Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.

I'm more like my father personality-wise. But my mom and I get alone really well - obviously because my mom and my dad get along so well.

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

The wonderful thing about age is that your knees don't work as well you can't run down steps quite as easily and obviously you can't lift heavy weights. But your mind doesn't feel any different.

We have become a society that can't self-correct that can't address its obvious problems that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.

Of course the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age.