In the study, 89 percent of Americans said that they interrupted their last social encounter by looking at a phone. And 82 percent of them said that it deteriorated the conversation.

There was a bridge to the 21st century, and yet, somehow, for very large number of Americans, it was unclear how you got from one place to the other, from being a manual working-class man to being some part of a Brooklyn-based sharing economy.

People put on their earphones, they lay out their phones, they put - open up their computers, and they convince themselves that they're most productive when they're focused on their e-mail, when, really, they're ignoring the cafeteria, the watercooler, the meetings with colleagues, the times when really the creativity, collaboration happens.

Every president feels that he has gotten unfair, dishonest coverage from the news media.

The president-elect Donald Trump moved a bit closer to getting his Cabinet in place with another round of confirmation hearings. The most contentious was for his treasury secretary pick, Steven Mnuchin, a billionaire banker who worked at Goldman Sachs and owned a hedge fund. There was important news that came out during the hearing. Mnuchin said that he would support raising the debt ceiling sooner rather than later, and not risk the country defaulting.

Trump said today that if countries are going to have nuclear weapons, then he said the United States needs to be at the top of the back, in his words, meaning increasing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Vaclav Havel had this great sense of humor. And you kind of felt that he was making a little bit fun of everything at the same time.