The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.

Next year I hope there will be even more parties lots of holidays and just having a good time really. Plus wing-walking air shows and learning to fly as they are all things I want to do. I won't be restricted by age.

For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century as North Korea has done.

History is strictly speaking the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.

What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.

Well again a gun sale database is just trying to get the Department of Justice to keep track of the guns that they're purchasing and supplying to drug dealers and murderers. I mean wow. Come on let's get the government under control before we start restricting the rights of - innocent citizens.

And you can't have a prosperous economy when the government is way overspending raising tax rates printing too much money over regulating and restricting free trade. It just can't be done.