In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which, as any American high school student can tell you, was an act that apparently had something to do with stamps.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'

We have been flooded with postal cards from all over the United States and several parallel universes. Just a quick glance though these cards is enough to remind you why this great nation, despite all the talk of decline, still leads the world in tranquilizer consumption.

The central point of this final chapter is that - follow my logic carefully here - unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It's insights like this that separate the professional book author from the person with a real job.)

The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812.

Megahertz: This is really, really big hertz.

Tokyo is huge. Something like 15 million people live there, and my estimate is that at any given moment, 14.7 million of them are lost.