I never had the vaguest idea whether any of it had anything to do with me, especially being a sixth grader. When I got older and traveled, I'd read about the history of where I was going. I'd be like, "Oh, history is kind of interesting."

The story you envision as you start out is always a great story; when the facts turn out to be different from, or more complex than, what you expected, your first reaction is always disappointment. That's when you must fight the urge to bend the story to your preconceived notions. First, it's dishonest. And second, in the end, the truth is always the best story.

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

John Dorschner, one of our staff writers here at Tropic magazine at The Miami Herald, who is a good friend of mine and an excellent journalist, but a raving liberal, wrote a story about a group that periodically pops up saying that they're going to start their own country or start their own planet or go back to their original planet, or whatever. They were going to "create a libertarian society" on a floating platform in the Caribbean somewhere. I know there's never going to be a country on a floating anything, but if they want to talk about it, that's great.

9 saw the first direct-dialed long-distance telephone call, between New York and San Francisco. Of course, back in that primitive era the parties had to speak to each other manually; today one or both ends of the conversation would be carried on by a machine.

Scientists tell us that the fastest animal in the world, with a speed of 120 mph, is a cow dropped out of a helicopter.

I regularly read Internet user groups filled with messages from people trying to solve software incompatibility problems that, in terms of complexity, make the U.S. Tax Code look like Dr. Seuss.