One of my favorite literary characters is Winnie in Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days. It's a two-act play, with only two characters. Practically all of the speaking is done by Winnie, who is described thus in the stage directions: "About fifty, well preserved, blond for preference, plump, arms and shoulders bare, low bodice, big bosom,... Read More

None of the words "Islam," "Muslim," or "Muhammed," nor any of the variant spellings of the latter two, occur in the index to George H. Nash's 1976 classic The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America. It is certainly possible that some of the conservative luminaries whose contributions Nash so meticulously describes had something to say about... Read More

I don't know how much of an airing the Jim McGreevey business got outside the East coast. McGreevey was governor of New Jersey until November 2004, when he resigned. The occasion of his resignation was his having hired a young Israeli national as his homeland security advisor. The young man had no qualifications for the... Read More

John Maynard Keynes[1] once observed that: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." The master in this master-slave relationship need not actually be an economist. It was only that Keynes was writing about economics[2] when the thought occurred to him. That... Read More

Let's start this month's column with a movie. If your PC and internet connection are happy to play a moderate-sized video, here is the movie. If not, I'll just tell you that the star of this movie is a gadget named Robomow,** made by Friendly Robotics, a firm based in Kadima, Israel, founded by two... Read More

Can Right to Life (hereinafter RTL) fairly be called a cult? This is a point on which I cannot make up my mind. Some of the common characteristics of culthood are missing — the Führerprinzip, for example. On the other hand, RTL has the following things in common with every cult in the world: To... Read More

————————— The whole thing came to mind as follows. A few months ago a colleague came into my office as I was frowning in silent thought. "What's up, John?" he inquired. "Well," I said, "I'm vexed." He stared at me. "You're what?" In pretty short order he was dragging other colleagues into my office to... Read More