"Do you like eggplant?" asked my friend. This was a serious question, requiring serious consideration. Deep-fried eggplant, undoubtedly...

Donald Trump gave us The Art of the Deal. Sun Tzu, The Art of War. And for any aging hippies out there with intact memories, Robert...

Everything is different now. Our soldiers, our hostages, our displaced citizens, our children's need to always know where the nearest...

I recently heard someone on TV talking about war mongering and hate mongering. There's lot of that going around. But are those the only...

How many confessions have you had to bear, dear readers, in this blog? Here comes another, perhaps the saddest of all: I have been...

Another confession, among the many I have made to you in this blog, dear readers. You know (so far) that I play Scrabble with myself, she...

Did you used to watch Fawlty Towers? If so, you will surely remember the episode in which Basil Fawlty, played by the inimitable John...

Double entendre intended. It's quite an experience waking up in Israel, for those of this blog's readers who are not based here. Of...

Times are tough in Israel. Let us not forget the words of Winston Churchill, who had, as you know, quite a lot to deal with during his...

A few weeks ago, after some violent rioting at a demonstration in my hometown of Toronto, the following shocking news appeared in the...

When in 1962 a young Jewish folk singer from Hibbing, Minnesota, changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, the new name...

Have you ever noticed that any version of this joke (which could include men of various ethnic groups, a rabbi and a priest, a turtle, a...

This reference will be lost on those who were not Monty Python fans. For these tragically deprived readers: Monty Python did a sketch...

Last night my husband and I were watching television, a news program that was reporting how some memes, those cute or annoying (depending...

[Gentle classical music fades in and then gradually out] Alasdair: Hello and good evening. Welcome to one of BBC 3's longest running...

I have missed you, dear readers! Consumed recently by dry academic writing and a period of personal angst, the details of which are...

I am a fiction junky, reading one or sometimes two novels a week. They have to be good novels, not plot-driven adventures with cardboard...

Following up on a comment by an enthusiastic and faithful blog reader (you know who you are, Shimshon) about this blog's recent posting...

Boring: adjective (circa 1841): causing boredom; tiresome; lacking interest. Noun: boredom. The exact origin is unclear, but it may have...

The noun wokeness now appears in the Cambridge Dictionary, where it is defined as "a state of being aware, especially of social problems...