- "Aren't you listening to me? I will not repeat myself! I say, I WILL NOT repeat myself!" (I heard something like this on the radio a couple days ago.)

- How is it possible that a weather report can list today's high and low temperatures as 49/42°F, while my car and the ice on my windshield tell me it's currently 31°F outside? Today, Yahoo weather lists the high and low in Derby as 47 and 42, yet the current temperature it shows is 41. (If I click on that weather link, however, the current temperature is shown as 43. I don't get it.)

- Does this country have a self-esteem problem? Phrases like "Here goes nothing" and "Let's see if we can't do this" indicate an expectation of accomplishing little.

- "I will not apologize for my behavior. I'm sorry - that's just the way I am." (This is a paraphrase from Homer on The Simpsons.)

- Company A is a private company that wants to raise money so they can make better widgets. They decide their company is worth 100 million dollars. They divide up the value of their company into parts called stocks. Since they want each stock to be a convenient $1.00, that means they'll be selling 100 million stocks. After selling all this stock (called an IPO - an initial public offering), they have tons of money on hand to make a better product. Then Company A decides it wants more money, and invents more pieces of paper to sell as stock, and people buy it. Doesn't that devalue every stock out there? How is this second selling allowed? Well, I guess it doesn't work that way. Maybe the company originally only sold 40 million of its stock. If the stock price rises soon after the original sale (because Company A is seen as a good one), when the company sells the second time, they're getting more in return for each stock. Now, is the second sale still called an initial public offering?

- A possible title for my next article (stolen from my brother who I think got it from a friend): Market Redistribution and the Urban Poor in a Saudi Arabian Province, with an Application to Local Fire Prevention.