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Allure magazine sought out Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, the women who wrote the book Perfumes: The A to Z Guide. “What are the sexiest-smelling perfumes of all time?” they asked. Turin and Sanchez said Chinatown was at the top of their list. Their explanation: “If wearing Opium is like walking around with a bullhorn […]

Last June, comedian Stephen Colbert reported that President Obama’s big TV address to Americans about the Gulf catastrophe was a failure because it went over the heads of too many people. Language experts who analyzed Obama’s speech determined that it was written at a tenth-grade level ” too professorial, scolded Colbert. I wonder what he […]

In the 18th century, the French Academy laid down rules about the differences between professional and amateur paintings. For example, it was decreed that true artists must create a “licked surface,” hiding all evidence of their brushstrokes. The illusion was more convincing that way; viewers could sink their attention fully into the image without being […]

If your home is like a museum, a staid assemblage of fine memories, I suggest you shake things up a bit. If your imagination is filled with tape loops that keep running storylines you’ve heard a thousand times before, shake things up a bit. If your daily actions are so thoroughly possessed by the anesthetizing […]

Maybe you know a person like my friend Joanna. She’s bright but terse, open-minded but not chatty. Like an inscrutable Buddha, she watches everything closely and churns her thoughts carefully. Silence is her ally. Now and then, though, when moved by an inner prompting that has nothing to do with drinking wine, she will suddenly […]

In one possible scenario I could foresee for you in the coming week, you’re sweaty and tearful, enmeshed in an extreme state that causes an internal blockage to dissolve. The sweat is purgative, the tears are cathartic, and you’re riding a wave of relief and release that clears out a backlog of emotional congestion. In […]

My favorite baseball player Tim Lincecum told San Francisco magazine: “I think you either get in the canoe with your oar and control the boat, or get into it and let the current take you. I’m kind of in between. I want to be able to enjoy the ride but don’t want to be swept […]

The United States is the planet’s major player in terms of political, economic, and military clout. China is rising fast as a competitor in those three arenas, but lags far behind in a fourth: “soft power,” or cultural influence. The rest of the world finds America’s style, entertainment, art, and ideas far more attractive than […]

As the economic recovery lags, many frustrated job-seekers have decided to stop waiting around to be saved; they’re taking matters into their own hands. As a result, entrepreneurship is thriving. I suggest you catch that spirit. In fact, I advocate a mass entrepreneurial uprising among Pisceans in the coming months. Even if you’re already employed, […]