It all comes down to control.

We keep focusing on doing the same thing better rather than trying something new. It is as if we are wearing blinders that let us see only one path and not the alternatives. ... There is little chance, much less financing, for the wild idea that might prove revolutionary. Organizations that give out "innovator" and "pioneer" awards claim to want to support new ideas but end up giving money to better ways of doing the same thing.

Misdiagnosis is "a window into the medical mind," revealing "why doctors fail to question their assumptions, why their thinking is sometimes closed or skewed, why they overlook the gaps in their knowledge."

Older media, with their entrenched infrastructures, are not crying out for innovation — at least not from an outsider. But that will not stop Google from trying.

There are few things in this world so stirring as a man who neither hates it nor imitates it, but in the name of what is best in it resists what is worst in it. The good man in a dark time is the unrepresentative man. He has the honor of an anomaly. He marks the distance that still has to be traveled. And how much, after all, can a single individual accomplish, all the uplift notwithstanding? Heroes are not policies.

"Unless you've been through it, you have no idea what it is like to live year-round in your second home."

Random drug tests have become routine, like pop quizzes for a student's body.

Spaniards are said to be the most enthusiastic brothel-goers — and cocaine users — in Europe.

"We call it the 'physical hyperlink.'"

There is precision in the fluff.

"Why wouldn't you want to harness that history?" Professor Bluestone said. "People going to do their work in that building would have that in the back of their min... [ Read More (2.1k in body) ]