A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.

After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction; a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine; a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine; a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate; a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.

The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.

Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.

This is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear. By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the United States yearly, this administration and a supine opposition are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and spying on 300 million Americans.

A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.

When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control.