The Hawaiian Islands were discovered by hardy Polynesian sailors, who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean in primitive canoes, braving violent storm-tossed seas for months at a time. My family and I arrived by modern commercial aviation, which was infinitely worse.

In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

If you tell the reader it's funny, then the audience is like an audience at a stand-up comedy club and they expect you to be funny, and if you're not, they notice. Whereas if you read a regular op-ed about Israel or the family or medicine, you're not starting with the assumption that you're supposed to laugh.

Miami, you can never run out of material. As long as you have Miami around you, you will never, never stop being amused.

I really try to think cinematically, because that's how people read. They create a theater in their minds.

Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.