Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.

You'll sometimes hear from people that they actually do a better job of getting their work done when they have a lot of other obligations - in effect, it removes the possibility of procrastinating.

Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.

Markets work best when there's lots of information available and a historical track record to go on; they excel at predicting things like horse races, election outcomes, and box-office results. But they're bad at predicting things like who will be the next Supreme Court nominee, as that depends on the whim of the president.

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

By the time of the '90s boom, CEOs had become superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with a kind of slavish scrutiny that Alfred P. Sloan could never have imagined.

I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.