The Language Gets Taken Away
Of all of important news that took place on November 5th, the event I had the strongest reaction to was when I learned that the author Michael Crichton had died. Of all the worst possible moments for a thoughtful, skeptical, and original mind to fall silent, this was it. For myself, I think of his speech on complexity as a delicious antidote to the inanities at work in current dominant thinking. It's like suffering a punch to the gut.

I remember seeing Crichton interviewed (I think it was by Charlie Rose) where he was asked what new project he was working on. Crichton replied that he kept returning to examining the question why humans fell sway to totalitarianisms benign and malign. This was a few years back and every few months or so I made it a point to check back and see if Crichton had developed something (speeches, essays, other works) based upon this line of thought. Sadly, nothing has yet emerged and given his untimely death may never.

Godspeed.