I'm not the only taxpayer who has no idea what he's sending to the IRS. This year, only 28 percent of all Americans will prepare their own tax returns, according to a voice in my head that invents accurate-sounding statistics.

Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.

I shared this insight with some other boat owners, and they all agreed that, definitely, putting your boar into the water is asking for trouble. Most of them have had their boats sitting in their driveways long enough to be registered historical landmarks.

With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.

I guess libertarianism is always considered so weird and fringe that people assume that you're in the closet if you don't go around talking about it.

It may be meaningless, but at least it's a gesture.

English history consists largely of royal people getting their heads chopped off...Needless to say, this brand of history was a hit with our son.