El aburrimiento ha sido motor de grandes desmanes, pero también ha dado origen a enormes y proverbiales obras de arte. Es el caso de las Memorias de Casanova o de sus relatos de evasión cercanos, si no a la ciencia ficción, sí a la literatura fantástica, que sirvieron muy probablemente a Julio Verne para inspirar algunas de sus historias.
Success came relatively late to James Gandolfini—if not by the standards of scholars, judges, and surgeons, then at least by the standards of actors. At the age of thirty-seven, overweight, sad-eyed, and modestly credited in motion pictures, he auditioned for the role of Tony Soprano fully expecting to fail: “I thought that they would hire some good-looking guy, not George Clooney, but some Italian George Clooney, and that would be that,” he once said. Gandolfini premièred in the lead role of “The Sopranos” in January, 1999, and, eighty-six episodes later, finished in June, 2007, in a haze of ambiguity. The screen went black and we were not sure if Tony was still eating with his family or fatally perforated by a hit man’s bullets.
The economist Albert O. Hirschman, who died last December, loved paradoxes like this. He was a “planner,” the kind of economist who conceives of grand infrastructure projects and bold schemes. But his eye was drawn to the many ways in which plans did not turn out the way they were supposed to—to unintended consequences and perverse outcomes and the puzzling fact that the shortest line between two points is often a dead end.
The 60-year-old political philosopher on the reading, growing up in a Jewish family and the moral limits of markets.
Como tantos hijos de padres demasiado autodestructivos y complicados, Frances Scott Fitzgerald construyó una invisible red de seguridad entre su famoso progenitor y ella. No era falta de amor, muy al contrario, era simple instinto de supervivencia. La hija de uno de los escritores más grandes y malogrados de la historia de la literatura pecó de frialdad como única tabla de salvación frente a los tormentos de su padre.
Many economists are advocating for regulation that would make banking "boring" and uncompetitive once again. After a crisis, it is not uncommon to hear calls to limit competition. During the Great Depression, the head of the United States National Recovery Administration argued that employers were being forced to lay off workers as a result of "the murderous doctrine of savage and wolfish competition, [of] dog-eat-dog and devil take the hindmost." He appealed for a more collusive business environment, with the profits made from consumers to be shared between employers and workers.
Hay una cosa segura en Egipto: el islam radical se ha desacreditado a sí mismo; ha demostrado su incapacidad tanto para empezar a construir un Estado como para impulsar un inicio de desarrollo económico y social. Pase lo que pase, los Hermanos Musulmanes habrán sido los verdaderos sepultureros del proyecto de un islamismo moderado, de la idea de una alternancia islamista que no se convertiría en una forma más de despotismo.
