At the height of rush hour, people on the London underground actually say "excuse me." Imagine what would happen if you tried an insane stunt like that on the New York City subway. The other passengers would take it as a sign of weakness, and there'd be a fight over who got to keep your ears as a trophy.

Many people have trouble sticking to their resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In 1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week the psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their resolutions; after two weeks we have no idea what happened because the psychologists had quit monitoring.

Congress shall also create a tax code weighing more than the combined poundage of the largest member of the House and the largest member of the Senate, plus a standard musk ox.

A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.

In those days, most people read newspapers, whereas today, most people do not. What caused this change? One big factor, of course, is that people are a lot stupider than they used to be, although we here in the newspaper industry would never say so in print.

The nuclear generator of brain sludge is television.

The other major kind of computer is the "Apple," which I do not recommend, because it is a wuss-o-rama New-Age computer you basically just plug in and use.