Fire and Knowledge

Apparently, the common pattern of people in any society is to have two important childhood friends, two significant adult friends, and two doctors. Typically, there are two powerful sexual partners who eclipse the others. Most commonly, you only fall in love once, and there is one member of your family whom you love above all others. The number of significant personal relationships is remarkably similar for everyone, regardless of their location, sophistication, or culture…. And once these slots are filled, they’re filled forever.

—Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 177

For the broad public at least, I am who the media says I am. I say what they say I say. I become who they say I’ve become.

—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006), p. 121

From Engadget:

Like the beginning of every great science fiction movie, experts claim that they’ve discovered a cure for our fuel-dependency woes that only requires an army of genetically modified bacteria… that eat wheat straw and excrete crude oil. You read that right: scientists have created bugs which are able to snack on woodchips or sugar cane and produce waste in the form of easily malleable oil. Not only are the buggers capable of creating a byproduct which can quickly be refined into fuel for vehicles, but scientists say the process is carbon-negative — it outputs less carbon than is required to produce it. Director of the project — dubbed LS9 — Greg Pal says that barrel prices could run as low as $50, and that the company plans to have a commercial facility producing the crude in 2011.

It’s strange living in a world where you can’t discern fact from fiction.

Jesus told us to be like the Good Samaritan, yet how many of you here today could afford to pay for a stranger’s hospital treatment and housing for a week? The Samaritan was able to help because he had the financial means to do so. Without it he could only have offered minor assistance.

—Kerry Heinz, as quoted in Richard Evans, The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me (2006), p. 3

A market economy allows accurate knowledge to be effective in influencing decision-making, even if 99 percent of the population do not have that knowledge. In politics, however, the 99 percent who do not understand can create immediate political success for elected officials and politics that will turn out in the end to be harmful to society as a whole.

—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 318.

There are very few people who don’t become more interesting when they stop talking.

—Mary Lowry, as quoted in Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start (2004), p. 60.

It is often easier to make an enthusiasm into a career than to become enthusiastic about a career dictated by others.

—Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 167

Start your Monday off with a little Beatles: