Learning from the French

Moving from journalism into fiction writing, it sometimes feels as if I have gone from one dying industry straight to another. All I read about my profession is doom and gloom, and I sometimes wonder whether I’ve chosen a career…

The Triumph of Triviality

We are the people of tomorrow, we have more stuff than anybody's ever had before, and we are so stupid and self-absorbed that we can't even bring ourselves to care about our imminent destruction of the planet (voting on the…

Marxism 2007: Day Four (Sunday)

“Cuba after Castro” was a great talk, with one small problem: it wasn’t about Cuba after Castro. The speaker, Mike Gonzalez, focused most of his talk on Cuba under Castro, and spent only the last few minutes talking about Cuba…