Month: December 2025

On winter solstice, so they say,
You only get the shortest day
But if you look at it just right
You also get the longest night

My wife and I went pie shopping for the holidays this morning. We bought two pies, a cherry rhubarb for us, and a peach pie to give away.

After we purchased them, I turned to my wife and said “In math circles, do you know how many pies are enough?”

“No,” she asked, “how many?”

“2πr,” I replied. It’s a good thing she loves me.

As I try to make sense of the current U.S. administration, the analogy that keeps coming to mind is cancer. Cancer starts out as a small anomaly, but then can quickly grow within the body, often with fatal consequences.

The divisiveness, toxic racism and astonishing economic destructiveness of this administration parallels the effects of cancer. A once reasonably healthy body politic has been taken over by a particularly virulent and dangerous mutation.

I was particularly struck by the ugly attack on the late Rob Reiner, who was not only a brilliant and beloved filmmaker, but also, in his non-professional life, a kind, generous, and deeply engaged American citizen. This fits the pattern.

After all, one of the ways that a cancer destroys the body is to attack healthy cells.

Today is the birthday of Hector Hugh Munro, whose writerly pen name as Saki. If he were alive today, he would be 155 years old, which would be impressive.

Saki wrote my very favorite short story, The Open Window. When I think to myself “What is a perfect short story?” that is the one I always think of.

But why take my word for it? You can read it for yourself here. If you’ve never read it, you are in for a treat.

Yes, what the president said after the death of Rob Reiner was totally reprehensible. Yes, it defied all notions of human decency. Yes it was an ugly act of pure, disgusting and malignant cruelty.

But there is a silver lining. Maybe this will do what all those other things may not have — the idiot ballroom, the punishing new taxes on Americans in the form of tariffs (good luck buying a house these days), the denial of affordable healthcare to millions of hard working American families.

You can hide a lot of snake oil behind a torch of tribal cohesion, but there are limits. The president is essentially saying here that he is a monster, and that he is openly proud of that. He is also implicitly asking his followers to be fellow monsters.

People will accept all sorts of cruelty and economic pain from their dear leader, if it lets them hold on to their sense of tribal identity. But many of those same people will balk at being asked to give up their very humanity.

If you ask people to give up their belief that they themselves are decent human beings, you just might lose a few million votes.

I went to the NYU ITP winter show, and as usual it was wonderful. There were dozens of fascinating interactive multimedia projects of all kinds, created by art students learning to flex their inner engineer.

In one project, I was asked to touch a crystal ball. When I did so, a magical creature appeared, floating inside the ball, and started to speak to me.

The creature said that we had a mystical connection, and that it would leave a gift for me. In the end, a small dish next to the crystal ball lit up, and the students running the project told me that the creature had given me a magical edible spell.

It was actually a small sweetened piece of gelatin, but I wanted to stay in the moment, so I picked it up and ate it. It was yummy.

Afterward the students asked me what I thought. I said I liked the work, but I couldn’t resist adding that the last time someone gave me a magical edible spell, I couldn’t remember anything for the next three days.

Now that Rob Reiner is gone, I realize that of all film directors, he was the one whose work spoke to me most personally. From This is Spinal Tap to Stand By Me to The Princess Bride to When Harry Met Sally and beyond, his films mapped out the different emotional regions of my life.

The films Rob Reiner directed inevitably got at the great contradiction in human existence: We are all ornery cusses, bent on self sabotage in ways that we do not even realize. Yet we are also beings of grace, and that grace comes out when we realize how much we need each other, and when we show up for one another.

The man himself may be gone, his life tragically cut short, but his work will live on forever. I suspect that long after most of today’s films are forgotten, future generations will be rewatching the extraordinary and beautifully true windows that he has given us into the human condition.

The president wants a new one dollar coin
That features himself on its shiny new face
Most folks do not really like that at all
In fact they are finding it quite hard to take

I suspect many people will soon want to join
In finding that coin an appropriate place
In some metro station or old shopping mall
Deposited next to a urinal cake

Today Dick Van Dyke turns 100. I know that I join many others in wishing a very happy birthday to a man who has brought so much joy to so many.

I hope he will still be around for another hundred years, so that we can all wish him a happy 200th birthday.

There is a department in the NYU Engineering School that teaches engineers how to be artists. There is another department at NYU in the School of the Arts that teaches artists how to be engineers.

This week, both of those programs are having their end of semester shows. Today I saw one of them, and over the weekend I plan to see the other.

As I was taking in the various projects today, I turned to a colleague and said “There is nothing more powerful than an artist and an engineer living within the same mind.” My colleague happily agreed.