Megan McArdle, on the 'darkness' of current critically-acclaimed TV dramas:

The truth is this: We watch so many crime dramas because there are no big stakes in middle-class American life. The criminal underworld is one place where decisions actually matter -- and can be shown to matter, dramatically.

Meg Wolitzer:

We live in a world of shouting, a world thick with millions of hands waving. Democratisation is in many ways something to celebrate, but what it's also proved is that, truly, nothing much has changed. Yes, success can be bigger and broader and more global than ever, but talent, oh talent -- we still know it when we see it, and if we're really lucky, maybe for a little while it won't get drowned out in all that noise.

Decius, in 2004:

I've come to the conclusion that you actually want shifty, dishonest politicians elected by an apathetic populace. This means that things are working.

I'm confident that technology has improved the resources available to people if/when they choose to act. So far they don't need to, largely. Don't wish for times when they do.

Bruce Schneier, last month:

Technology changes slowly, but political intentions can change very quickly.

Tyler Cowen, in June:

If the status quo of a few weeks ago is no longer an equilibrium, what happens next?

Shirley Wang, on the limits of drugs prescribed for ADHD:

The medicine may help with focus, but it doesn't help with deciding what to focus on, experts say.

Steve Coll:

America's post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why?

Jeremy Bentham, in 1843:

This, then, is the reasoning of the partisans of mystery: 'You are incapable of judging, because you are ignorant; and you shall remain ignorant, that you may be incapable of judging.'

Moxie:

The world we live in influences not just what we think, but how we think, in a way that a discourse about other ideas isn't able to. Any teenager can tell you that life's most meaningful experiences aren't the ones you necessarily desired, but the ones that actually transformed your very sense of what you desire.