There is more suspense, more dramatic torque, in one page of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne's heart-racked ruminations onthe Christian consciencethaninall Demi Moore's woodland gallops and horizontal barn dancing.

Children, viewed from one angle, are philosophy in motion.

Still, there remains so much to relish and remember.

We are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

There is more suspense, more dramatic torque, in one page of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne's heart-racked ruminations onthe Christian consciencethaninall Demi Moore's woodland gallops and horizontal barn dancing.

That's the trouble with cookbooks. Like sex education and nuclear physics, they are founded on an illusion. They bespeak order, but they end in tears.

The obvious precedent for Beijing 2008 was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936. Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling fairy lights.