Most people perceive moderates as timid, middle-of-the-roaders, who can't take a stand.

Golf is the art of driving hard, avoiding the rough, surmounting traps and hazards, aiming straight, and arriving on the green at last, only to end up in a hole in the ground before your companions. The favored pastime of businessmen and their cronies, probably without a full appreciation of its metaphorical implications.

The world belongs to people with IQs of 120. Anything much greater or less amounts to a liability.

Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

CHILDHOOD: The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.

But God has the most fun with artists and writers: he inflames them with the desire to rival his own creations, then douses their overheated ambitions with a cold spray from the garden hose of reality. If they persist, he slams them to the ground and tweaks them on the proboscis for good measure. A fortunate few break free and prosper; the others lament the day they didn't become bank clerks.

We're still just the world's premium brand of ape.