Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.

Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.

And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.

One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic-book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one another's worlds, preventing gridlock.

People read the papers not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. This is a form of living death. Its apotheosis is the daily poll in USA Today, which informs us what percentage of a small number of unscientifically selected people called a toll number to vote on questions that cannot possibly be responded to with a yes or no.

If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.

The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.