Cricket, like all sport, offers glory to few and a lifetime of it to even fewer. For the investment it demands, it offers short careers that end when people in other professions are starting to flourish.
Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.
Sports broadcasting is very open now. In the beginning you did encounter more traditional attitudes and get comments. But I'm talking about 12 years ago.
There are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency, and scoreless sports ties are boring.
Now, I am about to be nailed as the man who disliked 'Howl's Moving Castle.' Lord, give me strength! Also, IT, please disconnect the e-mail thing.
More than anything else, we need in this society the opportunity for people to tell us what they think without being told that they're either dumb, or stupid, or uninformed.
I don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.
Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.
In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true. America has become more like Russia: a kleptocratic society.
Libel actions, when we look at them in perspective, are an ornament of a civilized society. They have replaced, after all, at least in most cases, a resort to weapons in defense of a reputation.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.
Our society, our culture - the greatness of America - goes hand-in-hand with energy, and our leaders need to wake up. We need energy, OK?
Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.
There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.
The promise of Obama's presidency, in many people's minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It's pretty clear, though, that we aren't there yet.
I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school, Grammar School in Melbourne, and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.
I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing.
Just as infinite access to free music ultimately leads to no one making a living at music anymore, free journalism just doesn't pay for itself - particularly not when a search engine is serving all the ads.
Doesn't anyone here think this sounds like a vision of hell? While we are all competing or dying, when will there be time for sex or music or books? Stop the world, I want to get off.
Steampunk, the repurposing of Victorian culture and technology for contemporary fun and profit, is so ubiquitous - in media, books, fashion, music, cosplay, and maker culture - that we tend to imagine its superficial aspects are all that define it.
