Author Archive
“I’m in bed the next day, she brings me cafe-au-lait, gives me a cigarette. My balls feel like concrete.” — Ricky Roma, Glengary, Glenross Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a surveyor reported on two houses in London: “I found the whole area of the cellars of both houses full of sewage, to the depth of […]
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Did you know that America prospered for 140 years without a Federal Reserve or a National Income Tax, both of which are barely 100 years old, though now they’re so thoroughly entrenched, as is social security, medicare and medicaid, all of which are even younger, that the overwhelming majority of American people can’t imagine life […]
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In response to my latest book, which is an explicit espousal of laissez-faire, I’ve already gotten a few emails and messages with the exact comments I anticipated — anticipated from the moment I first conceived the idea, in fact, because I’ve been fielding these very same questions for well over a decade now. My main […]
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She drove him six hours into a small mining town in eastern Nevada, near the Utah border. During the drive he told her what had happened. She listened intently but did not speak. A green-colored half moon hung low in the sky, the horizon beneath it a band of xanthic light which glowed like something […]
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The American Dream is a dream of aspiration. It is a story of striving. But it is more: It is a dream of breaking away from the pack. The American Dream is the freedom of each person, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class or creed, free to pursue her or his own life […]
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May I suggest this Earth Day you peruse Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now? Steven Pinker is by no stretch of the imagination a conservative, right-wing, Republican blah-blah-blah-blah — if, that is, you’re still into all that nonsensical partisan meaninglessness, which I am not. (Meaningless, I say, because the left and the right are two […]
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You disparage wealth who have never known poverty. You disparage cleanliness and health from a tower of health and cleanliness. Let me tell you something: Poverty which is neither sin nor vice is also neither noble nor good. Poverty is hardship. Poverty is sickness. Poverty is misery. Poverty is death. The words well, weal, and […]
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As a bartender, the latest wave of environmental misinformation and exaggeration struck particularly close to home. I’m referring, of course, to the environmental push to outlaw plastic straws in bars, with, additionally, the threat of steep fines. Have you ever heard of “noble cause corruption”? It’s when you’re so convinced that your argument is on […]
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Summer dies. The long days wane away. The heat in the sky melts like lead to liquid pools. The hills beyond are baked as white as clay. Now creep in the gentle autumn ghouls Trailing their silken shawls of a Lethe- an mist. Shadows warp, gourds enlarge. And now what is always there but not […]
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Two minute energy facts about wind that you’ve never heard:
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Here’s how you create a setting: One hour before nightfall, on a pink-and-blue evening in the third week of August, 2011 … Here’s how you create a character: a solitary man traveling on foot … Here’s how you introduce a situation: entered the small, tree-shadowed town of Clifton — an isolated village around which many […]
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“Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Esthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful.” Stories and art are important because human beings are conceptual. This among other things means that humans survive by use of their reasoning brains. Humans evolved neither the balls of bulls, nor the trunks of elephants, nor the claws […]
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The following are five bullshit notions bartenders often hear that would kill the living beast in anyone: 1. You’re not smart enough Then educate yourself. As you know, it’s never been easier. Do you remember your ABC’s? A. Always B. Be C. Cogitating Always be cogitating. The truth is, it’s always, in principle, been simple […]
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She works in a diner called the Desert Rose which sits along the northwestern edge of Colorado, near the Utah border. It’s a small and undistinguished affair, worn and weathered but always brightly lit and burning like a little beacon in that high American desert. Triangles of cherry pie sit bleeding in the pie case, […]
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Most people are boring. Not you. Why? Because you broke away from the pack a long time ago. You’re a different breed — a dog of a different color. You cultivated the black art of individuality, learned the art of personality. You became brilliant. People argue about your modesty. She does things differently, they say, […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011