After decades of exhausting climate change denial, we’re now in the new era of disingenuous corporate environmentalism, all while companies work furiously to delay the demise of the fossil fuel industry. The “net-zero” plans these companies offer are consistently weak and ineffective, but far too often they successfully divert scrutiny away from high-emissions organizations.
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Plenty of Hollywood auteurs can claim a Freudian dimension to their work. But how many ever met the great man himself? When Oscar-winning director Billy Wilder was 19 years old, he was making a living in the rackety world of journalism in Vienna. He wrote for Die Bühne and Die Stunde, composing crosswords, squibs, columns, gags, movie reviews, theater reviews, interviews, anything and everything. In those days, his byline was Billie Wilder (he changed the spelling when he moved to Paris and decided... Читать дальше...
Once, mayors of New York City were towering national figures. Fiorello LaGuardia inspired a musical. John Lindsay, who exuded patrician charisma as he walked the streets of Harlem in the 1960s, was the first of four modern mayors to run for president. The combative Ed Koch even waded into foreign policy, ridiculing the United Nations as a “cesspool.” More recently, Rudy Giuliani, for all his right-wing toughness on crime, reveled in the title “America’s mayor” after the Twin Towers toppled. And when New York finally turned to an outsider... Читать дальше...
A few years ago, attending a tech conference that catered to an industry-friendly audience, I listened as a venture capitalist praised the upcoming possibilities for growth in the U.S. health care market. This V.C., who invested mostly in bioscience companies, was exultant at the possibility that personalized genetic mapping and other innovations would allow people to spend even more money on health care, purchasing everything from customized nutritional supplements to advanced targeted cancer treatments. Читать дальше...
