CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • Casinoland

    I’m not a big fan of casinos. Often, they’re liminal spaces, like airport terminals and hospitals, places that feel inauthentic, frenetic, yet ubiquitous. There aren’t any clocks on the walls. When you’re in a casino, you’re supposed to feel as if time is suspended. As long as you’re spending or winning money, the time of day shouldn’t matter, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not morally opposed to casinos or gambling. I enjoy a friendly game of poker, for example; it’s a game in which skill is typically more important than luck, at least over the long-term. But casinos don’t…

  • Rhodes Scholars

    A few months ago, when my family and I were in South Africa, we went on a driving tour of the Cape Town area. We only had a couple of days. We all rode in the backseat of a Toyota minivan– winding around the coast, the countryside, and the vineyards. Our driver’s name was Mark, the same as my brother. Mark happened to be the son of a former, prominent leader of African National Congress. His father, Reggie, was a good friend and former colleague of Nelson Mandela. I’ve written and spoken about Mark before. He and his family were…

  • An Interesting Read

    It’s not very often that something nearly a hundred years old would be considered a ‘must read’. However, given our current political climate, our various financial, regulatory, and social issues at hand, and the relative dysfunction of either of our two parties to do much about them, it may be time to take a look at this. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination for president to incumbent Taft. His response was to form his own Progressive Party. Known as the Bullmoose party, the Progressives lambasted the corruption of the Republicans and the inability to adjust and get anything…