My crazy parents and those crazy Catholic nuns didn't do a good job of forcing me to keep the Ten Commandments, but they kept me forever fixated on the very idea of a taboo.

It was simultaneously refreshing and a bit shocking to see how cavalierly most Aussies toss out slurs and insults about nonwhites.

I didn't see much besides Melbourne and a quick trip down to the Twelve Apostles, but all the Aussies I encountered were good-spirited and had a fine sense of humor.

What's good and bad, sweet spirit, are in the eye of the beholder.

I'm arrogant enough to tell you that I'm smart enough to have scored higher on my Scholastic Aptitude Test than any US president whose SAT score has been made public. I even scored higher than ex-presidential candidate Al Gore, whose SAT score was so high, it was deemed as potentially off-putting to voters.

Governments throughout the English-speaking sphere are creating and then ratcheting the torque on "hate-speech" laws with frightening eagerness.

I don't think it's entirely paranoid to suspect that one day, you won't be able to so much as question the primary tenets of anti-racism without going to jail.