Midlife Meditation

So much for the hip hooray and bally hoo. It was a cold day, a windy day, a no-amount-of-cloth-covering-fingers-will-keep-them-from-freezing day. It was Thursday, and all our walking was brisk.We parked in a garage, walked to Times Square, then up Broadway to Central Park, spent a couple of hours being alternately awed by fossil skeletons and creeped out by more modern stuffed dead critters, and in the middle of that, I took a call from my sister-in-law Intaba, who is now living an hour north of Manhattan. She was excited at getting to see us, and was hoping to see a show with us. Her idea: lottery tickets. We thought we'd take a stab at the half-price ticket booth at Times Square first, though, so after filling up on pizza, we headed over there. The line was long, and Amy volunteered to stand in it with Sarah. Sean and I walked over to the display of what shows were available and how much tickets were discounted. What followed was a half hour of three-way shuttle diplomacy, w...

Did I mention I like Star Trek ? Welcome to Sisko's Creole Kitchen, an establishment that epitomizes the economics of the 24th century, when technological innovations work hand-in-hand with fully enlightened attitudes toward work and leisure to liberate human beings from wage slavery. People are no longer locked into drudgery by the need to earn a living wage, for all essential human needs are provided by society. Money is a dim memory, as anything one wants or needs can be instantly replicated. Individuals are freed up to follow their true vocations, whether that means enlisting in Star Fleet to explore the galaxy or opening a five-star restaurant in New Orleans. This doesn't mean that anyone can just do exactly what he or she wants. Joseph Sisko, I assume, prefers serving authentic dishes made from scratch, rather than replicated to identical perfection, which means someone still has to catch the crabs for his kitchen, and someone else has to cook it. I expect there...

  Forget "E Pluribus Unum." The real motto of the United States is "There's money to be made." It's no accident we print "In God we trust" on our cash, because materialism is our true national religion.   This first struck me my sophomore year of college, when I took Econ 101. The professor told us a story of Soviet athletes (this was nine years before the Berlin Wall came down) visiting the United States, and being shocked by the sheer variety of products on grocery shelves. Granted, they came from what was, at that time, a planned economy, and they were often lucky to find one version of a product on the shelves, let alone the half dozen available at even a small market in America. But the question they asked is even more relevant today than it was then: Why do we need that many brands of ketchup? Or, if you really want to blow your mind with how many ways the same product can be packaged, take a look at the toothpaste aisle. I did just ...