When I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.

A panel at a beautiful annual literary festival in Brazil, held in the almost Utopian coastal town of Parati, found me matched with Fernando Gabeira. This comparison reduced my own limited charisma value to something like zero: Gabeira has excelled at every cultural activity in Brazil.

Jesus, it is true, shows no personal interest in gain, but he does speak of treasure in heaven and even of mansions as an inducement to follow him. Is it not further true that all religions down the ages have shown a keen interest in the amassment of material goods in the real world?

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.

We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.

As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the 'Onion,' I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing.