So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.

Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.

Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.

A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.

I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.