Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is a case of bad men doing wrong things for wicked reasons. This is the full-sized or standard purebred evil and is easily recognized even by moral neophytes. Other malignities-drugs in America, famine in Africa and everything in the Middle East-are more complex. When combating those evils people sometimes have trouble deciding whom to shoot.

Humans have trouble with economics, as you may have noticed, and not just because economic circumstances sometimes cause them to starve. Humans seem to have an innate inability to pay attention to economic principles.

When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.

Imagine having journalists in your own home and not even covering the furniture with plastic sheets first.

Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.