“Over time, parents have barnacled the most routine activities in infancy with their own preoccupations. It's sometimes hard to see the baby for all the barnacles.”

“We are at the tail end of a decline in infant mortality that began just over a century ago. Babies no longer wander into open hearths or are mauled by marauding pigs. We have vaccines, lead-free ed...”

“The psychologist Jerome Kagan has argued that parenting has a threshold function: up until that threshold is crossed, the effects of a child's very early experience even out in the end. But parenti...”

“One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. Whats the point? he said. Kids arent getting jobs. You never hear faculty talk that way. He did.”

“Education makes your maths better, not necessarily your manners.”

“The goal of argumentation is to make a case so forceful (note the metaphor) that skeptics are coerced into believing itthey are powerless to deny it while still claiming to be rational. In principl...”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom.”

“There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,00...”