Kim Jong Il, incidentally, has been made head of the party and of the army, but the office of the presidency is still “eternally” held by his adored and departed dad, who died on July 8, 1994, at 82. (The Kim is dead. Long live the Kim.) This makes North Korea the only state in the world with a dead president. What would be the right term for this? A necrocracy? A thanatocracy? A mortocracy? A mausolocracy?

Peach, which is a word used by the Cornish miners, in a generic sense, to denote all minerals of the chloritic family—and is consequently a very convenient word—seems to be essentially the mother of tin; but the experience of Cornwall goes to show that peach alone does not produce a permanent tin mine: an intermixture of quartz is necessary to give what miners call strength to the lode.

I've had many problems lately and I desperately need your help. First of all, I have been diagnosed with dentophobia. Because of that, I just can't bring myself to make an appointment even though I'm in terrible pain. I'm not sure if I'll need a root canal or just a filling. Please give me some ideas for how to overcome this phobia.

The moral legitimacy of targeted killing becomes even clearer when compared to the alternative means of fighting terror – that is, the massive invasion of the community that shelters and supports the terrorists in an attempt to catch or kill the terrorists and destory their infrastructure.