All things considered—my age, for example, and my unhealthy lifestyle—I have little, physically, to complain of. My only real problem is osteoarthritis of my hands, now somewhat deformed. The great Doctor Johnson used to take an objective observer’s interest in his own illnesses, finding them curious. He even performed small physiological experiments on himself. I do not go quite this far, but I note with puzzlement that the pain in my fingers flits from one finger to the other, without any real reason for it that I can detect. At any rate, there is always one finger that pains me ...
Most people are inclined to suppose that if there were justice in the world, they would be better off. This, of course, is the merest prejudice. Hamlet was, perhaps, nearer the mark when he said, ...
Recently, I read a small masterpiece of Soviet literature (or at least a masterpiece of literature written in the Soviet Period, which is perhaps not quite the same thing). It was Sofia Petrovna by ...
Reading a newspaper headline recently—on my telephone, of course—I suddenly became aware of a terrible injustice that was about to be done to me. The headline proclaimed that ...
1. I will try to be a more humble -- or even a little bit humble -- and will encourage my fellow Indians to cease producing reams of articles with headlines like these: -- ...
I don’t want to come off as lacking empathy, even though I do indeed lack empathy. The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is reassuring. Not because he ...
A long-lived creature from Mars, who had paid the earth visits over several centuries, would be very much struck by modern man’s thirst for, or indifference to, ugliness. He, ...
Remember Charles Rothenberg? Hopefully not, as it’s a most unpleasant memory. In the early 1980s, Rothenberg was locked in a bitter custody dispute with his wife, Marie, over ...
No one, I imagine, would include a speech by Donald Trump in an anthology of succinctness or political eloquence. Whether he is too lazy to organize his thoughts, or simply ...
Whenever I hear the word equity, my heart sinks, though I won’t go as far as to say that I reach for my Browning. My irritation on hearing the word is recent, however: I don’t ...
Recently, I read a splendid book, titled Homo cretinus, by the French science journalist and writer Olivier Postel-Vinay, on the subject of human stupidity, a subject as ...
From time to time I receive, unsolicited, messages from insurance companies about “how to keep myself safe,” to use an odious modern locution. Mostly they are about the ...
We have had an outbreak of golden orioles at my house in France. There are, of course, far worse outbreaks to have, but it is a little frustrating that these beautiful birds (the ...
While reading a new study by Lukas Althoff and Hugo Reichardt, Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress After Slavery, about how it is better for African Americans today to be ...
What you deem to have been recent depends very much on your age. What is recent to an old man is prehistory to the young. To me, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe seems ...
In life, we are always dancing on the edge of a volcano. The dance may last longer than it did in times gone by, what with the great increase of life expectancy; nevertheless what ...
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