Another batch of quotations I like (and therefore you also must like)...
"I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Elie Wiesel
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box." - Anonymous
"The best things in life aren't things." - Art Buchwald
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." - David Viscott

For those of you who have not seen this, what follows is supposedly an essay written by someone applying to get into NYU. Even if this guy is exaggerating a little and only did half of what he claims, he still seems like the kind of guy I'd like to hang out with.
IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello. I was scouted by the Mets. I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and won the weekend passes. Last summer, I toured with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact locations of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week, when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago, I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken to Elvis.

Link roundup...
Your laser printer may be spying on you.
Ten politically incorrect truths about human nature.
A visual representation of how 'solid' matter is almost all empty space. (For maximum impact, scroll one page at a time.)
Blacklisted news
A great puzzle

How fragile is human morality? More specifically, to what extent is our current sense of morality dependent upon economic considerations? Humanity pats itself on the back for its moral progress, and progress does seem to be the right word for it. Although it's taking longer than it should, the proportion of the world which believes that rights should not be dependent upon gender, race, social status, or sexual orientation has gradually increased in recent decades and centuries (although there are obvious exceptions). But do we deserve credit for this progress? It seems to me that much of the progress has been a result of economic considerations; namely, enlightened self-interest in the form of increased opportunities for reciprocal altruism. As just one example, slavery was popular worldwide (even with the Greeks, Renaissance Italy, and the U.S. before the civil war) because there were economic benefits, and it has become less common now that those benefits have been greatly reduced (for example, the industrial revolution made fossil fuels a less expensive option than human labor for many tasks). Would the North have been opposed to slavery if it had been benefiting economically by slavery as much as the South was? (Similarly, the progress of animal rights advocates has certainly been slowed by the fact that humans benefit economically by treating animals so poorly.) My overarching question is, how "sticky" is our morality? If circumstances change again, might all our moral progress be wiped away?

For the 'stuff I wish I had read when I was 13' file:
"Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies. Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults. And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop. Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy." - Paul Graham

Link roundup...
15 ways stores trick you into spending
Harvard Magazine looks at the Science of Happiness
Top-rated charities according to the American Institute of Philanthropy
New Yorker article about Robert Lang, a physicist who has revolutionized origami
52 proven stress reducers

For obvious reasons, this seems like a good time to think about patriotism. Tomorrow, right before the fireworks start, if you rise and pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, I encourage you to consider what that act means to you. What is "The United States"? The land? The people? The government? The institutions? The beliefs? The culture? There is nothing inherently wrong with loving a country (and there are a lot of things about the U.S. that I'm very appreciative of), but mindless obedience to anything is dangerous, so I encourage you to use tomorrow's festivities as an opportunity to examine what you love about the country and why.