It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.

Physicists are atoms' way of thinking about atoms.

Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.

I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time.

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

Most big companies don't like you very much, except hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don't like you at all.

For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.