Appetite If you could choose, would you forgo the hassles of eating forever? The arguments in its favor are compelling, but finding an answer is difficult. Searching for a solution, Geoff Badner photographs a week’s worth of food.

Rum Diary Watching Hunter Thompson watch himself on Charlie Rose, when neither Thompson is comprehensible, can be difficult to follow. Paris Review senior editor Oliver Broudy offers a memorial, remembering a party when Thompson held court.

Pascal’s Wagering Even great philosophers must eat, go to the bathroom, iron their shirts, get dumped. Like all of us, some live great lives, most suffer. But none can avoid the troubles of being human. Kevin Guilfoile recalls a past-life with Pascal, and a few unlucky bets.

A Modest British American When America is so despised around the world, it is too bad we’ve lost one of our best ambassadors. Louis Cooke (no relation) attends a memorial service for Alistair Cooke in Westminster Abbey and sees the 20th century’s greatest radio broadcaster remembered among the famous and the great.