You Should Be Nicer To Him,' A

The Beauty Of Science Hugely Outranks The Charms Of Superstition.

Here We Are Then, I Was Thinking, In A War To The Finish Between Everything I Love And Everything I Hate. Fine. We Will Win And They Will Lose. A Pity That We Let Them Pick The Time And Place Of The Challenge, But We Can And We Will Make Up For That.

Islam Makes Very Large Claims For Itself. In Its Art, There Is A Prejudice Against Representing The Human Form At All. The Prohibition On Picturing The Prophet - Who Was Only Another Male Mammal - Is Apparently Absolute. So Is The Prohibition On Pork Or Alcohol Or, In Some Muslim Societies, Music Or Dancing. Very Well Then, Let A Good Muslim Abstain Rigorously From All These. But If He Claims The Right To Make Me Abstain As Well, He Offers The Clearest Possible Warning And Proof Of An Aggressive Intent.

The Best Blended Scotch In The History Of The World - Which Was Also The Favourite Drink Of The Iraqi Baath Party, As It Still Is Of The Palestinian Authority And The Libyan Dictatorship And Large Branches Of The Saudi Arabian Royal Family - Is Johnnie Walker Black. Breakfast Of Champions, Accept No Substitute.

Very Often The Test Of One's Allegiance To A Cause Or To A People Is Precisely The Willingness To Stay The Course When Things Are Boring, To Run The Risk Of Repeating An Old Argument Just One More Time, Or Of Going One More Round With A Hostile Or (much Worse) Indifferent Audience.