The most affecting e-mail I ever received was from a distinguished philosopher of my acquaintance. “All is well,” he wrote, “except that I am dying.” He was not the kind of man to write such a thing unless it were true, and he did indeed die three months later, of cancer. He was a few ...

I do not think ahead a great deal, much less am I a prophet, but I do take credit that for some considerable time I have wondered what would come next when people grew bored with the fashion for transsexualism. I plumped for incest, but Spain, blazing the way to the total liberation of man from all ...

Absurdity is nothing new in human affairs, but it seems to be increasingly predominant in Western society since the vast expansion of tertiary education. Frequently one does not know whether to sit down because of the dangers posed by helpless laughter, or to climb up to the roof in order to throw ...

“Buy now, pay later!” The advertising slogan for a credit card put me in mind of the title of the first chapter of Lewis Carroll’s satire Sylvie and Bruno: “Less bread, more taxes!” The credit card offered interest-free credit for four months provided you spent enough, followed by ...

I wouldn’t recognize stock manipulation or accountancy fraud at its most blatant, but it doesn’t surprise me when others discover it. After murder, fraud was one of the first crimes committed by mankind. Jacob indulged it with the help of his mother, and his long-term reputation did not suffer ...

The London School of Economics has decided that it will not use dreadful words such as Christmas, Easter, Lent, and Michaelmas to designate its term times and holidays. Presumably, its management now congratulates itself that it has made a step toward true diversity, equity, and inclusion, the ...

Immediately on reading of the recent mass shooting in Monterey Park that resulted in eleven deaths, or twelve if you count the perpetrator of it, I looked up the town on the internet, never having heard of it before. I was immediately directed to a site that informed me of the ten best things to do ...

Few of us who live in modern countries can see the stars at night, or more than a few at most. This is because of light pollution, the production of artificial light at night that is not strictly necessary (though what is not strictly necessary is probably itself incapable of strict ...

It is much easier, and more fun, to denounce bad behavior than to behave well. Denunciation brings its pleasures, among which is the discomfiture, or worse, of the person or persons denounced. We love to imagine the squirming of someone under the lash, or as a consequence of our words. And all this ...

My relatively scant hair having grown into a porcupine-type mess and having both a video podcast and a dinner party to attend on the same day, I went to my barber to smarten myself up a little. His is still a cash-only business. No doubt such businesses will soon disappear altogether and a few ...