Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?

If you read the 'Daily Mail,' you would imagine that the British middle classes lead lives of unremitting misery.

Poor Harper Seven Beckham, having to live with that name all her life. It's the Boy Named Sue syndrome; at the very least it will toughen her up.

In Washington, success is just a training course for failure.

I cannot be alone in being pretty nauseated by Red Nose Day, or at least its television manifestation. Do I think that wretchedly poor children in Africa should get food and life-saving drugs? Of course. Do I want to be hectored into contributing by celebrities who earn more in a 10-minute slot than many of these families get in a year? Nope.

Disney World has acquired by now something of the air of a national shrine. American parents who don't take their children there sense obscurely that they have failed in some fundamental way, like Muslims who never made it to Mecca.

All over the U.S. there are people whose lives are being destroyed for lack of proper health care provision, and there is no sight more odious than the rich, powerful and arrogant trying to keep it that way.