My definition of cool is finding your own definition of cool and not necessarily taking your lead from what other people tell you or from what you might read from magazines or see on TV.

If I was designing a web site for elementary school children I might have a much higher percentage of older computers with outdated browsers since keeping up with browser and hardware technology has not traditionally been a strong point of most elementary schools.

It is an interesting fact that during my tour I was never allowed access to computers radios or anything else that I might damage through curiosity or perhaps something more sinister.

By and large the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is after all a form of communication.

On the political front of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions you bring 10 women in then it's 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy the number of chairs can actually increase.

I thought well you might see curves there but that's just a bone - so even if I lose weight that's not going to change anything. That's how I look. That's my shape. Do the math.

One of the most important things that I did to turn my life around was to realize and to accept that from this minute that's all we have. Everything that happened behind us we cannot change so you might as well look to the future.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later he was succeeding a failed Republican president and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said probably because he himself didn't know.

Choose your corner pick away at it carefully intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.