Molière on the Modern Healthcare System

There are times, when overcome by irritation at our modern medical system, which is expensive, run by insurance companies and all too often, populated by doctors who seemingly aspire to ever greater heights of corporate efficiency even as they resolutely neglect their bedside manners and care little about outcomes while ordering an array of expensiveContinue reading “Molière on the Modern Healthcare System”

Woody Allen’s Guide to Civil Disobedience and Revolution

Today is Easter Sunday. Jesus was a Jew and a rebel. So, on this great day in Jewish history, and in honor of Jewish rebellion, here is Woody Allen on civil disobedience and revolutions. In perpetrating a revolution, there are two requirements: someone or something to revolt against and someone to actually show up andContinue reading “Woody Allen’s Guide to Civil Disobedience and Revolution”

Nietzsche on the Lazy Faithful

Those who read Nietzsche often find him very funny. (Some of those who read him find him extremely unfunny too, especially when the joke is on them.)  His humor sometimes sneaks in on you in the most unexpected of places. A good example is found in the following: On the future of Christianity. – As to theContinue reading “Nietzsche on the Lazy Faithful”

The Deadliness of Humorlessness

In the climactic scenes of Umberto Eco‘s The Name of the Rose, Adso of Melk and William of Baskerville confront the old, blind, and malignant librarian Jorge, sworn, no matter the price to be paid in lives, to keeping  Aristotle‘s Poetics a perennial secret because of its subversive doctrines that not only analyze and permit laughter,Continue reading “The Deadliness of Humorlessness”