The greatest of people in society carve niches that represent the unique expression of their combinations of talents. If everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combination of talents in this world, our society would be transofrmed over night.

Here's what I'm wondering: if, digitally, you can remove red-eye, smooth over wrinkles, make people look thinner, then why don't we have the technology to make me sing better?

If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.

Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

So while you're getting ripped apart head to toe as you fall into a black hole, you will also extrude through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste squeezed through a tube. To all the words in the English language that describe ways to die (e.g., homicide, suicide, electrocution, suffocation, starvation) we add the term spaghettification.

Note, however, that you cannot simply add temperatures the way you can add volumes or weights. Two people in bed, each with body temperatures of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, do not normally create a 197.2 degree under-the-cover oven.

I have a multivolume history of the world from the 19th century that begins with Noah's flood as though it's as historical a fact as the rise and fall of Rome.