Quotes of the day

[America has] the kind of culture that can tolerate rap music and extreme sports that can also create space for guys like Page and Brin and Google. That's one of our hidden strengths.--Paul Romer

... if an attractive woman tells you "You don't want to go out with me" do you believe her and act on that?--Megan McArdle

Palinoia: when you think people are out to get you, and then they do their best to justify your erroneous belief. --Megan McArdle

Americans aren’t going to fix our national financial problems until a lot more people decide to drop out of the “normal” competition to see who can borrow the most money in order to bid on a fixed number of homes in affluent school districts and places at selective colleges. You don’t need to be a Christian to look for a better way. Even an unbeliever knew enough to listen up when he saw the bright light on the road to Damascus.--Megan McArdle

I'd never done a detailed budget before, much less written it down, and forced myself to stick to it by doling out all the payments in cash. It sounds unbearably tedious. But it's actually incredibly freeing. I have never before felt like I had total control over my money. And given all the economic gyrations, it would be awfully nice to know that I was on the road to a paid off house, and could cut my expenses to the bare bones if needed.--Megan McArdle

Saddam was well aware of the “who monitors the monitor problem” – what is the head of the Special Guard mounted a coup himself? Saddam’s solution was not original: appoint a relative. Make sure the appointee is a coward so he would not dream of mounting a coup. Just in case he is tougher than you might think, choose someone stupid so he cannot mount a successful coup and is too stupid to recognize someone else’s good ideas for a coup. ... It is very hard for one player to communicate his strategic intent to the other indirectly: presumably Big Bush thought it was obvious which side had defeated the other and could not imagine that Saddam would even consider Gulf War I a win for the Iraqi regime! This leads the players to have two quite different interpretations of the same event and creates room for future errors.--Sandeep Baliga

He is about winning the game without passion or prejudice. He doesn’t give a damn if there were some hurt feelings on his defense. As we used to say in the old days: Tough noogies. He had no faith in his defense stopping Manning. And he coaches to win. And come to think of it: Wasn’t he showing MORE faith in his defense by thinking they could stop Peyton Manning’s Colts from the 30-yard line?--Joe Posnanski