Goddamnit, I miss Umberto Eco.

This latter-day collection of lectures and essays may not be Eco at his absolute best, partly because it's a mixed bag of subjects, not all dealing with subjects he's an expert in, but all the same he's so very intelligent, funny and ... well, decent about it.

Elie Wiesel reminded us, a couple of weeks ago, that those who imagined they could do what they liked were not those who believed God was dead, but those who thought they themselves were God (a common failing among dictators, great and small).

Whether the topic be the tragic need of nations to invent an outer or inner enemy against whom to define themselves, taking a bite out of the ass of those who decry "relativism" without knowing what it means, Victor Hugo's faiblesse for going WAY over the top ("a single cliché is kitsch, shamelessly letting fly a hundred clichés is an epic"), the the way 24/7 media creates silence by noise ("To avoid talking about deviant behaviour, talk a great deal about other things") or why Utopia is always an island. And the glorious satire "Living by Proverbs", where he picks apart populism by suggesting a utopia ruled by Common Sense(TM) in the form of proverbs and laughs all the way to certain doom.