Literary, social, and, in the end, political themes of Russian art have resonated with every generation of Russians.

The future is on the way.  Leading-edge innovators, we are assured, have already moved on, and are earnestly focusing on the just the sort of problems - manufacturing, energy, transportation (and I'd add healthcare) - that urgently require imaginative solutions.

Reviewing "The Myth of The Paperless Office" for the New Yorker in 2002, Malcolm Gladwell argued that if the computer had come first, and paper didn't exist, someone would have had to invent it.  Paper, it turns out, is a lot more useful than we typically appreciate.

"The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace."

As in Chicago, President Obama seems to live in a cocoon in which Republicans are largely absent, offscreen actors that no one pays any attention to.

Congress has never before passed and the Supreme Court has never upheld a law requiring individuals to buy a commercial product, as Obamacare does. On this the Obama Democrats, not Clarence Thomas and judges following his lead, are the ones sweeping aside precedent.

80% of women at the top (in business, I presume) have husbands who don’t work.

In the America of our time a lot of people make livings as actors, musicians and, yes, as puppeteers. I think it's a safe assumption that they get more satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from their work than they would as file clerks or factory workers with significantly higher pay.