"The studio vice president called me in and said: 'Sit down, kid' even though he was only about six years older than I was. 'I want to tell you a story. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie he delivered a bag of groceries. We took one look at him and knew he was a movie star. You ain't got it kid, you ain't got it. You ain't working hard enough. I want you to get back to class and study. Now get out of here'. I leaned across the table and said: 'I thought you were supposed to think he was the grocery delivery boy'."

Harrison Ford / Columbia Pictures in 1966

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

Proverbs 18:17

A 1995 study found that bronze-medal winners, by and large, were more content than silver-medal winners, but that fourth-place finishers are crushed with "what might have been."

Yahoo! Sports

A poorly chosen baby name can lead to a lifetime of neglect, reduced relationship opportunities, lower self-esteem, a higher likelihood of smoking and diminished education prospects, according to a new study of nearly 12,000 people.
...
The study is based on users of the European matchmaking website eDarling, where researchers found most people would sooner remain single, and continue paying for online dating, than consider a romantic partner with an unappealing name.
...
In one of the researchers' experiments, online daters whose names carried the most positive valence (Alexander) received 102% more profile visits, relative to opportunity, than daters whose names carried the worst valence (Kevin).

Notably, prospective partners were given no more information than the person's first name, age and location, and the latter two factors were controlled, as daters only received profile links to people whose age and place of residence met their criteria.

National Post / Misty Harris

Really I'm not scared of anything that's going to come to me in sports. I think my biggest fear would be getting my sight back. Once you go blind you start imagining the world as this perfect place. Getting your sight back and seeing how imperfect it is crushes some blind people. To be honest, getting my sight back would be like another low point in my life.

Charlie Wilks, 14 year old blind football player / ESPN

Brevity is the soul of wit.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, sc. ii

I don't believe [AOL's] management was evil or stupid. The shortsighted approach of the MBAs had a simpler origin: They didn't use the service the way members did. They didn't know how often Community leaders talked would-be suicides off the ledge or how many desperate housewives found recipes and advice. All these points of deep engagement were driven from the bottom, from users. (Note that there are only two businesses that call the customers "users" - drugs and the Internet.)

For management, though, AOL was just an Instant Message service by day, an email service by night. The ultimate verdict: Since advertisers shunned Community, what was it really worth? Very quickly, Community became AOL's ignored child.

Jesse Kornbluth

One of her next experiments, known now as the "jam study," has become a modern classic. In a Palo Alto, Calif., supermarket known for its exceptionally vast range of products, she set up two different booths offering shoppers the chance to sample various unusual preserves. One booth offered 24 different options; the other only six. You would think that, with more choices in the first booth, more shoppers who stopped there would find a flavor they liked and go on to buy a jar. But the opposite happened: People tried more samples and bought a lot more jam at the booth with six varieties ... The people who stopped at the 24-jam booth didn't say: "Please take away most of these options so I can more easily make a decision." They simply felt overwhelmed and less willing to make any choice at all.

Christopher Chabris / Book Review: The Art of Choosing

Just like the Saints failing to convert a crucial fourth-and-inches in Saturday's wild-card game, the issue was with the execution, not the decision. It's always easy to bash a choice that fails. Sometimes a failed decision is still the correct one.

Chris Chase / Yahoo! Sports

"I think a lot of people told him he couldn't -- You can't this and you can't that." Silas said of [Kwame] Brown's 10-year NBA career. "We came in and told him he could? We got on his case" when Brown passed up high-quality shots.

"I'd rather see him shoot and miss than pass it out. He'll shoot, miss, go back and get the rebound, and put it in."

Brown said he hasn't been coached like this since high school. Silas didn't just say, 'shoot', he meant it.

Larry Brown said that also, Kwame Brown described, but it's more about the reaction from a coach when you miss it. (Silas) carries a confidence with him that if you miss a good shot, it's not a big deal. Just keep playing hard.

News Observer

[Responding to the question: Do you think bad comedians know they’re bad?] It seems like my experience has been that the truly good comedians, the people who are really funny, are always doubting themselves, and it seems like the people who have very little talent are the ones who never doubt themselves like George Bush. Same thing in politics. He doesn’t seem to be worried, doesn’t have a second thought about anything. So, if you’re a comic and you’re not worried that you’re funny, you’re not funny.
[Editorial note: The political views expressed in this quote don't necessarily reflect those of A Penny's Worth]

Jimmy Dore, Comedian / Buzzine

GQ: Your new movie is called Friends with Benefits. Ever been in one of those relationships?

Mila Kunis: Oy. I haven't, but I can give you my stance on it: It's like communism - good in theory, in execution it fails. Friends of mine have done it, and it never ends well. Why do people put themselves through that torture?

FoxNews.com

‘A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable and should be secured because they seldom return.’

Francis Bacon / Google Knol

As I was finishing college, I was invited to Stanford with a small group of young people to discuss economics with Milton Friedman for a PBS series called "Tyranny of the Status Quo." I was a socialist then and spent several weeks studying left-wing economic doctrine in order to rebut the great man.

On the afternoon of my final cram session, I found a chair by the hotel pool, but as I was mastering the high points of the Swedish regulatory regime, the Hawaii women's volleyball team settled around me, sunning themselves and cavorting in the water. Distracted for some reason, I did not go on to crush Friedman in debate that afternoon.

The show consisted of me making some left-wing argument, Friedman demolishing it in roughly six to eight words, and then me sitting there with my mouth agape trying to think of what to say.

David Brooks / New York Times

Assad soon faced an unprecedented challenge to his regime, fueled by anger after decades of dynastic dictatorship. Not only did thousands of street demonstrators brave government snipers and tanks week after week, but activists unleashed a barrage of clever force multipliers. They had discovered what the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel called "the power of the powerless."

They dyed the public fountains of Damascus and Hama blood red. They scribbled anti-regime slogans on hundreds of ping-pong balls and rolled them down into the Damascene streets from a tall hill. They created phantom demonstrations by recording rallies in one city and broadcasting them from loudspeakers hidden atop buildings in another. And so they forced Assad's goons to spend time frantically draining fountains, sweeping ping-pong balls from sidewalks, and chasing imaginary street protesters.

David Feith / Syrians Unleash the Power of Creative Dissent

Eating more fish is a good thing, say health experts--unless that fish happens to be fried.

Los Angeles Times

In the early 1980s, Mr. Coustas was in Japan to sign a new shipbuilding contract for Danaos. He recalls being approached by a Japanese workers' representative who "wanted to thank us for giving them work." The worker told him, "'We will do everything possible to build a good ship for you.' Can you imagine that happening here? Here, if you tried to do the same thing and place an order in the Greek shipyards, you would get protests that either you paid too little, or are trying to pressure the workers, or whatever."

John Coustas, Greek Owner of Danaos Corp.

Students don't learn new words by studying vocabulary lists. They do so by guessing new meanings within the overall gist of what they are hearing or reading. And understanding the gist requires background knowledge. If a child reads that "annual floods left the Nile delta rich and fertile for farming," he is less likely to intuit the meaning of the unfamiliar words "annual" and "fertile" if he is unfamiliar with Egypt, agriculture, river deltas and other such bits of background knowledge.

E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Years ago new engineers in the Lamp Division of General Electric were assigned, as a joke, the impossible task of frosting bulbs on the inside. Eventually, however, an undaunted newcomer named Marvin Pipkin not only found a way to frost bulbs on the inside but developed an etching acid that gave minutely rounded pits instead of sharp depressions. This materially strengthened each bulb. Fortunately, no one had told him it couldn't be done, so he did it.

Bits & Pieces, December, 1989, p. 20-21

One of the major failures of entrepreneurs is that they believe in themselves more than their ideas.

Air Asia founder, Tony Fernandes

"I don't think people understand," the brunette beauty says in the February issue of Esquire. "They all think we should shut the f**k up and stop complaining because you live in a big house or you drive a Bentley. So your life must be so great. What people don't realize is that fame, whatever your worst experience in high school, when you were being bullied by those ten kids in high school, fame is that, but on a global scale, where you're being bullied by millions of people constantly."

Actress, Megan Fox

Almost 80 percent of National Football League players are flirting with bankruptcy two years after they retire, according to Sports Illustrated. NBA players aren't faring much better. 60 percent of former National Basketball Association players end up broke within five years of retirement. Athletes squander millions of dollars due to bad decisions, lavish spending and poor financial planning.

Yahoo! Sports / Investopia.com

Ever wondered why football goalkeepers almost always make spectacular dives in those nail-biting penalty shoot-outs ... [and] ... why they often dramatically fail to save the shot[?] ... according to the findings of recently published international research, they'd be better off standing still to win the game for their team ... The reason they dive appears to ... boil down to peer pressure: goalies feel that, if they dive, their coach, fans and team-mates will think they've done their all to deflect the shot. But, after watching hundreds of penalty shoot-outs, researchers concluded they'd be better off ... standing still in the centre of the goalmouth - rather than diving to their left, or right. If they remained still, they would likely save one out of every three penalties. Diving to their left, or right, would result in a chance of below 15% in making a successful stop. How often did the goalkeeper actually stay still? The research, published in the journal, Progress in Brain Research ... found that only in 6% of all penalty kicks faced, did the goalkeeper remain relatively motionless. The research team also discovered after interviews with goalkeepers that many felt pressured to 'look' like they were doing 'something' - best demonstrated by flinging themselves at great speed and athleticism to their left or right. There was also the problem that a goalkeeper - beaten by a shot after staying still in the centre - looked as if they had not tried at all.

Serkan Ozturk / Fairfax Media

Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing - like stocking shelves or labeling parts.

Tech industry CEO, Kyle Wiens

According to multtiple studies, gratitude is mentally and physically nutritious for kids.

"We know that grateful kids are happier [and] more satisfied with their lives," explains Hoftra University psychology assistant professor Jeffrey Froh in an article this week in The Washington Post. "They report better relationships with friends and family, higher GPAs, less materialism, less envy and less depression, along with a desire to connect to their community and to want to give back."

That's not all. It's also believed to boost immune systems and lower blood pressure over time. In a Temple Univeristy study, patients with hypertension lowered their blood pressure just by calling a "gratitude" hotline everyday.

...

In a study of early adolescents, Froh found that kids who journaled daily about their good fortune, over a period of two weeks, were less prone to depression and more satisfied with their lives overall. And that optimism and satisfaction made them more likely to take care of themselves physically in the long-term.

Pyschologist Robert Emmons, author of the book "Thanks!", explains it this way: "Our emotional systems like newness, [but] we adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house-they don't feel so new and exciting anymore. Gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it. "

But like anything else, gratitude takes getting used to. Developing a 'thanking' routine, from journaling to dinner time shout-outs, is an essential element to all the studies that noted improvements in patients.

Shine / Yahoo!

Be self-deprecating. "Humor is a powerful weapon," says Jeff Nussbaum, a speechwriter who has worked for Al Gore and Joe Biden. "But to earn the right to wield it against others, you need to turn it against yourself first." Gephardt made the mistake of going after Republicans without first winning over the audience. "There wasn't that same goodwill," recalls Attie. "He was a little too harsh on people."

Christopher Beam / Slate

[Piers] Morgan says he's learnt a lot about technique from Barbara Walters, whose book he still keeps in his office for reference.

"The best way of assessing someone's character is to get them emotional," he says, citing one of Walters's tricks.

Sydney Morning Herald

The Everton star [Tim Cahill] is the rarest of interview subjects when it comes to professional sports folk. Not just interesting but interested. You ask him questions, and he asks them back. He wants to know about what you are doing, how your job works, who you are. He wants to chat.

Sydney Morning Herald

The more control you seek, the less influence you will have. And the more influence you have, the less control you need.

Dick Gregory / Mijah.com

Small design elements make a difference. Niels van Quaquebeke and Steffen Giessner of the Rotterdam School of Management showed logos of 100 Global 500 companies to two groups of participants. One group rated them on attractiveness and symmetry; the other judged whether the logo suggested that the company behaved ethically. The finding: Rationally or not, people associate symmetrical logos with more ethical, socially responsible behavior.

Harvard Business Review

Loyalty can be a virtue, but it is a secondary virtue when it conflicts with principle, and a vice when it's only a function of ambition.

Bret Stephens

And with three failed marriages behind her (Moore was previously married for four years to musician Freddy Moore and for 13 years to Bruce Willis, with whom she had three daughters), the "G.I. Jane" actress reveals another big fear.

"I would say what scares me is that I'm going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I'm really not lovable, that I'm not worthy of being loved," Moore reveals. "That there's something fundamentally wrong with me."

Yahoo! / Demi Moore

Say "placebo effect" and most people think of the boost they may get from a sugar pill simply because they believe it will work. But more and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos.

A particular mind-set or belief about one's body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision, several recent studies have found, highlighting how fundamentally the mind and body are connected.

It doesn't seem to matter whether people know they are getting a placebo and not a "real" treatment. One study demonstrated a strong placebo effect in subjects who were told they were getting a sugar pill with no active ingredient.

...

Hotel-room attendants who were told they were getting a good workout at their jobs showed a significant decrease in weight, blood pressure and body fat after four weeks, in a study published in Psychological Science in 2007 ... Employees who did the same work but weren't told about exercise showed no change in weight. Neither group reported changes in physical activity or diet.

Patients in a recent study were treated with placebos for an induced asthma attack. They reported feeling just as good as when they received an active treatment with albuterol.

Another study, published earlier this year in the journal Health Psychology, shows how mind-set can affect an individual's appetite and production of a gut peptide called ghrelin (GREL-in), which is involved in the feeling of satisfaction after eating. Ghrelin levels are supposed to rise when the body needs food and fall proportionally as calories are consumed, telling the brain the body is no longer hungry and doesn't need to search out more food.

Yet the data show ghrelin levels depended on how many calories participants were told they were consuming, not how many they actually consumed. When told a milkshake they were about to drink had 620 calories and was "indulgent," the participants' ghrelin levels fell more "the brain perceived it was satisfied more quickly" than when they were told the shake had 120 calories and was "sensible."

The results may offer a physiological explanation of why eating diet foods can feel so unsatisfying, says Ms. Crum, first author on the study. "That mind-set of dieting is telling the body you're not getting enough."

Studies across medical conditions including depression, migraines and Parkinson's disease have found that supposedly inert treatments, like sugar pills, sham surgery and sham acupuncture, can yield striking effects. A 2001 study published in Science found that placebo was effective at improving Parkinson's disease symptoms at a magnitude similar to real medication. The placebo actually induced the brain to produce greater amounts of dopamine, the neurotransmitter known to be useful in treating the disease.

...

With depression, an estimated 30% to 45% of patients, or even more, in some studies, will respond to a placebo, according to a review published in December in Clinical Therapeutics. An additional 5% of patients were helped by an antidepressant in cases of mild depression, and an additional 16% in cases of severe depression. (The clinically meaningful cutoff for additional benefit was 11%.)

Fertility rates have been found to improve in women getting a placebo, perhaps because they experience a decrease in stress. A recent randomized trial of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome found that 15%, or 5 of 33, got pregnant while taking placebo over a six-month period, compared with 22%, or 7 of 32, who got the drug, a statistically insignificant difference. Other studies have demonstrated pregnancy rates as high as 40% in placebo groups.

Ted Kaptchuk, director of Harvard's Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter, and colleagues demonstrated that deception isn't necessary for the placebo effect to work. Eighty patients with irritable bowel syndrome, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder, were assigned either a placebo or no treatment. Patients in the placebo group got pills described to them as being made with an inert substance and showing in studies to improve symptoms via "mind-body self-healing processes." Participants were told they didn't have to believe in the placebo effect but should take the pills anyway, Dr. Kaptchuk says. After three weeks, placebo-group patients reported feelings of relief, significant reduction in some symptoms and some improvement in quality of life.

Why did the placebo work, even after patients were told they weren't getting real medicine? Expectations play a role, Dr. Kaptchuk says. Even more likely is that patients were conditioned to a positive environment, and the innovative approach and daily ritual of taking the pill created an openness to change, he says.

Do placebos work on the actual condition, or on patients' perception of their symptoms? In a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Kaptchuk's team rotated 46 asthma patients through each of four types of treatment: no treatment at all, an albuterol inhaler, a placebo inhaler and sham acupuncture. As each participant got each treatment, researchers induced an asthma attack and measured the participant's lung function and perception of symptoms. The albuterol improved measured lung function compared with placebo. But the patients reported feeling just as good whether getting placebo or the active treatment.

"Right now, I think evidence is that placebo changes not the underlying biology of an illness, but the way a person experiences or reacts to an illness," Dr. Kaptchuk says.

Placebo can be more effective than the intended treatment. In a trial published in the journal Menopause in 2007, 103 women who had menopausal hot flashes got either five weeks of real acupuncture, or five weeks of sham acupuncture, where needles weren't placed in accepted therapeutic positions. A week after treatments ended, only some 60% of participants in both groups reported hot flashes?a robust immediate placebo effect. Seven weeks post-treatment, though, 55% of patients in the sham acupuncture group reported hot flashes, compared with 73% in the real acupuncture group.

Wall Street Journal / Shirley S. Wang

Both men use a technique they say is popular with memory fanatics, a method known as loci, which means places, thought to be used by the ancient Romans and Greeks. The theory is that the brain is best equipped to remember images and locations, because this information is evolutionarily useful, say, in helping humans remember which trails through the woods lead back home.

By turning names, facts and figures into pictures and then anchoring these images in the mind using familiar locations, such as one's house, one needs only to "walk" through his house mentally to remember where the image was placed.

"It's such an addicting hobby-slash-sport," says Mr. Dellis. "When you start the techniques, you don't believe it [is going to work]. When you see the results, you feel like you have a superhuman power."

One key is to move through the location the same way each time to place each memory in order. Using a house, it might be front door, hall mirror, coffee table, etc. To remember a grocery list, imagine, say, the eggs smashed on the front door, the bread reflected in the mirror and the orange juice spilling on the table.

Some anchor their memories on the golf course (the tee box, fairway and green for each hole are natural locations). Others use the trip to school or to visit their grandfather. One past memory championship competitor would move her fingers as she recalled information because she played the piano and was scoring music to remember streams of numbers, says Tony Dottino, a founder of the tournament.

The more outrageous or evocative the picture, the easier the word is to recall, experts say. For instance, to remember a grocery list that includes milk, one might imagine milk spewing from the TV?the location anchor.

Proponents say these memory techniques have uses beyond merely wowing people. They can help business types give speeches without notes, and students memorize facts for tests.

WSJ / Nelson Dellis

Staffers said much debate was made over whether to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room. ["800-pound gorilla" refers to a very powerful opponent, while "the elephant in the room" refers to an obvious truth which is ignored]

FoxNews.com

unlike athletes, male fashion models earn far less than their female counterparts. ''Some shifts you don't get much at all and others are a whole lot better, but there's definitely a disparity between male and female models,'' he said.

''It's the converse of what was happening in tennis, with the males earning a lot more than the females. But now the females have caught up [in tennis], so it will be interesting to see what happens in the modelling world.''

Sydney Morning Herald / Damien Stenmark

This aggressive missionary effort bears fruit. In 2010, the church reported 272,814 converts world-wide, or roughly five per missionary. Of course, the number of converts varies widely by mission. A missionary in South America can expect to baptize regularly, while those in some European countries are lucky to count even one convert by the time they come home.

The most important converts to Mormonism might be the missionaries themselves. Studies indicate that returned missionaries maintain strong levels of religious activity, with more than 80% attending services each week and paying tithes to the church. Returned missionaries also tend to have high educational levels and marriage rates.

Allison Pond / Wall Street Journal

Research ... shows having less than 20 reviews about a product does not actually help people decide if a product is what they want. In some cases it actually reduces the positive perception of the item [and] ... only about 1 in 1,300 purchasers actually write a review.

Jared Spool / WatchingTheWatchers.org

President George W. Bush shared with me that he's never known a time in his entire life he was not unconditionally loved by his father. He said, "You know what that did? It gave me the freedom to fail."

Josh McDowell

Julian Lennon [Beatle, John Lennon's son] is not always so ready to make allowances. When people come up to him in the street, blabbing about their love for his father, "because he spoke the truth", they meet with a polite reserve.

"I have to say that, from my point of view, I felt he was a hypocrite. Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself."

The Telegraph

The good news behind the bad news of rising persecution is an increase in church growth, which often results from the persecution itself. A pastor in Iran states: "We wouldn't be growing if we didn't have a price to pay for our witness."

Open Doors USA

That productive capacity, [President Calvin] Coolidge knew, was sapped by the spendthrift, he called it "socialistic", notions of government that sought to be all things to all people. Coolidge, making note of federal farm subsidies and flood insurance, criticized the thinking of "expect[ing] the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts," in a post-presidential column on Oct. 17, 1930. Americans, he wrote, "want the right to run our own business, fix our own wages and prices, and spend our own money, but if depression and unemployment result we look to government for a remedy."

As Coolidge saw things in 1924, "A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude." Coolidge helped Americans prosper by letting them be free.

Charles C. Johnson

"Not having the power is liberating," says [Icann founding chairman, Esther] Dyson, who warns against Web oversight by governments or groups of governments. When asked about lobbying by the United Nations for control over the Web as an alternative to Icann, Ms. Dyson correctly calls this a "fate worse than death" and quotes this warning from a poem by British poet Hilaire Belloc: "Always keep a-hold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse."
...
Icann proves that a self-regulating body can do its job, if it has limited powers and isn't burdened by political agendas - even and especially - if it oversees something as complex, global and valuable as the Internet.

You have given so much to me. Give one thing more, a grateful heart.

George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh poet, Anglican priest and member of Parliament / LA Times

[Randy] Moss was right about one thing Sunday: The NFL is about business. "Football leaves you in college and high school. This is a job. And if you understand the nature of this job then you understand where I'm coming from."

Yahoo! Sports / Randy Moss

Max Markson, the celebrity agent who advised Bingle through the couple's break-up, says [Michael] Clarke will win back the public if he performs on the field. ''Australia turned their back on Mark Waugh, Shane Warne,'' Markson says. ''As soon as they started scoring runs or taking wickets, they turned back. Public opinion sways, that's part of it - the ebb and flow.''

Clarke's vice-captain for Sydney, Brad Haddin, agrees: ''The reaction from the public changes week to week: you are one good innings away or sometimes one good cover drive away from the support being with you. . ."

Sydney Morning Herald

It was there that he [Dale Carnegie] got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the "Y" manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. In his first session, he had run out of material; improvising, he suggested that students speak about "something that made them angry", and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience.

Dale Carnegie / How to Win Friends and Influence People

[C.S. Lewis] thought that fairy tales were the best way to convey truth for children and adults alike. He wrote about this quite often in his letters, and took no shame in reading fairy tales out loud in British pubs with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in his dedication to Lucy Barfield in "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." "You are already too old for fairy tales," he wrote to the young Lucy, "but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

Micheal Flaherty / Wall Street Journal

[On 'While You Were Sleeping'] This is the first romantic comedy I've seen in a long time that, by the third act, doesn't forget about being funny.

Jeffrey M. Anderson / combustiblecelluloid.com

But a deeper weirdness is a law seemingly bent on outlawing bargaining because bargaining brings uncomfortable differences to light. For experiments do indeed suggest [car] salespeople make generalizations about which groups are likely to bargain hardest. Even black salespeople have been found to lead off with a higher quote when meeting a black shopper. Women are said to be less aggressive bargainers than men. Other generalizations suggest themselves, such as my salesman's belief that fathers like playing big spender when spoiling their teenage daughters.

Who knows why these differences turn up in the data, but no law of nature says every cultural subgroup must be equal in its determination to cadge every nickel of advantage in every transaction.

Holman Jenkins

"Americans make up six percent of the world's population, but they account for 100 percent of the men on the moon. So what? America functions. Much of the rest of the world does not."

Wall Street Journal

But exactly what an English major makes in a lifetime has never been clear, and some defenders of the humanities have said that their students are endowed with "critical thinking" and other skills that could enable them to catch up to other students in earnings.

Turns out, on average, they were wrong.

Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business are as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who major in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology, according to an analysis by researchers at Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

Washington Post / Peter Whorisky

Over lunch, Prof. West tells me that "every teacher needs to find his style" and that his is "old-fashioned lecturing." He observes that he has become more "conversational" over the past 40 years of teaching; not once during his lecture did he consult any notes. Professors, he says, need to figure out how to play to their strengths—by listening and watching their students carefully. "I look out at every class to figure out what's working and what's not."

There are tricks and devices that can help. For instance: "Never underestimate the power of dead air." Prof. West advises "asking a question and simply waiting for the answer." He has noticed that "people will get very uncomfortable and start squirming, until someone will try." For the really tough crowds, he says, he will surprise them. They think that he is carrying around a cup of coffee, but actually he has candy inside and when someone finally answers a question correctly, he will throw a piece to that student. He smiles slyly: "It's like training seals."

Prof. Elliott West / Wall Street Journal

For years, federal researchers could not understand why drug- and tobacco-prevention programs seemed to be associated with greater drug and tobacco use. It turned out that children, while grasping the idea that drugs were bad, also absorbed the meta-message that adults expected teens to take drugs. Well-intentioned messages, in other words, can have the unintended consequence of opening the door to expectations and behaviors that might otherwise remain closed.

Meghan Cox Gurdon / Wall Street Journal

Reporters and analysts who cover the [Supreme] court approach predicting the justices in various ways -- some more confident in their judgment than others. But, as with so many things in life, researchers actually have studied the question. Their finding backs up a long-standing intuition of lawyers and experienced journalists alike: If a justice keeps interrupting you with questions, your side is in trouble.

Several studies have looked at the question, including one by USC law professor Lee Epstein, William M. Landes of the University of Chicago and Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based on statistical analysis of Supreme Court oral arguments from 2004 through 2007.

Their conclusion: "The number of questions and the total words in question ... provide a reasonable predictor of most Justices' votes," the clearest exception being Justice Clarence Thomas who, alone among his colleagues, almost never speaks during the court's arguments.

Los Angeles Times

I hate to lose more than I love to win. I hate to see the happiness on their faces when they beat me.
[Jimmy Connors on his dislike of schadenfreude and losing]

BBC.co.uk

Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies:
I always like to ask writers like yourself, what you think, or the skills and the temperament required for being a professional writer?

Mark Steyn:
Well, I think the first thing is you just have to do it. I think if you sit around and wait for the great opening sentence, you'll never write anything.

You mentioned my father. My father was an art expert and for years he was planning on writing a book on art, and he used to leave notes for himself by the telephone and the note would be, "go to post office, pay gardener, write book". [Laughs] And of course, if you just leave notes for yourself by the telephone like that, then you never will write a book. So I think a lot of it is just doing it.

When I started in journalism and you're kind of a cocky young punk and you can't understand why it is that some of these guys you think are like middle aged bores and haven't written anything interesting in 25 years are holding down all the jobs, and my limited experience of being in the editing rooms at newspapers is that often it's because they are the guys who are reliable. That if you say that we need this by 5pm, they deliver it by 5pm. We have that awful phrase, "oh, he's just phoning it in", you'd be surprised if you're the editor, from the editor's point of view, how grateful you are for the guy who phones it in, compared to when it's 5 o'clock and you haven't got the copy, and you're waiting there. So I think at a certain level, you've just got to be reliable, you just have got to do it.

And I think that after that, if you really don't want to be spending a couple of hours a day writing, you really should not be writing. You've shouldn't be doing it. I am a painfully slow writer compared to a lot of people. I'm always horrified when I hear people saying how long they take to write a book because it comes very slowly to me. But I think that even if it comes slowly, you've just got to actually just sit down there and do it.

Conversations with History: Mark Steyn / 10:37 - 12:52

1. You admire characters more for trying than for their successes.

2. Remember that what's interesting to an audience can be very different from what's fun to do as a writer.

3. Theme is important, but you won't see what the story is actually about until you're at the end of it. Now rewrite.

4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff, but it sets you free.

6. What are your characters good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

8. Finish your story and let go, even if it's not perfect. Move on, and do better next time.

9.When you're stuck, make a list of what wouldn't happen next. Often the material to get you unstuck will show up.

10. Pull apart the stories you like. You've got to recognize what you like in them before you can learn from them.

11. Putting an idea on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, you'll never share it with anyone.

12. Discount the first thing that comes to mind. And the second, third and fourth?get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

13. Give your characters opinions. Passive, malleable characters might seem likable to you as you write, but they are poison to the audience.

14. Why must you tell this story? What's the belief burning within you that feeds your story?

15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

16. What are the stakes? Give us a reason to root for your characters. What happens if they don't succeed? Stack the odds against.

17. No idea is ever wasted. If it's not working, let go and move on?it will come back around to be useful later.

18. You have to know yourself: Learn the difference between doing your best and fussing.

19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

20. What's the essence of your story and the most economical way of telling it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Emma Coats