I think most models fear growing old, but from a tender age I had always chosen to play someone grown up. I am slowly but surely catching up with the people that I have spent the last decade and a half trying to portray.
Over the last decade, economists seemed to share a broad consensus about economic policy, with the old splits between monetarists and Keynesians apparently being settled by events. But the Great Recession of the last two years has changed everything.
It could safely be said that Iraqis are dying at a faster clip since the American-led invasion and occupation than they did during the last decade of Saddam Hussein's rule.
The last decade has been a little rough, so I'm hoping to start this one on the right foot.
We founded Palantir in 2003-2004 because we perceived a giant gap between how the defense and intelligence community was harnessing technology to achieve its goals and what we had seen was possible in Silicon Valley over the last decade.
We have the resources and technology to produce more energy than we consume and break our long-standing dependence on foreign sources of oil. All we need is the will. In fact, there's a path to follow, one that North Dakota blazed over the last decade by building a comprehensive energy plan we called Empower North Dakota.
Over the last decade, at considerable cost to me in money and effort, confronted with ridicule and intimidation, I have brought more than a dozen lawsuits challenging the corruption in the election process in Tennessee.
The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.
For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.
Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children's bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember.
