The television anchorman Dan Rather turns up in rag-top native drag in Afghanistan, the surrogate of our culture with his camera crew, intrepid as Sir Richard Burton sneaking into Mecca.

For now, we assume that self-evolving robots will learn to mimic human traits, including, eventually, humor. And so, I can't wait to hear the first joke that one robot tells to another robot.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.

A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.

Religious hatreds tend to be merciless and absolute.

Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable.