Enhancing male sexual performance is one thing, but public policy advocacy is beyond the pale when it comes to acceptable Super Bowl fare.

Terrorism, however motivated, baffles people, because they cannot imagine doing these things themselves.

Terrorists are likely to be different from non-terrorists, but not because of any obvious disease.

Terrorist cells ... get rid of doubts by getting rid of the doubters.

By James Poniewozik, in the Dec 29, 2003 issue of Time magazine

In the most mass of mass media, it is no longer possible to please most of the people most of the time. In all of entertainment we are moving from the era of mass culture to the era of individual culture. If it's harder and harder to define mainstream pop culture, is there a mainstream at all?

... Mass culture developed only because the technology for mass communication was invented before the technology for mass choice.

In an overentertained, overmediated society, mainstream culture becomes more and more a secondhand experience. We are less influenced by [the things themselves] than by what we hear about them ...

... the culture is increasingly in the hands of nontraditional commercial tastemakers like Wal-Mart. With almost 3,000 locations in the US, Wal-Mart is more of a broadcaster than NBC is.

"When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army.

But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me.

In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either.

You become so apathetic you don't care at all.

For the United Nations, the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello was a crippling blow, comparable in its effect on the UN's sense of its own possibility to the impact President Kennedy's murder had on the self-confidence of the United States.

He could transform hopeless situations into hopeful ones and negotiate cease-fires at the height of genocidal wars.

He must have known that he was faced with making the best of a bad job. And yet he had been in bad situations before and succeeded.

Walter Pforzheimer helped draft the legislation that created the CIA and built the world's greatest collection of intelligence literature in English.

Nothing was closer to his heart than a George Washington letter from 1777 in which he wrote, "The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged. All that remains for me to add is that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible, for upon secrecy success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue."

It was his practice to buy two copies of a book whenever he could -- one for the agency, and one for his own collection.

Repeat transactions are not necessarily the rule in today's global economy.

Indirect reputation systems, where buyers base their decisions on a seller's previous interactions with other buyers, are a potential substitute for personal interactions -- provided such information is available.

For generations, people were openly uptight about "those things" across the board.

But we no longer are.

And thus, banning the f-adjective in 2003 becomes a random, isolated gesture, displaying a studied daintiness that can only be defended with stammering vaguenesses.

We are witnessing less a linguistic free-for-all than a narrowing of the gap between the formal and the informal in public discourse.

An essential component of beauty is being undermined and will soon be practically eliminated, and that is scarcity.

If there is only one right way of doing things, every other way is wrong.

Anybody can complain, blog and find fault; the real intellectual might try to solve problems.

Capitalism and democracy are sometimes equated, but ... get over that fairy tale.

... There's long been a mostly unrewarded group in the middle: people with great taste in music ...

... email, cell phones, working nights and weekends, "working out" ... What are we trying to prove?