“We need oil not just for driving but also for food. Going back to a less intensive mode of agriculture implies less dense living, less transportation of foodstuffs, and not eating fruit out of season. The real response to our dependence on cars: less transportation, more communication. Less moving around in the real world, more in cyberspace.

“It’s time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban America.

..urban life and urban values are the only sustainable response to the modern age of holy war, environmental degradation, and global conflict.

“Global inequality reached an incredible Gini coefficient level of 0.67 by the end of the century. This was mathematically equivalent to a situation where the poorest two-thirds of the world receive zero income; and the top third, everything.

“..you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions. Parkinson’s Law explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here.

“Steffi Graf is the only singles player, male or female, to have achieved a true Grand Slam across all three types of tennis courts, as the other five true singles Grand Slams occurred when the Australian and U.S. Opens were still played on grass.

“People seem to have forgotten how crazy 1998 and 1999 were. My recollection is that people at that time expected to work for two years and then retire! The market was unbalanced in favor of employees to a degree that was unhealthy, because businesses were constantly confronted with unpredictable escalations in salaries, unexpected losses of key staff, uncontrollably high turnover. There was so much chaos in the job market that businesses had difficulty finding time to actually focus on their business.

“It’s hard to close down unnecessary bureaucracies. It’s easy to admit that a government program has drawbacks, but many won’t seriously consider whether it does more harm than good.

“Start with *brevity*. Add other dimensions (features, speed, coding time, flexibility) as required by testing.

“Are we negotiating?
Always.