Iran’s war against Israel took another turn for the worse last week as Operation Rising Lion struck Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program, air defenses and military leadership. Iran’s retaliation has so far been uneven and ineffective. Contrary to the scaremongers, World War III hasn’t broken out, nor will it. But what next? The 1979 Islamic Revolution retains power in Tehran, and it could rebuild its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs and terrorist networks. The only lasting foundation for...

World-class chess players know the difference between strategy and tactics better than politicians do. To win in chess you need to start with a strategy — a long-term plan that gets you to a position of superiority. Then you close in with a sequence of tactical moves. As Max Euwe, the Dutch chess grandmaster of the 1930s, once observed: “Strategy requires thought. Tactics require observation.” The West is all tactics. The East is mostly strategy. You need both because even the most brilliant...

Many longtime New Yorkers have had a sinking feeling at some point in the past decade. They have worried that their city was heading back to the bad old days of the 1970s and ’80s. Subway trips can have a chaotic or even menacing quality. Nearly half of bus riders board without paying their fares. The number of felony assaults has jumped more than 40 percent over the past decade. The city’s fourth graders, after significantly outperforming their peers in other large cities...

We all know and love the late, great Robin Williams for his work in movies, television shows, Saturday Night Live, and standup. But let’s not forget he also has a slew of commercials under his belt as well. The talented Williams delighted in everything he did because, honestly, what medium wouldn’t benefit from his signature charm and humor?With such a long and illustrious career, fans may be happy to know that there's still new (to us!) William's content to find and enjoy. The evidence? Even the biggest Robin Williams fans might be surprised to find this recently unearthed commercial he did for the Illinois Bell phone company (later known as AT&T) back in 1977.In the clip, where Williams unsurprisingly plays a mischievous husband making voices while his wife shops around for the perfect landline phone, we see a delightful foreshadowing of his alien character Mork from the sitcom Mork & Mindy—it certainly helps that the woman playing his wife resembles Pam Dawber, who played Mindy in the show. (Not to mention the fact that he says "people of Earth” with that perfect alien voice.)Watch: - YouTube youtu.be Of course, it wasn’t just nostalgia for Williams that people felt while watching this video, but also wistfulness for a bygone era, a simpler time when something like a landline was even a thing. Here’s a small smattering of comments from YouTube:“You bought a phone and it sat on a desk or hung on the wall for decades and did its job, no updates, no 'starting it up', it was always on and always worked.”“Miss the days when you could slam the phone.”“The most surprising thing is that they repaired the broken phones rather than simply throwing them out and giving you a new one.”“Oh, the times when we could make ourselves unavailable.”“I remember having to go to the phone company. All the different color phones on display.”“Our yellow kitchen wall phone had a cord like 12 ft long. It got knotted and tangled once and just stayed that way forever.”“I remember being so excited about the new "pushbuttons" instead of the rotary dial.”And last but not least, “I want to live in this time period.”While we have two things to miss because of this video, it also, as one view put it, gave us “something to smile about,” and that’s never a bad thing.If you're wanting more of Williams and his special brand of humor, you're in luck. Thanks to the Internet, we have a few more archived Robin William commercials at our disposal, arguably more chaotic than the one for Illinois Bell.Here's one for the popular game, Legend of Zelda: - YouTube youtu.be And another for Snickers, because who portrays the unhinged quite like Williams? - YouTube youtu.be Especially this rather notorious one, in which Williams drives director Howard Storm insane with his shotgun style improv skills.Williams’ comedic genius continues to be something we marvel at, and its inexplicable blend of zaniness, tragedy, and existentialism will always be a mystery we can never fully solve. That’s part of what made it so magical, and why we can watch even one of his most seemingly insignificant works and still be mesmerized. He was one of the greats, no doubt about it.This article originally appeared in February.

"The language of peace."

"I really don't pay that much attention."