Perhaps you’ve heard of Brandolini’s Law. It states that the amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude larger than that needed to produce it. I propose a corollary: The amount of theatrical bluster and outrage behind an opinion is inversely proportional to how informed that opinion is. And, gar!, 2017 was quiiiiite a year of clattering, spasmodic, desperately self-assured outrage, sluicing from the Internet into our living rooms and cubicles.
So, yeah, how about we make 2018 the year of nourishing, tentative, empathic curiosity? A year of egoless questions and speculative inquiry? That hints at the spirit of our cover feature, “ We Just Had to Ask”. We pulled together arts figures, activists, historians, industry visionaries, and smart, effervescently nonboring celebrities to verbally wrestle with topics such as why history is important, the relationship between artistic provocation and political activism, the idea of dignity in work, and what’s next for Las Vegas in a post-October 1 world. No agenda but insistent curiosity, no outside motive but to pose some nagging questions we (and many of you) always kinda obsessed over. I can’t think of a better way to start the new year. Can you? Don’t answer that. It’s supposed to be rhetorical and fruitfully open-ended!