Alain de Botton encourages a diet of the mind:
The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certaintiessomething that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of cultureand, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Or as Michael Oakeshott said to me as his face fell when I told him I was planning on a career in journalism: "Oh dear. The need to know the news every day is a nervous disorder."
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan