Thus my No. 1 son in the middle of the night. The mobile-phone text-message wakes me up. I read it, check the time, and respond: “Yup, but it’s three in the morning. Remember, I’m six hours ahead of you…” He responds a minute later: “I know, but I’m about to paraphrase you in a room of eight-thousand people on live radio. I want the first sentence on the back cover of your new book: I’ll ask the moderators for their thoughts on it and mention your name.” I get out of bed, turn on the light, shuffle to my study, take a copy of my new book from the bookshelf, and respond: “Intelligence of the human species can be defined with good precision: it is high enough to fatally damage its natural habitat, but too low to repair the damage.” A minute later, I send him another text-message: “That’s my haiku of a hundred and sixty characters including spaces from 2007. Goodnight!” His last message is sweet: “Thank you, pappa. Appreciated and goodnight.” And so I shuffle back to bed, turn off the light, and try to fall asleep again.