The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.
In my column series 'The Main Thing', I often talk about how Internet technology can improve the way people communicate - both within a business and between a business and its customers and partners.
My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.
Whether people choose to have same sex relationships or relationships outside the marriage - whatever happens between two consenting adults should be purely their business, not the state's or the society's.
There is a natural partnership between State and Commerce, and the American business community to work together to educate the United States about marketing overseas.
There is a natural link between the effective running of my businesses and the effective direction of philanthropic funds. I apply business principles to my philanthropic work so that maximum value is given to the causes I support.
There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.
How do you explain the bond between man and wife? Well, for one thing, it's private. What people do in their own marriage is their own business.
In my new book, 'Birth,' my goal is to share the path I have traveled in the spiritual sphere and in the business and philanthropic sphere in order to reveal the essential connection between the two.
I see no conflict whatsoever between Christianity and good business practices. People say you can't mix business with religion. I say there's no other way.
I think there is a big difference between the music business and music. And my relationship is to music, not music business. I think the business will keep changing, but music won't. Music will be there.
Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.
Being able to speak to all my fans is really cool - you always hear people cheering for you on the court, but to have messages of support in between tournaments is really motivating.
If the choice is between doing something supercool and having no one hear it and doing something equally cool and tricking people into putting it on the radio, I don't think the second option is some big sellout.
If I was just in one band, I would have a problem with the amount of time between records because I don't want to wave one flag. I just want to be part of something cool.
The truth is, we have this idea that late night is about creativity and being cool, but that's not our job. Our job is to get as many people watching the commercials in between our show. That's the reality of it.
I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object - 'muse,' if you will, 'model,' whatever you call us. It's that silent language of communication, like being psychic with each other.
I think our biggest problem is lack of real, honest communication between black men and black women. A lot of men talk amongst men, and a lot of women speak amongst women.
If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.
If we ever start communicating with living creatures from other planets, the number one priority is, how are you going to communicate information? Even between different cultures here on Earth, you get into communication problems.
