One of the ugly secrets of the renewable-energy industry is that its products make no economic sense unless they are highly subsidized.

We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me.

If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun!

The whole hardware industry has experienced the phenomenon in which every time computers get cheaper, they appeal to a new set of users; every time they get more powerful, old customers upgrade.

If people don't find what you are doing threatening, then it is probably not very important.

New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free?

People who grow up in a region doubtless have a better cultural awareness of their own cuisine, but it's also true that a lot of locals go to McDonald's, Applebee's and the like.