coalitions active at the same time, alongside non-Sardinian groups from Sicily, the Aegean, and Anatolia. This essay sets out the logic, evidence, and tests of that hypothesis.
The post-World War II liberal economic order has been built on principles of openness: reducing trade barriers, promoting cross-border investment, making international travel and communication seamless, and encouraging the global flow of goods, services, and capital. This framework has generated extraordinary global prosperity, lifting billions of people out of poverty and creating unprecedented wealth, particularly for the managerial and professional classes who operate most effectively within an interconnected world.
Yet, this order has not been without its tradeoffs. Capital mobility and the relocation of production to lower-cost countries have devastated many American communities, displacing tens of millions of workers and hollowing out local economies. The resulting sense of economic abandonment has fueled the rise of populism on both the left and the right. Unless addressed, this political backlash risks dismantling the very openness that underpins the liberal order.
The path forward is not to retreat into protectionism or punitive taxation. Instead, the United States must secure the future of the liberal economic order by making itself the single most attractive and profitable place in the world to do business. By ensuring that global firms choose to invest, operate, and employ workers in America, the U.S. can simultaneously preserve the benefits of globalization while restoring opportunity to its citizens.
From the swirling steam of a dark roast to the clatter of conversation and ideas, coffeehouses have long served as more than mere vendors of caffeinated drinks—they have been incubators of democracy, centers of intellectual exchange, and engines of historical transformation. Across cultures and centuries, the coffeehouse has acted as a public square for discussion, dissent, and discovery. From the Ottoman Empire to Enlightenment Europe, and from revolutionary Paris to the cafés of Vienna, coffeehouses have repeatedly hosted the minds that moved the world.
