Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.

There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules.

Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.

All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a double-header.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.

Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.