Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called "self-interestedness". This was not a portrait of man "warts and all". It was all wart - except that the dominating attribute was not considered a blemish.

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.

I just got hooked on the radio, the voice of it all. It was my connection to metropolitan America, if you will. Sports, in particularly baseball then 'cause of its rich sediment of numbers, was one of the first things a young person could peg up with adults on - that is, you could know as much about Jimmy Fox as your father did.

Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

No matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting.

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.