"We're talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn't care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable. ... It's implacable. It takes the carbon dioxide we produce and translates it into heat, which means into melting ice and rising oceans and gathering storms." (Bill McKibben)

"Many people would be hard-pressed to find Syria on a map, let alone know the factions that are fighting and the outside nations that are backing them. A simple computer card game may not be deep, but when players ponder whether to play a "Saudi Support for the Rebels" or a "Rebels Assassinate Key Regime Leader" card, they are making decisions, and that is how humans learn best. Perhaps it will spur them to learn more current events, or if nothing else, they may remember a few names and places, and who is fighting who. At the least, they will learn a lot more than playing Angry Birds on an iPhone."

"What this comes down to is a problem of familiarity and convention... When you stop to think about it, there's really no reason to believe that film and television aren't inappropriate media for exploring real-world issues and events. I mean, Michael Bay made a film about Pearl Harbor, even. But we're more accustomed to non-fiction film and television because there are more examples of them."

"The BBC's first answer was to ignore the pictures almost entirely, in the cause of pure news. The newsreels were still being brought in, often out of date and lacking real sound... By the early 1950s the BBC had its own newsreel department... But [the newsreels] were really short feature films... For the BBC News people, who had grown up in the culture of words, this was fine. Moving pictures could never be serious. They conceded that news bulletins should be aired on television too. But how to marry the raw visual power of film with the sacred duty of news reporting?"

"What gets missed is the fact that work is work, and that we as humans live in the real world, and sometimes we have to make less than optimal choices in order to keep going. It's easy enough for someone on the outside to mock a musician for doing the state fair circuit, or an actor for showing up in an appallingly terrible film, or an author for writing yet another book featuring a protagonist you think is past her prime -- or whatever. But people have to work and eat and keep moving, looking for their chances. I'm not going to dump on them or judge them for that."

"If Russia is neutral, then why does the Assad regime have advanced Russian weapons and advisers, and the rebels do not?"

"With every new distribution medium, be it the telegraph, radio, television or now the internet and mobile phones, there are always those who say that things will never be the same again; but, the change is rarely quite as radical as pundits first prophesise. The key objective for journalists and news executives is to understand and adapt to technological change. However, as in the early days of television, so too during the first decades of digital journalism, the potential of new technology was rarely understood."