As we contemplate the scary rituals and costumes of Halloween, we cannot help but reflect that the everyday world has become so spooky it makes the night of goblins and witches seem downright safe. For example, we see the annual proliferation of rubber monster masks and skeletal getups i ...

I tore open yet another long white envelope and pulled out the contents, the predictable Still Nifty at Fifty stared at me from the gaudily coloured card with its inane cartoon face leering up at me. I opened it to discover it was from Jill, my neighbour. Sighing, I placed it alongside t ...

As Shiites and Sunnis continue to knock each other off in Iraq and rant against the West, the search for a new Muslim sect has become urgent. The revolutionary spin off, to be called Smiley Muslims, has only one religious duty: smiling. No member is encouraged to carry a gun or don a s ...

The Bush administration has finally turned in its battle against nuclear proliferation to the one Western weapon that is apparently downright omnipotent:The Almighty Dollar. Washington has begun to employ the mighty new weapon to cut off Iran and North Korea from the international financ ...

With a surprising salvo of bravado, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asked the provocative question, Does Iran have a right to exist In the startling speech, he warned Western nations, especially European ones, that they will be hurt if they continue to insist that Iran should n ...

We all know the story of the rube who gets sucked into a game of Three-Card Monte on Fifth Avenue and watches his bets disappear in the pockets of the quick-handed sharpie at the folding card table. And what do we have in the Middle East now but a variation of the same obvious suckers ga ...

General Motors, long inept at making cars with quality ratings that might persuade Americans to buy them, now finds itself too broke to install solar power. But it has made a clever and commendable accommodation to its impoverishment. It has agreed to allow a solar-power company to insta ...

After years of making its users feel insecure about viruses and worms, Microsoft has finally achieved what was until now hardly imaginable: making the companies dedicated to its own security feel insecure. It seems that in its new operating system, Vista, scheduled for release in early 2 ...

One of my favorite movies is National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. There is one particularly funny scene in which a squirrel has hitched a ride inside the Griswold house sequestered in the tree Clark has set up. The squirrel is discovered and makes a run for it, causing chaos and panic a ...

While the world goes its self-destructive way not entirely because humans differ in their beliefs about the nature of and existence or nonexistence of God we have yet another book by a contemporary philosopher, riffling through the dusty bones of ancient arguments that can never be set ...

Now, the stage was set. We had land, water, the sky, heat and light, and our first invention, a way for whatever creatures we would invent to reproduce and have a great time doing so. Now, we were ready to develop the actual creatures who would inhabit the invention. Today we were schedu ...

In a recent debate with her Republican opponent in the race for the Senate, Hillary Clinton was repeatedly challenged about her presidential ambitions and accused of inattention to her duties as a Senator from New York. Ever unruffled, she maintained that she is very much focused on her ...

The press was abuzz with the news that President Bush has dropped the dumb saying in regard to Iraq that America will stay the course. Unfortunately, almost all other comments emanating from the oval office indicate that he intends to keep the same dumb strategy. In other words, with po ...

An extensive study by the U. S. government of Mexicans hoping to enter America illegally has concluded that not a single one of them knows what a ladder is.This key finding has given impetus to funding for extensions of the border fence between America and Mexico. As President Bush noted ...

Remember Lenins quip that The capitalists would sell us the noose to hang them with Talk about the inevitability of history. Now the statement seems to apply more to the communists. When UN sanctions went into effect against North Korean, Beijing vowed to enforce them, at least, as much ...

Now, even the most nefarious politicians have clean hands. Just ask them and theyll show them to you. How is that possible Have they all suddenly been overcome by moral rectitude Not at all. While were free to tell ourselves such a fairytale, the surprising feat is due entirely to the wi ...

Really Yeah. We figure, why make the creatures think about the billions of things that will be going on to keep them alive. We want to free them up to think about their lives, do things they actually want to do, and, my favorite subject, think about and discover the given. The given W ...

President Bush continues to row upstream in Iraq, even though the current seems to pick up speed every minute. In fact, he seems to be rowing up Niagara Falls. But he just keeps on going, despite the fact the majority of Americans are standing on the venerable Niagara tour boat, The Maid ...

Love the good things in life So we do. Unfortunately, a new study shows that if you're content with voluntary starvation you can live longer. The proof is in the monkeys. One rhesus monkey was put on a calorie-restricted diet, while the other one was allowed to eat till content. You alre ...

A new medical study has provided more good news about booze. There is an ingredient in red wine that apparently really does prolong life, at least, the life of mice. How do we know In a recent study, mice that were fed all kinds of artery-clogging foods and fattened up were given huge do ...