Milt's File is taking a holiday break from this location. However, new updates are available at the WGN Radio website.

Tonight on Extension 720: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are known to Christians as the first five books of the Old Testament and to Jews as the Torah—the five books of Moses. Tonight, we will examine these scriptures in a new light with ROBERT ALTER, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley and author of a new translation and commentary of the Torah. This new work, The Five Books of Moses, highlights not only the true meaning of the text but also its beauty and poetry.

More information on this and other programs is available at our monthly program guide. You can listen to the show from 9 to 11 p.m. central time here.

Milt's File will return tomorrow.

A recorded edition of Extension 720 will air tonight after the 8:00 Northwestern wildcats game. More information on programs is available at our monthly program guide.

AS KERIK FALLS CAN GIULIANI BE FAR BEHIND? Apparently not, acdcording to this inside-dope article that has just appeared in the New York Observer.

WHAT DOES HITCHENS THINK OF POWELL'S TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE? Perhaps not quite all the world is asking that question--but we were interested, having formed favorable impressions of both on the occasions that they appeared on Extension 720. The answer is fulsomely provided in this essay by the former about the latter and just published in Foreign Policy magazine.

CALLING SAM HUNTINGTON...Could Fareed Zakaria be right when he argues, in this column from Newsweek, that Islamic militancy is losing out to "secular" political parties? If so--and we need much more convincing--it does not follow that the terrorist threat will diminish. To the contrary, it may grow still more desperately homicidal.

WHAT'S KILLING ALL THE RUSSIANS...and what will become of them? Or, rather, what will their nation become as all the demographic trends point toward decline? Nicholas Eberstadt's article in the current issue of The Public Interest raises and answers these and related questions in a way that would motivate any self-protecting Kremlin bureaucrat to shift quickly into the private sector.

ARE MIND AND BRAIN THE SAME THING? Or do non-physicalist theories of mentality now require serious reconsideration? This brief note from Philosophy Now does nicely reopen the issue.

WHERE IS MODERN SCIENCE GOING? The answer, if there is one, is probably somehow coordinate with the end-of-year awards handed out by Scientific American. Here's their group of articles that names names and justifies kudos.

THE NEXT INFORMATION REVOLUTION...is heralded by the new announcement from Google. When the great academic libraries are fully accessible on the internet, then research, scholarship, student enrollments and the universities themselves will go through transformations we cannot yet fully anticipate.

CAN THE BLACK FAMILY BE RESTORED? The question is probingly asked by Kay Hymowitz who has researched it (on the streets!) and pondered it closely. This important article has just been published in City Journal.

HOLLAND WILL NEVER BE THE SAME...as it was before the public murder of Theo Van Gogh. For an on-the-scene view of what is happening in the wake of the shooting and near beheading of the filmmaker who dared to be critical of Islam, do read on in this article from the current Weekly Standard.

ABANDON YOUR ICONIC MYTHOLOGY...says Victor Davis Hanson to his friends on the left. Does he have any? Well you can't live the academic life and not encounter colleagues more "liberal" than oneself--since they outnumber conservatives by seven or eight to one. And it is hard to maintain political enmities in university departments when there is so much else to be nasty about.

A PRISON DOCTOR'S REFLECTIONS ON THE TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS...and on the ways in which they "enable" and even foment social pathology. Dalrymple is someone who shows up rather often in this space...but we have just come across this striking interview that he gave to an Australian magazine a few years back.

GEORGE HIGGINS, PROPERLY APPRECIATED...as the fine American writer he was. This overview of his work is by another admirable maker of the modern American fiction canon, Ward Just, who appeared on our program a few months ago. Higgins used to come often, until his untimely death.

EINSTEIN AND GODEL ON PRINCETON PROMENADE...must have had some great discussions. It does now appear, according to this fascinating reconstruction published recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that the Godel Universe took shape during these long walks down the tree shaded streets in New Jersey.

HOW NOT TO RAISE YOUR KIDS: This article strikes us as that rare commodity: something from a pop-psych magazine that makes good sense and may actually do some good.

SCHUBERT'S WINTERREISE...is especially appropriate for the season, And going on this winter journey with him through this excellent performance of a great song-cycle is, surely, less enervating than an actual December 2004, airline journey.