Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually .

Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely.

Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.

A country's assets reside in the tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the risk-takers.

Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated.

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.