The demise of Google Reader, if logical, is a reminder of how far we've come from the cuddly old 'I'm Feeling Lucky' Google days, in which there was a foreseeably-astonishing delight in the way Google's evolving design tricks anticipated what users would like.

Societies are healthiest when their radius of trust is broad and when people feel they can influence their own fate.

We're now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work

According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

Racial prejudice boils down to the deeply anti-American message that some people are born to fail.

Successful societies-those which progress economically and politically and can control the terms on which they deal with the outside world-succeed because they have found ways to match individual self-interest to the collective good.