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The less inequality you have in a society, the more social peace you have. It’s kind of a no-brainer.

‎The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

But that’s not to undermine how accurately we can calculate, because we claim to understand the behaviour of the entire visible universe winding back through the big bang to a time when it was the size of a beach ball. So that’s all the billions of galaxies and all the billions of stars in the galaxies compressed to about the size of a beach ball, which is pretty impressive.

And then there was “Container Bob,” a legend in port security circles.  A month and a week after 9/11 in the giant Italian container port of Gioia Tauro, which handles about two and a half million containers a year, authorities, alerted by a dockworker (again!) discovered a stowaway within a container that was carefully and tastefully appointed for a long voyage.  It had a bed, a heater, and a toilet.  The man also had a satellite phone, a cell phone, a laptop computer and most curiously airport security passes and an airline mechanic’s certificate valid for Chicago’s O’Hare and New York’s Kennedy airports. Curiouser and curiouser, after his arraignment, he was released on bail and disappeared.

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first, and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained, and I recommend you to follow his example…. Books of science and of a grave sort must be read with continuity; but there are very many, and even very useful ones, which may be read with advantage by snatches and unconnectedly: such are all the good Latin poets, except Virgil in his Æneid, and such are most of the modern poets, in which you will find many pieces worth reading that will not take up above seven or eight minutes.