As many of us have been filling out income tax forms over the past few weeks, it's been hard not to wonder: How did we get into this mess in the first place? Why did our ancestors ever agree to a complicated system with a morass of different rates, which means a bureaucracy waiting to happen?

The answer: As with so many expansions of governmental power, the income tax was first sold as a minor measure. Some politicians and journalists issued warnings, but only after enactment of the tax did the full consequences become apparent.

The most famous Old Testament phrase about how we are to act toward others is "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18b). Perhaps the most famous New Testament phrase is "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress ..." (James 1:27a).

That doesn't sound too hard. Neighbors live next door to us. Widows are women whose husbands have died. Orphans are children whose parents have died. Easy to know our obligations ... right?

The end of civilization as we know it? Or, January Fool's Day? The Y2K bug has engendered such a huge range of predictions that it's hard to know what to do besides sticking with the old Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

When DNA evidence late last year showed that either Thomas Jefferson or his close relatives had both white and black descendants, several columnists took the opportunity to point out that classifying people by race is silly, since most "blacks" and millions of "whites" in this country are the offspring of racial mixing over the past three centuries.

College students regularly e-mail jokes about their schools' traditional rivals. One southeastern set of "How many does it take to screw in a light bulb?" digs includes: "At Tennessee it takes only one, but he gets seven credits for it.... At Ole Miss it takes five. One to change it, and four to find the perfect J. Crew outfit to wear for the occasion.... At LSU it takes 104. One to screw the darn thing in and 103 to bring the beer.... At Vanderbilt, it takes two. One to screw it in, and one to say how they did it as well as Ivy Leaguers." And so on.