“Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing are often considered part of lomographic technique.

“The Nobel Peace Prize is the only one that is awarded not for solving a problem but for merely trying to. Sometimes, the hope expressed by the Nobel committee is realized—as it was by Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, for example, in 1993. Just as often, the prize ends up honoring an illusion—Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin, in 1994—or a cause that’s as hopeless as it is noble: the Dalai Lama, in 1989; Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1991.

“New Yorkers are living longer than ever before, and longer than most people in the country. A New Yorker born in 2004 can now expect to live 78.6 years, nine months longer than the average American will. What’s more, their life expectancy is increasing at a rate faster than that of most of the rest of the country.

“My feed reader shows me what’s been updated. It can’t show me what’s new [to me].

“..men 18-34 are more likely than women to need extra thanks from the boss in order to be productive.

“The worst thing that can happen to a code base is size.

Most people only arrive at this conclusion via painful things happening to them.

“Google has not displayed an ability to create the best tools for sharing knowledge. It is hubris for Google to think they should be a definitive source for hosting that knowledge.

“The long-term benefits of the Socratic method: In a study of 105 children 10 years old, teachers spent an hour a week for 16 months teaching lessons based on philosophical inquiry. These children showed significant improvements on tests of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities. Their higher scores persisted two years later—while the lower-scoring control group were, in some cases, declining further.

“This is the paradox of age: younger people are more motivated to do things because more things are new, but they lack experience; older people have the experience so their designs are better, but they lack the motivation to do the parts they now feel are tedious and stupid.

“Experimental result: People held more extreme positions after they spoke with like-minded others. Liberals favored an international treaty to control global warming before discussion; they favored it far more strongly after discussion. Conservatives were neutral on that treaty before discussion, but they strongly opposed it after discussion.

The creation of enclaves of like-minded people also squelched diversity. Before people started to talk, many groups displayed a fair amount of internal disagreement on the three issues. The disagreements were greatly reduced as a result of a mere 15-minute discussion.