Barack Obama and Sarah Palin were in a car that was being driven through Death Valley. Obama was driving, but Palin wanted to be in the driver's seat, as she thought that Obama kept taking wrong turns. The car had been going in circles for hours, as...

I got my flu shots this week. They were 15 dollars, given out by the campus health clinic. They hurt. Last year, I couldn't even feel it as the needle went in. This year I got one in both arms, and they hurt, very much. Was it amateurish nurses, or...

Is Sarah Palin the Moses, or the Howard Dean, of the Republican Party?

About 375 million years ago, whatever line of animality we belong to got out of the streams and started to try to get up on dry land. I'm reading a funny biology book called Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin (Random House 2008). Shubin says the reason...

I finished reading Charles Molesworth's Marianne Moore biography for the second time a few days ago. Toward the end, there was a remarkable statement made by T.S. Eliot. He was dining with Moore in England, and Eliot said, "Wensleydale is the Mozart...