Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs rising or falling grasping at kisses and toys advancing boldly sudden to take alarm retreating to the corner of arm and knee eager to be reassured taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.

One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

The committee's finding that China stole sensitive technology from U.S. weapons research labs is alarming.

Nevertheless there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins all of them imaginary.

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years the MP3-playing alarm clock I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.

Your body tells you what it needs and if you sleep past your alarm on a Saturday morning it's probably because you need the sleep.

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.