I imagine you turn to these pages out of weariness and disgust with much of what appears earlier in the newspaper. As in the confirmation of the banana-ness of this particular republic with such spectacular own goals such as missing files in the Department of Finance, the kind of hapless cock-up quite at odds with the notion promoted by that same Department of its own expertise...

It’s fairly safe to assume that if Kathy Switzer was running her first Boston Marathon on Monday afternoon, she would have been held back from finishing, with thousands of others.

“If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.” — Kathrine Switzer