The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe.

I had no shoes and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet, so I took his shoes.

Turbulence.” This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You'll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, “Folks, we're encountering a little turbulence.” Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean water-buffalo organs off the windshield.

I do not mean to suggest for a moment that all it takes to be a top executive is a custom-tailored European suit. You also need the correct shirt and tie.

All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it.

And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.

A secret society within a secret society.