In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron stream flowed. Radios had valves, as though electricity were a fluid to be diverted by plumbing. With the click of the knob came a significant hiss and hum, just at the edge of audibility.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn't necessarily be good.

Particle physicists may freeze a second, open it up, and explore its dappled contents like surgeons pawing through an abdomen, but in real life, when events occur within thousandths of a second, our minds cannot distinguish past from future.

For much of the twentieth century, 1984 was a year that belonged to the future - a strange, gray future at that. Then it slid painlessly into the past, like any other year. Big Brother arrived and settled in, though not at all in the way George Orwell had imagined.

I'm surrounded by friends and family who are not that impressed by celebrity. They don't have any problem telling me I'm acting like an idiot or I'm not that funny.

I deliberately try to carry a different perception of myself as opposed to my father's. I respect my dad and his body of work, but I can't give him credit for what I am today. As a person, I give my parents full credit; career-wise, no.

A preoccupation with money and, especially, with what money meant was, in our family, an inherited thing. My father's father, Jack, who died before I was born, was very much possessed by the idea that money was freedom.

I will be personally seeking alternatives for my family's health care coverage, just like the rest of Americans affected by Obamacare. In the meantime, I will do everything in my power to fight this terrible piece of legislation.