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I quit smoking around 10 years after I quit drinking, but I miss smoking much more, and it was far harder to give up. Especially since, right after my last cigarette, I met my ...
Imagine for a moment that you are an intelligent and self-sufficient Martian living in a plush, temperature-controlled trailer home somewhere amid the vast frozen plains of that ...
We all, I suppose, live in a tiny world of our own construction, whose size and character depends upon what interests us. I realized the other day just how peculiar my own little ...
"Are you ready for life changes?" the advertisement that came through the Internet asked me. In general, the answer is "No, I am not ready." I don"t like ...
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine": so uttered a distraught and heartbroken Humphrey Bogart in the iconic Casablanca. It's one ...
Richard Dawkins must be one execrable speck of a man. The outspoken atheist never tires of picking on the pious, slamming them as ignorant fools beholden to anachronistic beliefs. ...
I believe modern society would be far saner and healthier if it worshiped Groucho Marx rather than Karl Marx, but as with most things, I find myself in a small and persecuted ...
I don"t believe in racism, sexism, or homophobia. There, I said it. While all three are prevalent all over the world, I don"t think they exist here in the West. Of course, ...
Predictably, responses to veteran New York Times genetics reporter Nicholas Wade's new book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History are already starting to break ...
The world is too much with us, late and soon. Before long, it can begin to seem reasonable. I have my doubts. The usual always seems reasonable. For example, existence seems ...
A "selfie," when posted by an even remotely attractive girl, is a bit like telemarketing. Everyone claims to hate it, and conventional wisdom deems it to be incredibly ...
There is no magic in the new Cosmos"no angels or demons, no dragons in Eden, just cold dust and burning gas viewed through rose-colored glasses. No creator gods dominate the ...
Last week, some rich guy at a party in Vienna may have grabbed Kim Kardashian’s ass and someone may have approached her wearing blackface. So? She got $500,000 to be the ...
Why should the dying have all the best deaths? Fatal illness is not the only form of terrible human suffering: on the contrary, the briefest of reflection should be enough to ...
Ridiculing “Bronies”"those fanboys who are obsessed with the TV show My Little Pony"is a forgivable offense. Sure, these are seemingly heterosexual males who ...
As cultures ancient and modern continue their clash along the bleeding arc from Timbuktu to Afghanistan, America's policy mandarins are searching for a way out of a dilemma that ...