An American flag is more likely to fly on a mobile home than on a mansion. Someone said that the light at the end of the tunnel could be a freight train heading your way.

• A new telephone scam has been reported. Someone phones you, pretending to be someone at the phone company who is conducting "tests" and asks you to touch certain keys on your phone. When you do, that authorizes the other phone to charge calls to your phone. People in jails and prisons have been said to be among the sources of this scam.

• The media seem determined to portray George W. Bush as someone who is not very smart. But how many dummies do you know who have piloted jet planes?

• As someone who has worked both in private industry and in academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach ethics to people in business, I want to puke.

• Big differences that can be worked out are less dangerous than small differences that can't be.

• Too many people in the media seem to think that being objective means criticizing "both sides," when in fact it means an unbiased search for the truth. You can do objective research on the Nazis and then conclude that they were pretty rotten people.

• The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.

• Whatever you may think about the death penalty, it has the lowest recidivism rate of any of the ways of fighting crime.

• A mother was surprised to hear her son say -- disapprovingly -- that he knew nothing about his high school math teacher's personal life. All his other teachers discuss their personal lives in the classroom, so it is the math teacher who seems odd.

• We are privileged to live in a time when we could see the greatest tennis player of all time, the greatest golfer of all time and the greatest basketball player of all time. On the other hand, we could also see the worst president of all time, so perhaps it all evens out.

  Continued...