Osler's Razor

Merry Christmas!

I have a piece in today's Waco Tribune Herald. Here is how it begins:

My parents have a beautiful old crèche that is set up every year with all of the familiar characters: The beatific Mary, slightly dazed-looking Joseph, baby Jesus, three wise men, assorted animals, and some shepherds. To my brother and I, this was the original action-figure set, and we spent hours posing the figures and arranging unorthodox new developments. We also had a parade of other characters visiting the baby Jesus: hockey players from the knob-hockey set, our sister’s Barbies, and at one point a figure of Coleman Young, the then-Mayor of Detroit. My mother seemed to view this as heresy, but to us it represented a spiritual truth: Everyone could visit the Christ child, even if you were a goalie for the Maple Leafs or an arms-akimbo waif from Malibu.

You can read the rest of it here.