When I was young I liked taking tests. I happened to be good at it. Certain subjects came easily, like math. All the science stuff. I would just read the textbooks in the first few days of class.

In the same way that when the car got going, people thought it would be an electric car, people thought it would be a steam car.

When you say that after World War I there was a pandemic that killed more people than the war itself, most will say: "Wait, are you kidding? I know World War I, but there was no World War 1.5, was there?" But people were traveling around after the war, and that meant the force of infection was much higher. And the problem is that the rate of travel back then was dramatically less than what we have nowadays.

Bangladesh is largely a river delta, and the rising sea level means that when storms come in, the human sanitation is backing up, the ability to farm.

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.

Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.

In software you can't really add people and expect to get more done, because their ability to understand the program and what's going on it would require so much investment and all their work would require so much review that you'd be more likely to slow things down.