Experimental Science Is Fascinating, But I Don't

I Realize That After Decades Of Positive Thinking The Notion Of Realism, Of Things As They Are, May Seem A Little Quaint. ... When The Stakes Are High Enough And The Risks Obvious, We Still Turn To People Who Can Be Counted On To Understand Those Risks And Prepare For Worst-case Scenarios. A Chief Of State Does Not Want To Hear A General In The Field Say That He 'hopes' To Win Tomorrow's Battle Or That He's 'visualizing Victory'.

The Secret Of The Truly Successful, I Believe, Is That They Learned Very Early In Life How Not To Be Busy. They Saw Through That Adage, Repeated To Me So Often In Childhood, That Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well. The Truth Is, Many Things Are Worth Doing Only In The Most Slovenly, Halfhearted Fashion Possible, And Many Other Things Are Not Worth Doing At All.

It's A Glorious Universe The Positive Thinkers Have Come Up With, A Vast, Shimmering Aurora Borealis In Which Desires Mingle Freely With Their Realizations. ... Dreams Go Out And Fulfill Themselves; Wishes Need Only To Be Articulated.

Crime Seems To Change Character When It Crosses A Bridge Or A Tunnel. In The City, Crime Is Taken As Emblematic Of Class And Race. In The Suburbs Though, It's Intimate And Psychological, A Mystery Resist To Generalization, A Mystery Of The Individual Soul.

In A Process That Had Begun In The 1980s And Suddenly Accelerated In The Early 2000s ... [t]he Peaks Of Great Wealth Grew Higher, Rising Up Beyond The Clouds, While The Valleys Of Poverty Sank Lower Into Perpetual Shadow. The Once Broad Plateau Of The Middle Class Eroded Away Into A Narrow Ledge, With The White-knuckled Occupants Holding On For Dear Life.