The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

To me as long as we've known each other I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.

The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.

There's always a miasma of misinformation emerging from the higher education sector as to which are the 'best' courses to take. My advice would always be to ignore the perceived wisdom and look for the most reliable evidence on the ground.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books newspaper stories Web sites apps how-to videos this article you're reading even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.

I've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I of course used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.

I frankly don't think it's going to be a successful war on terrorism until law enforcement agencies like the FBI are willing to share with other law enforcement agencies. If they can't share information there's no way this war can be won.

The main thing I say on war is that we need to obey the law and formally declare war.

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.