We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.

It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.

Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.

I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.

It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn't for me.