It is more accurate to say that humanity has managed to arrive at the 21st century through a growing series of critical thresholds, moving towards current global, social and environmental limits.
And most recently they are being followed by Yours Truly who, despite the best efforts of the Ford Fusion to outwit, snooker and checkmate him, has managed to arrive at Port au Choix in rare foul mood on the way south to Gros Morne National Park.
And they showed that unlike his companions – Idemili, Iolo, Lloyd and Indy – David had managed to arrive back in the UK.
But only about two dozen of those Special Forces have managed to arrive, and they are not all in the right places.
When his mother asked how he had managed to arrive so early, he said he had driven out, setting out at 6 while the dawn was still an hour off.
"I still cannot understand how we, the international community, and the Afghan government have managed to arrive at a situation in which everything is coming together in 2014 — elections, new president, economic transition, military transition and all this — whereas the negotiations for the peace process have not really started," Mr. Bajolet said in his opening comments.
By legend, the two events were in the long run one: Darwin saw the adapted beaks of his many finches, brooded on what they meant, came up with a theory, sought evidence for it, and was prodded into print at last by an unwelcome letter from an obscure naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace, who had managed to arrive at the same idea.
In the course of a three-day visit, I was required to explain to a number of bewildered French how we have managed to arrive at the present situation and why we are now satellite-feeding the world the minutest details of Presidential indiscretions.
Although their methods, manners and viewpoints are divergent — to say the least, given Mr. Mamet's recently proclaimed political conversion from liberalism — these two gifted playwrights have managed to arrive in New York in the same season with new works capable of sending you (well, me anyway) reeling from the theater in search of the nearest nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
My camera assistant-cum-sister - last seen disappearing upriver on a log boat just before the police arrived - had managed to get our footage on to Star TV's national news.
Six weeks earlier, in California, Logan had told him he must trim off ten pounds for his role in "Sayonara," and before arriving in Kyoto he had managed to get rid of seven.
