The Two Things about Being a Public Intellectual

1. You’ll work your ass off trying to devise new, exciting, and sophisticated ideas.
2. You’ll be remembered for some silly piece of fluff you threw together based on a bar conversation.

Every three months or so, in a fit of narcissism, I’ll Google myself or my website to see who’s been linking to me. Here’s what I discovered the last time I did it: I’ve gotten more publicity for The Two Things than anything else I’ve done, casually or professionally. Periodically, someone new will discover The Two Things page and link it, and I’ll only know because of the unexpected deluge of emails with more submissions. Today it was MetaFilter. I’m not annoyed, just amused. Keep those submissions coming.