If you Google 'regret and tattoo,' you will get 11.5 million hits.

Unlike earlier thinkers, who had sought to improve their accuracy by getting rid of error, Laplace realized that you should try to get more error: aggregate enough flawed data, and you get a glimpse of the truth. "The genius of statistics, as Laplace defined it, was that it did not ignore errors; it quantified them," the writer Louis Menand observed. "...The right answer is, in a sense, a function of the mistakes.

If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.

If you Google 'regret and tattoo,' you will get 11.5 million hits.

both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.

Wow. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.