For all his success, Mr. Lee, 83, remains on the alert for perils that may exist only on the distant horizon: the rising role of China in the region as the United States looks the other way, the buffeting of the world economy, even climate change.
But if you are alert to that peril and if your school does not prohibit freelance work, then go to it.
Surely, he himself is alert to the perils of overconfidence.
But he is apt to be more alert to the perils of sitting in his lap.
"He's in Nevada, filming," he says, when I ask, and with the protectiveness of a father alert to the perils of favouritism, adds: "Marcel is in Sri Lanka.
Newly alert to the perils of not seeming patriotic enough, he ended a speech in Pennsylvania the other morning with "God bless America!" A little disenchantment with Obama could turn out to be a good thing.
Four or five years later, even PG Wodehouse was laughing fascism to greater scorn ("Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags!"), not because he was more alert to its perils, but because he was more genuinely apolitical.
People have been warned by the F.B.I., for example, to be personally vigilant and alert to some unspecified peril.
Their mathematical models failed to alert them to potential perils.
A national advertising campaign, to alert teenagers to the perils of irresponsible sex, is planned for this autumn.
