Quotes of the day

Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?--T.S. Eliot

... [Phil] Jones’ delete request [of Climategate emails] was funded by the US Department of Energy.--Steve McIntyre

I could have owned a third of Apple Computer for $50,000.--Nolan Bushnell, Steve Jobs' boss at Atari

... it's trivial to prevent irrational bubbles, but rational ones are by definition immune to greater examination.--Eric Falkenstein

Despite what some among us [in the National Education Association] would like to believe [about our ability to advocate] it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; More.. and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year ...--Bob Chanin, General Counsel to the NEA

What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?--Thomas Friedman

I’ve taken part in several postseason runs where we have played 20 games. The long-term impact this game has on our bodies is well documented. Look no further than the players that came before we did. Each player today has to play three years in order to earn five years of post-career health care.--Tom Brady

Male characters' performance of chores was often humorously inept as measured by negative responses from others, lack of success, and unsatisfactory outcomes. These depictions have important implications for the learning of gender roles from television exposure.--Mass Communication and Society, Volume 9, Issue 2 May 2006

Now a stunningly candid new book, Message From an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love, illuminates ... the plight of Chinese women who give their daughters up for adoption. And that arithmetic is far more complex and brutal, the journalist Xinran writes: “a black hole in the woman’s heart and unanswered questions in her daughter’s.”--Anne Kingston

The RMB is unlikely to become a serious reserve currency in the foreseeable future. There are a number of reasons for this. First and most obviously, there are few realistic mechanisms by which the world can acquire RMB. Either China needs to run a large current account deficits, or it needs totally open domestic financial markets in which foreigners can easily acquire domestic RMB-denominated bonds to the tune of several percentage points of China’s GDP annually.--Michael Pettis

What evidence do we have that Obama is reluctant about all of this stuff [concerning Bradley Manning]? To me, a better explanation--one that explains the fact that there's not that much daylight between Bush and Obama on these issues--is that being president makes you want to do these things. The president has access to more information than the rest of us, and as Daniel Ellsberg warned Kissinger, long ago, that changes how you think. ... I used to think that Janet Reno was evil--SWAT teams and tanks in child custody disputes? Really? Then we had a succession of new Attorneys General who all seemed to err on the side of megalomaniacal overreach. At which point I decided that it probably wasn't the person; it was the office. When you're sitting up there in that lofty perch, hearing about all the bad things that are happening in the country, and you know that you could do a lot more to fight them if you just had a little bit more power--well, sure, maybe it's not a good idea in abstract, but you're not going to abuse it, you're just trying to solve problems. Et voila, Waco.--Megan McArdle

... every single dollar of interest we pay on the national debt comes right back to the pockets of American taxpayers. If you don’t understand that, then you’re not thinking clearly about the national debt. ... It’s important to understand this in order not to be bamboozled by tricksters who try to misdirect every conversation about government spending into a conversation about government debt. It’s spending, not debt, that can impoverish us, and that’s what we should be talking about.--Steve Landsburg

I just think that in no society should there be one ruling party. And in New York, there’s way too much of the Democrats — we’ve got to have a little bit of something else.--Rachel Feinstein

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