While Apple is so clever at appealing to both sexes, the Droid, with its new “Stealth Bomber” ad, seems to be developing an abjectly male persona.

It was a fullish moon when I picked up a book called “The Lights in the Tunnel,” thinking that the title was sure to lift my spirits on All Souls Day. Perhaps I should have picked me up some Dostoyevsky.

It’s not that “The Lights in the Tunnel” isn’…

There are many ways of showing respect to those you don’t actually respect.

So it’s touching to see that Apple has not only produced a few “Get A Mac” ads to darken the hearts of those about to upgrade to Windows 7, but has also donned its Wellington …

I know that many, especially those associated with making money out of music, feel that pirates who share files should be made to walk the plank to the rhythm of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.”

However, a survey commissioned by the professional cogitators at Demos in the U.K., suggests that …

Have you ever been hurt by a lover who went back to her ex?

Have you ever experienced that constant troubling frisson, even when you were with them, that it was only a matter of time?

Well, might I offer you a little televisual solace? Jerry Seinfeld, he who walked a mile in Bill Gates’ shoes with the man himself, …

The jingle competition held recently by Microsoft must be tattooed to the tips of your tongues.

For those who might have been attending a serious yoga retreat at the time, a man called Jonathan Mann won $500 for a ditty that some described using a word that rhymes with ditty….

Perhaps you are one of those who saves your credit card information on your Xbox remote so you can buy points at the very time your mood demands them. Perhaps you also have a dog. Then this story from Fox News will be important to you.

Greg Stroke and Christine …

Miley Cyrus is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest and most important musical artists.

So when she recently decided to leave Twitter and rapped on YouTube about it, one imagined that investors in the supposedly billion-dollar company shivered uncontrollably for several days.

As did some who watched the haunting …

I am not concerned about the future, only because I am told that humans will soon be in the clutch and thrall of robots and perfect harmony will be enjoyed by all. However, I must register the initial frisson of disturbia I experienced on reading a report from the Boston Globe magazine that suggests the iPhone may be a wise toy for 3-year-olds.

No, this is not some mocking suggestion that those who use an iPhone do, indeed, have the minds of children less than 4. It is, rather, a fascinating analysis of what happens when you just hand a 3-year-old an iPhone with the initial aim of keeping the little rodent in your life quiet.

It seems the iPhone’s happy, colorful design is not only a great attraction for a little child’s imagination, but the keyboard tends to suit tinier fingers rather better than larger ones.

Indeed, there is a considerable possibility that the iPhone might just help in children’s education, something app developers have not been slow to realize. The Globe tells us that 60 percent of the apps in the education section of the iTunes store target extremely little people.

Now I know there will be those who worry that if you give a little one an iPhone they will be zapped with gamma rays and all sorts of deleterious electronic waves that will seep into their brains and be an enormous health risk.

One might heed the words of Dariusz Leszczysnki, a researcher for the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, who told a Senate subcommittee: “In my opinion the current safety standards are not sufficiently supported because of the very limited research on human volunteers, children, and on the effects of long-term exposures in humans.”

But most of the things parents give children to keep them quiet carry a certain risk to health: plastic toys that kids lick, bite, and try to swallow with the result that all sorts of paint and gunk might enter their bodies; candy that children lick, bite, and try to swallow with the result that they then put on weight; and let’s not even start with the quality of teenage babysitting in the world.

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Humans are essentially post-rationalizers.

We go off into the world and do things and then work out reasons why we’ve done them in order to create some sense of, well, order in the mess that we continually create. We claim that the reasons we have for doing as we …