Some years ago, in Australia, I appeared on a platform with a prominent intellectual, many times more famous than I. We were asked what it took to be good. The famous ...

Politeness is a virtue. But, as with all virtues, it becomes a vice when carried too far. It is not merely that it can be oleaginous; it can be pusillanimous, the cowardly ...

One of the more fascinating scholarly oeuvres of the 21st century is economic historian Gregory Clark’s planned trilogy of books with bad Hemingway puns for titles. In 2007 ...

Sigmund Freud’s notion of a death instinct always seemed preposterous to me, but now I am not so sure. At any rate, there seems to exist a death wish, and in the Western world ...

Two weeks ago I wrote about the folly of viewing “I’m fleeing to a red state” as a panacea rather than a postponement, and last week I dealt with the right’s disdain for ...

Many a foreign correspondent, sent to an obscure country of which he knows nothing but which has suddenly drawn the world’s attention to itself by a terrible but ...

Last week I reviewed a book published by an American academic press—it hardly matters the title or author, for in the respect to which I wish to draw your attention they are ...

It goes without saying that there should, for reasons of social justice, be full representation of all demographic groups in all human endeavors: for example, in scientific fraud. ...

A friend of mine kindly sent me the brochure of a conference of art historians that has just been held at University College, London, which claims to be one of the best academic ...

Of all the open invitations to fraud ever issued, the concept of mental health must have been among the most successful. In the past, there was the idea of mental hygiene, which ...

As I hope to be able to work till my dying day, I am perhaps not the right person to animadvert on the present disturbances in France about the raising of the retirement age from ...

Dave: “Let’s talk about Doug Mackey, the guy convicted of posting memes!” Readers: “Oh crap, I bet Dave’s gonna be contrarian and scolding, like a broken fucking ...

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 ...

From time to time, my readers email me asking for my take on issues of the day. (This has happened twice.) I feel more obliged than usual to respond, now that we know that the ...

“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, ...

Perhaps because this has seemed like the coldest winter I can recall in normally balmy Southern California, I got to wondering: Why do northerners tend to be smarter than ...