As American productivity, once the exuberant engine of national wealth, has dipped to an embarrassingly uncompetitive low, Americans have shaken their heads: the country's old work ethic is dead.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.

The television anchorman Dan Rather turns up in rag-top native drag in Afghanistan, the surrogate of our culture with his camera crew, intrepid as Sir Richard Burton sneaking into Mecca.

Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable.

Human ingenuity has given centuries to the goal of ensuring that the human body might move around at an even 68 degrees all year.

For now, we assume that self-evolving robots will learn to mimic human traits, including, eventually, humor. And so, I can't wait to hear the first joke that one robot tells to another robot.

When man sends colonies into space, he will be able to mount moveable, sun-reflecting mirrors to simulate rhythms of day and night and even the terrestial seasons...But he doubtless will follow the longstanding American habit of thinking that outer space should, as much as possible, resemble Southern California.