Censoriously asserting one's moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris.

I am sorry that Mr. Cheney, and every other supporter of enhanced interrogation techniques, has to defend the practices as if they were torture. They are not.

I am not sorry the CIA went to the edge of the law in the aftermath of 9/11 to prevent further mass-casualty attacks on the U.S.

I don't read 'Vanity Fair,' whose millionaire-fashionista-liberal shtick I find repellent.

My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing.

I almost never listen to radio or watch political talk shows, especially if I happen to be on them.

I wear two hats at the 'Wall Street Journal': one as a columnist, the other as the editor responsible for our editorial pages in Asia and Europe.

'J'eet jet?' is still the standard way for a Pittsburgher to ask if you're ready for a meal, but the meal itself is no longer limited to chipped ham and an Iron City beer.

Spring and summer in Pittsburgh mean outdoor festivals.

A city built on rivers and bituminous coal, Pittsburgh in the '90s has survived the boom and bust years.

It may be no surprise that Pittsburgh has direct flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt, but consider this: many of the tourists here have come from Europe to the capital of culture in the Alleghenies.

Every scandal has its road kill: the pedestrians who stumble into the headlights of the oncoming 18-wheeler.

Many visitors to Chicago know the Loop, the shops on the Magnificent Mile, and the Museum Campus. Meanwhile, much of the bustle is in the developing neighborhoods around the Loop: North, South and West.

Cincinnati attracted its first permanent white settlers by flatboat in 1788. It took its name from the Society of Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary officers. That name came from Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer and general.

Cincinnatians support a symphony, an opera, a ballet, museums, many galleries and theater groups.

In Minneapolis, the overhead sky walks protect pedestrians from the winter cold and snow.

Humidity notwithstanding, summer seems to bring out the best of Cincinnati.

Brand names are well known to business school professors, but only one professor is a brand name herself. Call her Professor Oprah.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

One-third of all professional baseball players come from Latin America, and Sosa is following role models such as the late Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican, from whom he adopted the No. 21. Now he is a model for others.

Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive.

Fans love McGwire for his powerful physique, for his on-field hugs of his son, the part-time bat boy. He is Big Mac, or Paul Bunyan in Cardinals red with a white-ash bat instead of an ax.

If he is convicted, Dr. Kevorkian says he will die a martyr's death by going on a hunger strike.