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Little by Little
The day Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I hid under the sheets. I seriously considered giving up my US passport. Then I got mad. I went to my first demonstration and my first march. Meanwhile, I threw money at causes. It was my first taste of activism. But as the chaos […]
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The Cop and the Showgirl
The Cop and the Showgirl sounds like a hard-boiled detective novel. Or a screwball comedy with lots of feathered costumes. But this blog post is about Meng Hongwei, the supercop, and Fan Bingbing, the starlet. They are the most famous victims to date of China’s newest form of repression: liuzhi. liuzhi Human Rights Watch calls […]
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Numbers Game
When I was a lawyer, people thought I was some sort of mathematical genius because I could read a profit and loss statement. That is to say, I could never calculate a discounted cash flow but I could act like I understood investment banker talk. Out here in the real world, however, most everyone is […]
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Home on the Range
Texas, for me, has always been a fly-over state. Aside from a long-ago business trip to Irving, I’d never set foot in the Lone Star State. I imagined Texas to be one great stretch of arid land with only tumbleweeds to break the monotony. A place only Wile E. Coyote could love. Well, folks, I […]
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Treasure
Whenever I go to Los Angeles, my Mom has a list of things for me to do. I’m not complaining. My brother’s list is much longer. This time my task is to clean out a bedroom closet. Not all of it, just a few designated eyesores. One of those items is a beauty case Grandma […]