Peace on earth and mercy mild are still possible. On Christmas Eve, all things are possible.

Count your blessings for selfish reasons! Psychological studies show that people who are aware of their blessings and feel grateful for them live longer than non-grateful people, have fewer medical problems such as hypertension, earn more and achieve longer marriages.

A transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on an historically unprecedented scale-involving hundreds of millions of people-and may eventually be recognized as the principal cultural development of our age.

I don't think there are many larger lessons to be found in sports.

I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment.

For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.

But by showing us live coverage of every bad thing happening everywhere in the world, cable news makes life seem like it's just an endless string of disasters - when, for most people in most places today, life is fairly good.