How impoverished is a political system when an lowly author is an enemy that demands as much attention as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did in the days of the Soviet Union. Who is the Chinese author who will make an impact of this size? Read the obit for yourself if the name doesn’t ring a bell.

Did you read that Canadian psychologists, the Gold Brothers, are claiming that they have identified a new delusion — “patients who claim they are subjects of their own reality TV shows.”

This delusion has always been a key strategy for staying sane. What am I going do now?

I am stunned by the sheer number of reality shows. I think these shows are just dumb.

Who actually watches all these shows? Who cares about the alliances? Who cares about the lurid revelations? Who cares about the he said, she said nature of it? Who cares about these twisted competitions?