As I note in my book, the most famous impressionists all suffered from serious medical problems: Monet became blind (but didn’t stop painting the bridges of Giverny). Vincent Van Gogh, drinker of kerosene, turpentine, and absinthe, probably thought the coronas he painted around stars and streetlamps were real. Edgar Degas became severely myopic, which led…

I had the pleasure of driving for a few hours in yesterday’s New England blizzard. (I was coming back from a radio interview for “On Point,” which is broadcast out of WBUR in Boston. You can listen to me here.) While driving up a white I-93, I counted more than a dozen vehicles that had…

PZ attacks religious beliefs with his usual angry panache: Religion is a bad thing. It encourages people to believe in things that are not true. It really is as simple as that; we’d be better off if people valued truth over comfortable delusions. Unlike most Americans, I don’t believe in angels, the devil or the…