The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless. SAT scores do measure both specific knowledge and valuable thinking skills.

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

Progress through trial and error depends not only on making trials, but on recognizing errors.

Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.

The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.

European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion.

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife.