As It Stands Now, Those Of Us

Why Does An Iphone Cost Only A Couple Hundred Dollars? Because, As The Stage Performer Mike Daisey Depicted In An Arresting One-man Show Called 'the Agony And Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs,' Apple's Shiniest Products Are Made By A Shadowy Company In China Called Foxconn.

We All Want Merit To Mean Something, And We All May Be Tempted To Reduce That Meaning To Something Measurable And Concrete Like An Sat Score. The Reality, Though, Is That Who Deserves Entry Into An Institution Depends On What The Institution Exists To Do.

To Be Sure, The United States Has Profound Problems, Not Least Our Faltering Educational And Physical Infrastructure.

The Boomers Have Modeled A Set Of Bad Habits, And One Grand Gesture Is Not Going To Unwind All Those Bad Habits.

What Does Purpose Mean? It Means The Deepest Desire For Our Short Lives To Mean Something. . . . To Speak A Language Of Purpose Is To Return To First Principles And To Be Able To Answer, In Plain English, The Plain Questions Of Why? Why Should We Chip In To Help Someone Else? Why Should We Defer Gratification? Why Should We Care About The Long Term? Why Should We Trust Anyone Who Seems To Be Limiting Our Ability To Do What We Want?