Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is...

This country has a UFO problem, after all. You might not have been aware we have one, or thought about it in these terms, but we do have a UFO problem: namely, we don’t seem to understand what UFO really means. So here it is: a UFO is an unidentified flying object. So any time...

The great cause of the new Republican intake is the reduction of the deficit but to anyone seeking evidence of sincere attempts at deficit-reduction the evidence is baffling. The Republicans showed before Christmas that they would seek to reduce the deficit but not when it came to a matter of the tax breaks that had...

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor’s coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather’s handwriting,...

Frank White, who literally wrote the book on the overview effect, is also part of the Overview Institute. And he thinks of space travel largely as Mitchell does—an evolutionary step. “If fish could think at our level of intelligence,” White said, “back before humanity existed, and some fish were starting to venture up on land,...

The British version of ‘Shit My Dad Says’ is really entertaining.

bobbybaird i’m a writer, so are you. we try to compose our thoughts and words for effect as well as sense. vain of us? a bit.

At one conference Hameroff told Dennett, publicly, “You know, Dan, maybe the reason you like this [mechanistic] idea is because you’re a zombie. And maybe the reason I see things differently is because, I’m not.”Hameroff told me he was half-joking. But Dennett took offense. “I wound up apologizing,” says Hameroff. “I guess he only likes...

I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.

We can’t tell you the origin of the experience. But we can tell you the brain does appear to be built to have these [mystical] experiences. There are examples of people reaching similar states, spontaneously. But for the most part, it takes work. Meditation and these powerful prayer experiences require dedication and practice. But people...

When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, ‘Gnome Chomsky,’ Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?

The American people are fed up…with political posturing.’ True, but also an example of political posturing.

I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They’re like a couple having a fight...

Memo to extreme partisans: If you can’t bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?

Because of racism, he can’t govern effectively’ is not a great argument for re-election.

Gov. Christie says ‘New Jersey First.’ State-based Isolationism!

Nice mix of Tory MPs saying this issue shouldn’t be used for petty political pointscoring, & Tory MPs trying to score petty political points.

Given Loughner’s obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.

Some libs took offense at my David Broder quip earlier. In my own defense, I was taught in college it’s OK to disrespect dead white males.

One upside of the heat. Kind of cool to see a cat pant.

To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?

Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it’s someone else’s witch being hunted.

The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the past 13 years, the period was not one of collapse...

Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse’s Phone.

A jacketless Murdoch resumes his quiz, brushing off the assault as ‘an overexcited autograph-hunter wanting to have his shaving foam signed.

This is how it works now with the news: the story begins with a moral, then a narrative is fashioned to support it.

Kid 1: *examining my gorgeous strawberry and blueberry pies*: Wow, Mom, your pies don’t look awful this time.Me (Ilona): …~A little later~Kid 2: *wandering into the kitchen*Kid 1: Hey, you’ve got to see these pies. *opening the stove*Kid 2: Wow. They are not ugly this time.Kid 1: I know, right?

Not reassuring when weathermen say ‘Today will be terrible but don’t worry it won’t be as terrible as tomorrow or Friday.

Genghis Miliband roars up to the despatch box like a caged donkey.

[T]he anti-vitriol vitriol is getting ugly.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is...

These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait—Texas? Wasn’t Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn’t its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that ‘we have billions in surplus’? Yes, it was, and yes, he...

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

I realise I’m behind on this but Rebekah Brooks was married to Ross Kemp of Gangs fame?! And she assaulted him? That explains so much.

It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or ‘objectify’ them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like ‘Stalinism,’ say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will...

It is the finding of neuroscience, in fact, that belief is at least in part a matter of emotion. Whatever we believe to be true lights up areas of our brain responsible for self-identification and the processing of feelings and sentiments. If we believe something, then, the object of our belief becomes an emotionally potent...

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

I got my dad a great father’s Day present. He called to say: ‘Ach. Zis present is so good I now think it vas almost vorth having children.