Lael Ewy

Wealth is a social relationship.

For as much as we obsess over the subject, you'd think we'd know this by now.

The power of hype is its ability to radically lower our expectations.

I remember vividly the 1980s TV show That's Incredible! featuring a yogi so flexible he was able to fold himself into a tiny Plexiglas box.

Aside from being the name of a long-forgotten New Wave band, scandal has become the primary means for the party out of power to stay relevant on the political scene.

Even if we can agree that jargon is absolutely necessary, we still can't help but be annoyed by it.

Every profession has jargon: specialties and sub-specialties are shot-through with special terms like “endoplasmic reticulum” or “moment of inertia” particular to them.

The recent history of the word “entitlement” shows how a word’s connotation can take over its existence and taint everything it touches.

As opposed to its denotation, or dictionary definition, a word’s connotation is about the associations we have with a word. In the case of the word entitlement, it’s almost all negative.

The phrase “sense of entitlement” is at fault for this negative connotation.

The most powerful lies aren’t the day-to-day, so-called white lies--that we’re ”fine” or that we genuinely care if complete strangers “have a good one.” These are, in fact, sometimes important parts of being polite.