There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.

The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy - a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.

Nothing about economic growth in the United States over the course of the past 40, 50 years, during which time this has been continually happening, would indicate that we are being harmed in an overall sense by this.

It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.