In the four decades after World War II, manufacturing jobs paid more than other jobs for given skills. But that is much less true today. Increased international competition has forced American manufacturers to reduce costs. As a result, the pay premi...
Since World War II, most of the conflicts in the world have been internal conflicts. The weapon of choice in those wars has all too often been landmines - to such a degree that what we find today are tens of millions of landmines contaminating approx...
A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all...much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the bloss...
We evolved living in more sunlight than today. We make our own vitamin D when sunlight hits our skin cells. Many people living in the northern hemisphere, however, suffer from lower levels of vitamin D during the fall, winter and spring.
We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries.
I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians,...
One of the reasons I decided to enter this profession," one of the Riot Librarrrians wrote, "was because I'm in love with information, and the library remains one of the few spaces in our lives where information is not a commodity.... There's a subve...
And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?” “Oh, my goodness, yes,” said Anna. “He wrote a book you could kill a man with—twelve hundred pages—called A New Kind of Science. It’s all about them.” “We should totally ask him what he th...
When I auditioned for drama college, they asked me to do my Shakespeare. I couldn't do it. They asked me to do my modern, and I couldn't do it. They asked me if I had a song prepared, and I said 'No,' so I sang 'Happy Birthday.' And I did a reasonabl...
I look at decisions like - it's like an Indiana Jones movie. The guy comes to a rope ladder, and he's being chased. There's uncertainty on the other side, but he knows when he gets to the other side, he's going to take his machete and cut the rope la...
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he ...
When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into yo...
I dated a guy and he liked me but I didn't like him. I went through his wardrobe and cleaned out his house and got him to get a new car. He said to me, 'If I give you $10,000, will you find me my wife because I want someone like you?' And within a ye...
I have a great track record, and I have never been sued. If I can't find someone for someone, I refer them out. I have an affiliate division of matchmakers all over the world that I work with. Men like certain types of women, and I can subcontract th...
My ultimate game - or at least one I would really like to see - would be something where it was like the beginning of George R. R. Martin's 'Game of Thrones', where you're Ned Stark, and you know that one of your friends has been murdered, and you go...
Hey dawg, wassup?" he said, in the strange way that white talent agents from Los Angeles do in an attempt to sound like young black men from underprivileged backgrounds. A linguistic fashion as peculiar as the lisp that everybody in medieval Spain ha...
Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man.
Ha!" he thought. “That will teach me to meddle with magic meant for kings! Norrell is right. Some magic is not meant for ordinary magicians. Presumably John Uskglass knew what to do with this horrible knowledge. I do not. Should I tell someone? The...
Try to be thoughtful, don't make the poor man say it; see how human he is, he has children of his own, it is your job to ask: And he will nod and say And now he can never not nod. And now he can never say no. And now he can never not say .
Jack was unexpectedly moved when he swore allegiance to the king and country. He had served both for years, could easily have laid down his life. Yet it was different to pledge his loyalty and best efforts toward governing this nation. Dying was easi...
One true king knew when to step aside and give up the reins of power—to remove his crown and relinquish his kingdom—all for the sake of glimpsing, just once in a lifetime, the face of a holy child. He was the Fourth to follow the Star. His gift w...
