“Consider the average of those four World Series played at 10-year intervals.  On average those series lasted six games and would have ranked fourth among primetime entertainment in their respective years.  This year’s series went five games and would rank third for the season-to-date.  Everything and nothing has changed.  The media landscape has been completely reinvented, and yet the status of the World Series among the most popular shows on television has remained remarkably stable.”

There was once a naturally occuring nuclear power plant in Africa.

“Snoopy was the polar opposite of Charlie Brown, who had nothing but failures, losses, and flaws. But were the two quite so radically far apart? Snoopy’s critics are wrong, and so are readers who think that Snoopy actually believes his self-delusions. Snoopy may be shallow in his way, but he’s also deep, and in the end deeply alone, as deeply alone as Charlie Brown is. Grand though his flights are, many of them end with his realizing that he’s tired and cold and lonely and that it’s suppertime.”

“So here’s the bottom line. If you’re a poor person in America, your income is as high as the incomes of your counterparts in Scandinavia. But you have a much better chance of out-earning your foreign counterparts if you begin the climb the economic ladder. Yes, that means more “inequality,” but that’s why the term is meaningless. By the standards of any normal and rational person, the US system is producing better outcomes.”

“If Brooks could inspire journalists to engage in public discussion of morality, politics and current events would not be relegated in favor of abstract reflections. Instead, moral scholarship would inform analysis of just about any issue: student debt, income inequality, national defense, healthcare reform, mass incarceration, and on, and on.   And would that give journalists license to moralize? In common usage, that word refers to someone offering haughty opinions of right and wrong. But offering moral opinions or explorations should not be inherently self-righteous. Many readers prefer writers who discuss morality to be forthcoming about their own flaws. On that score, Brooks falls short.”