I am fussy about my diet and straining my voice. I know sounds a bit over the top. But I'm not as bad as I used to be. These days I don't drink alcohol for five days before a show - very dehydrating for the vocal cords and all that acid reflux. I used to ban it for a fortnight. Nightmare.

The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it.

The design of those commissioners frigates and warlike force is directed rather against Long Island and these your Honors' possessions than to the imagined reform of New England.

Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments it is apt to emerge again and again independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.

That was always my frustration with so many of these shows because design is not an ambush... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements yet these are in truth very often owing not so much to design as chance.

In these dangerous times where it seems the world is ripping apart at the seams we can all learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day and we should reach out to each other and bond as a community rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium.

I am politically pro-choice but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large - especially this world so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal life and death decisions for others - nor do I believe they should be made by a church run by childless men.

Individuals approaching death often experience encounters with their dead relatives who seem to welcome them to the next world. These deathbed visions are authentic and convincing they are often followed by a state of euphoria and seem to ease the transition.