It's Saturday, and that, I think, means it's house-cleaning day for a lot of people. Have fun, folks!

Once you're done, if you can find it, watch "I'm All Right, Jack", a British movie from 1959, starring Peter Sellers, Terry Thomas, Ian Carmichael and Sir Richard Attenborough. Two good reasons to watch it: it's funny; it's illustrative of how nothing ever changes. In the more than 40 intervening years, nobody's learned anything.

And, just to rub it in, feel free to pick up T. E. Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and do a little browsing in that. It's from 40 years before "I'm All Right, Jack".

It would seem that even those who know history are doomed to repeat it.