I was in Catholic school where you were taught not to lie, ... It's hard to believe a young child at that age would lie. There was no lie about it.

The problem of forgetting might not torment us so much if we could only convince ourselves that remembering isn't important. Perhaps the things we learn - words, dates, formulas, historical and biographical details - don't really matter. Facts can be looked up. That's what the Internet is for.

[The first floor - the original ranch house - was dark and contained the entry, sitting room, and bedrooms (a master suite had been carved from the old kitchen and bath), while the airy top floor housed a large living room, kitchen, dining room, studio, and loft, and it opened onto a rear deck. It was a design layer cake that wasn't all that appetizing.] When you walked in on the ground floor, you had no idea what was upstairs, ... It was two totally different houses.

The history of using mice to stand in for humans in medical experiments is replete with failures.

Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.

Human attention is limited, and a massive number of newly browsable books from the long tail necessarily compete with the biggest best-sellers, just as cable siphons audience from the major networks, and just as the Web pulls viewers from TV.