A couple of psychiatrists appeared on CNN on Sunday to discuss the president, and their exchange serves as an apt reminder of why Americans, and conservatives in particular, should distrust these so-called mental health experts. One of ...

Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. —Pope We value rights because, as the terrible old proverb says, man is a wolf to man. Knowing only too well that other people can harm us, we ...

The general method, or rather hustle, of the Confidence Man Steven Pinker is to use evidence of greater material well-being to justify the value judgment that human life has never been better. Like everyone, I am all for material ...

When I reached maturity, or at any rate stopped growing, I was of average height. Now I am below average height, the world having grown taller than I in the meantime. In the same way, I used to be averagely egocentric or ...

This last political season, a 29-year-old bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described “radical,” came “dancing across the water” to conquer the Democratic nomination and a congressional seat in Brooklyn, New York. ...

There was once a medical student of my acquaintance who consistently scored lower marks on multiple-choice examination papers than could have been expected by chance, which I suppose implied knowledge of a kind, albeit of a mirror-image ...

Like practically everyone else, I look at my phone or turn on my computer as soon as I wake to find out what has happened in the world in my temporary absence from it. You can always tell that nothing much has happened when the ...

For a number of years I have been fighting a lonely one-man (or should I say one-person?) battle against self-esteem—not my own, of course, because I have just the right amount, but as the master key to human happiness. Of the ...

Sitting in two airports last week, in Paris and Riga, it suddenly occurred to me that I had not seen a single person who was smartly, let alone elegantly, dressed (I do not exclude myself from this stricture; I have never been elegant ...

Just as there’s a tremendous difference between acting ethically and feeling the need to announce to the world that you’re an ethical person, there is also a massive distinction between being raped and feeling the need to tell the ...

For the past three months or so I have suffered from, or at least experienced, a condition called discoid eczema on the instep of the sole of my right foot. It is always satisfying for a doctor to diagnose himself: I remember once ...

Within the conventions of English drag comedy, the most familiar character is what the Monty Python troupe dubbed "€œthe pepperpot"€: a frumpy, lumpy menopausal matron, portrayed by a barely disguised male actor. (Amusingly, this ...