I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith forgiveness absolution extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic no matter how lapsed they are.
No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.
Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.
Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.
The banking collapse was caused more than anything by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation rather than by greed.
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.
The scientific argument advanced for intelligent design at the Dover trial those arguments collapsed scientifically and intellectually.
I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.
Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction the movement has been in a funk.
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then like any great place it collapsed and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world.
What's amazing is that I'm recognized all over the world through 'Red Dwarf.' British fans are exceptional but the American fans are something else. Some of them fly 500 miles to stand in line for three hours just to meet me then when they do they collapse. It makes you feel like a rock star!