That Ken Clarke is a wily cove. The elder statesman of the Tory party this week rode to the rescue of the young pretender, David Cameron, who was under pressure to confess whether he had taken drugs at university. Which is interesting, as you might expect that comedians, especially, out there with only their wits to protect them, would seek all the help they could get

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But, no. So Ronnie Barker has had a Humanist funeral. In this, he follows, among others, Bob Monkhouse; as it happens, too, the current President of the British Humanist Association is Linda Smith, the wit of most of Radio 4's comedy quiz output.

A pod, after all, can be the thing from which nasties like killer viruses emerge in science fiction nightmares. And the word also evokes a womb-like cocoon, in which to hide and take refuge. Comforting on the one hand, a little sinister on the other ... they couldn't have chosen a better name.m.norman independent.co.uk.

Yet there's something ambiguous, to say the least, about the irreversible drive to develop gadgetry that feeds on fear of human contact as a parasite feeds on a host.Not that Apple can be blamed for its own brilliance, of course, (in the highly unlikely event of my wife reading this, yes of course I want the video version for Christmas), or even accused of not recognising the ambiguity. If so, the only likely beneficiaries from the experiment are Amazon , Ocado, home security specialists and the manufacturers of serotonin-enhancers.As our lives shrink, it couldn't be more natural or inevitable that the technology shrinks to fit them. whatever the terror, the solitary guarantor of safety from it is to avoid exposure to other human beings.It's hardly a surprise, then, in this the Age of Petrifaction,that confining everything to the smallest possible space is the ideal not only of the Apple designers, but also the class of the perpetually terrified to which ever more of us unwillingly belong. Like all vile American trends, for example, the "gated community" is catching on here 10 years after it took root in the land of the free, and if ever the seed of a Thatcherite wet dream came to fruition this is it: Row after row of Lexuses (Lexi for the pedant) criss-crossing the concrete while their owners cower away behind the iron grilles, reading the latest scare story about violent crime in the Daily Mail, and washing the newsprint off their fingers every third paragraph with an alcohol rub, while the private security firm patrols the perimeter fencing.Writing on Yom Kippur, this lapsed and blasphemous Jew can't help wondering whether God, rather than the thunderous and vengeful beast of the Old Testament, might be a deranged social scientist, compressing human existence like a scrap metal yard's car-scruncher to determine what happens when you create a highly social animal and terrorise it into an antisocial lifestyle. For seclusion is the best and only real defence against all the threats that mortify us today, except perhaps the sort of dislocation from reality that leads slowly but eventually to mental illness.Mad, deluded Asian boys on the Underground, with dreams of heavenly virgins in their heads and rucksacks on their backs; marauding gangs of hoodie-wearing, iPod-snatching pubescents who will knife our children at the first sign of resistance; ultra violet rays slipping through the ozone layer to pepper us with malignant melanomas; hideous viral infections fostered by greedy poultry farmers in Szechuan, now preparing to mutate and jump between species ... By a perhaps over-cute irony, the best and only defence against avian flu will be to find a sturdy table and shelter beneath it. Go home, to flesh it out a little, close all the windows, barricade yourself and your beloveds in with the video iPod, the candles and the stockpiled Evian and tins of baked beans, and pray that the supplies of entertainment and nourishment last out until the danger passes.