The Mars Problem

The end of 2025 is rapidly approaching; it's cold outside here in the American Midwest, and I find myself doing a kind of typical (for me) end-of-the-year thinking. This is the kind of thinking that is both backward-looking and forward-looking, where I reflect on the year that has

In the article Close Reading Is For Everyone, Dan Sinykin writes, So what is close reading? As my co-editor and I write in our book, “Close reading is the practice of paying attention to a passage of text to account for at least one aspect of its meaning and to

When I was young, there would be something I needed to do, and I'd say to myself, "I'll do it later." Then I would go and take a nap, or make a bagel, or watch something on TV. Time went by, and then I&