In his last Takimag column of the year, our favorite doctor touches on the ridiculously improbable, unethical, and farcical Qatari World Cup, and the complete equanimity with which he watched the England-France quarterfinal match in a provincial French bar.

I would like to take this moment to wish all of our readers around the world a peaceful, blessed, and merry Christmas.

The World Cup in Qatar attracted hundreds of millions of viewers, for whom entertainment was more important than the extravagant absurdity of air-conditioning the outdoors in a place as hot as Qatar so that the players should be able to play at all, the sheer waste resources on so ephemeral an event (Qatar is said to have spent $220,000,000,000 on preparing for the championship), and the lives taken during the construction of the stadium and other infrastructure.