Assistant Village Idiot

M Scott Peck tells an anecdote at the beginning of People Of The Lie , in which a young man, already depressed after the suicide of his olde...

Interesting news in this month's Scientific American. Smarter childrens' brains continue developing longer. Makes sense. Related ...

Wacky Hermit over at Organic Baby Farm comments on students' lack of logic in their attempts to weasel better grades out of their profe...

We have contempt for manipulators. We sometimes have contempt for the manipulated as well, if we believe they are of the age and ability of...

Compare what is said about the two demonstrations . Same newspaper. I especially liked the part about "America's most tolerant a...

In the mental health biz, a guy who walks in wearing a BIG cross sends up red flags. Judgement is reserved, because some Christian groups e...

"Rhinoceros" is not Eugene Ionesco's best work, but it is his most-performed. Ionesco himself notes wryly: "When Rhinoce...

The expert in any field is the one who knows when you can force something, and when you absolutely should not force it. This is true in the...

I sent my uncle a blog article, and he wrote back rather dismissively why I would wish to waste my time reading something from the “Mudville...

Jeff Greenfield, CNN Senior Analyst, was on "Imus In The Morning" today. He started off his commentary about the Bush press confe...

I was taught in college that the two dominant factors in whether children read well are their basic intelligence and whether they were read ...

Last in a series about British lefties. Parodists often pride themselves on skewering both parties of a controversy. When the RSC pokes fun...

In view of this link at Ray Robison, which lists discoveries from the recently-released documents from Afghanistan and Iraq, shouldn't ...

I love saying that word, BTW: preshn’t . Even better than neshn’t . I got lunch in the hospital cafeteria at 12:30 and went out to the car....

Polls capture in either-or fashion attitudes that are more complex and mixed. Sometimes this is reasonable. In the run-up to an election, ...

My brain tells time automatically. On weekdays, I hit the snooze alarm twice before arising. I find I often turn over to check the time 10-...

Ooh, those wicked wadicals…I’m gonna get my wadical ewadicator. The organized wings of liberal causes in the UK are fashioned much as they a...

I was going to do the wombats first, but Lee Harris's article at TCSDaily moved McDonald's into the next slot. What is it about McD...

I suspect that many of my readers are already regular visitors over at Tigerhawk. But for those of you who missed it, he quotes at length f...

First in a series, in which I will eventually work in wombats, the bathrooms in McDonald's and the Reduced Shakespeare Company in London...