Larry Summers, former Harvard President and former Secretary of the Treasury, said that he would be stepping back from public commitments after a release of emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein showed that Summers stayed in touch with Epstein even after the pedophile was convicted. Summers said, “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.” Of course, he should have felt the same shame a week, a month, a year ago. His actions that supposedly bring the shame had already occurred. Apparently as long as the emails weren’t public, he was not ashamed.

The girl in the comic strip asks how best to deal with A.I., and Lars, the space alien, responds, “Become an oligarch.” She asks how to do that, and Lars says that this planet’s requirements are “you need to be a white male narcissist with inherited wealth and live in a country run like a banana republic.” She mutters, “Well, I got one out of three, so it’s a start.”

A coupon urged me to buy beef sticks because they contained “real ingredients.”

All my life I have heard conservatives rail against big government, but I have never been sure of the definition of “big government.” Apparently, food stamps or a subsidy to the poor is big government, but a tariff and/or owning a share in a private company, another form of governmental subsidy, is apparently not big government. Why is that?

A member of the book group denounced a novel “as written for money.” I thought the greatest writers—e.g., Shakespeare and Dickens—wrote for money. Perhaps the only authors who do not write for money are academics, and I assure you that even many of them dream of dollar signs.

“Socialism” is thrown around as an epithet a lot these days. So is “communism.” I wish that those who did so would define the terms, or does it just mean something the person does not like?

Tim Weiner in The Mission: The CIA in the 21^st Century quotes David Petraeus: “You really should have a deep understanding of a country and all aspects of it before you invade it.” I hope this is kept in mind as Trump considers actions in Venezuela. It didn’t work out very well in Iraq.

As Ian Frazier was signing my copy of his latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough, I told him I had been his admirer since Great Plains written more than thirty years ago. He thanked me, and I continued that Paradise Bronx, too, was marvelous . . . except for the ludicrous subtitle. “You didn’t like the subtitle?” I explained that I had been a Brooklyn boy for over a half century. He continued that the subtitle had not been his but the choice of his editors.

I am fascinated by those religious institutions that allow so many to feel self-righteous by making the lives of others so much worse.

A perspicacious person said: “A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr.”