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Lobster is a religion in my family. Every summer growing up, we would drive to the shore and sit at those campy picnic tables with the red and white plaid pattern plastic covering and order a mess of boiled lobsters. I learned at an early age how to chew the cartilage out of the legs…

Recently I have become and more and more a devoted follower of Quillette, which brands itself as liberal alternative to academic liberalism. The magazine sources writing it believes–often rightly so–to be heretical in modern academia. This often means writing that is highly critical of academia itself, but also writing that goes after sacred cows in…

There are no words for the horrific shooting that took place in Christchurch, New Zealand today. Like so many of these shootings of which just one is too many, your first thought goes to the victims and their last terrifying moments. You think about all the families and communities that have been shattered by these…

Courtesy of the University of Utah, happy 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679 82148 08651 32823 06647 09384 46095 50582 23172 53594 08128 48111 74502 84102 70193 85211 05559 64462 29489 54930 38196 44288 10975 66593 34461 28475 64823 37867 83165…

Thanks to jet lag, I’m waking up really early. So I’m going to try working out in the morning. Let’s see how long this experiment lasts.

Jan: Do you always shut down the entire office when you leave for an hour? Michael: No, no. That would not be efficient. Actually, they just don’t get very much work done when I’m not here. Jan: [Stares] Michael: That’s not true. I know how to delegate, and they do more work done when I’m…

For those of you on the left hand side of the aircraft, you have a beautiful view of downtown Manhattan. For those of you on the right hand side of the aircraft, thank you for flying United. Incidentally, this is also why I love United.

It was perhaps not ideal that we didn’t decide to do a walking tour of Lisbon until our last day, but I’m glad we did it this way. Discovering a country on your own is so much more fun than being lectured about it, even if the lecture is a comprehensive, colorful walk through centuries…

A stark contrast I’ve noticed between customer service — most notably with wait staff — in the US vs Europe. In Europe, you have to do a lot of work to get a waiter’s attention. They don’t scan the tables looking for customers to help, and they tend to not even notice the ‘hand wave’…

Today I visited the University of Coimbra, one of the oldest universities in the world. The centerpiece of the university is the campus, and the centerpiece of this campus is Biblioteca Joanina, a veritable cathedral of knowledge finished in 1750. I don’t use the word cathedral lightly. When this library was built, the school it…