“It is money that, in the language of economic sociologists, enables us to become ‘disembedded’ from our social context, with contradictory effects. Because a £10 note is the same regardless of who holds it, money can be viewed as a dreadful force for anonymity and dissolution of community. But because a £10 note is the same regardless of who holds it, money can also be viewed as the best basis for anonymity and cultural equality. It permits an absence of judgement.”

“Whatever we may have liked about the era of cheap, oil-based food, it is drawing to a close. Even if we were willing to continue paying the environmental or public-health price, we‘re not going to have the cheap energy (or the water) needed to to keep the system going, much less expand production. But as is so often the case, a crisis provides opportunity for reform, and the current food crisis presents opportunities that must be seized.”

“This may not be comforting, but your confusion is shared by many people in the middle of this financial crisis.”

“In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”

"[A]fter a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, I got sick of it. And I devised a simple technique for revenge."

"Either of these transformations would be Pareto-optimizing and eliminate large Federal bureaucracies and political constituencies, which is probably why I've never heard anyone even suggest them."

"[M]erely declaring, statutorily, that every citizen has a right to health care, or that health care is 'free' to every citizen, does not make health care available to all or 'free.'"

"The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus was only hours old, police hadn't even identified the gunman, and yet already the perpetrator had been fingered and was in the midst of being skewered in the media. Video games. They were behind the massacre."

"Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006"

"I don't see this... as a Republican thing or a Democratic thing. It's just the way we live today. Drunken sailors from the Capitol to the freeways. Heirs living on their inheritance and spending it fast. ... It is later than anyone dares to think."

"Curiosity and creativity in the fully adult sense are hard work and are acquired tastes, just like running is an acquired taste. ...[I]t is probably equally futile to expect either to become widely popular among the general population."

"In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about