Alex Pareene

For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it's a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it's changing the world, like if 'This American Life' suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders. ”

The thing with 'The West Wing' is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality - these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had. ”

I don't want to be totally repetitive and doing the same thing over and over again for the rest of my life. I don't want to do that at all. ”

Many people - especially those people who earn livings by convincing editors and bookers that rich and influential strangers consider their thoughts and opinions interesting - have ideas about who should or should not run for president. ”

Most of us don't think forwarding a racist joke or speaking in an insulting 'comedic' accent is appropriate at the workplace. Unfortunately, for those raised in the toxic culture of conservatism, the sort of mentality that leads government employees to do those things is widespread. ”

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business. ”

Conservatives frequently complain of being frozen out of the culture industry, though, like all industries, the culture industry will produce or sell anything it expects to profit from. ”

For CNBC, and for Wall Street, billion-dollar fines for violations of the law are just part of the price of doing business, along with litigation costs and 'compliance.' ”

I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly. ”

Rush Holt would be a fine senator. He's an actual physicist, which is neat. He cares very strongly about global warming, which is probably the single most pressing issue of our era. ”