1 I think Paul Graham has many good ideas, and I enjoyed his book...but this essay (which is also in the book) includes pretty bizarre points. See the sections on Churchill and on Israel.

2 He also repeats this old chestnut "If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking." Contrary to what you may have heard, Galileo wasn't the first or only person to think this, and the current standard of the time was Aristotle's work, not the Church's. Italy had established the first national academy of science in the Western world, and the first standardized curricula at the university level. Galileo published his work without peer review, after receiving warnings for doing it in the past. By the way, if he had waited for peer review he would have avoided embarrassment as well as legal prosecution. His proof was WRONG-he compellingly showed that JUPITER revolved around the sun by observing its moons --NOT that the Earth did. His blunder opened the door for another to prove the theory mathematically, not too long afterward. Pity. Spin isn't limited to astronomy and Galileo's name lives because of it. Other than that, it is a good read. Except for those Churchill and Israel parts. And others.

3 I agreed with the general thrust, though certainly not with the Israel part. Dennis Prager was less succinct in that he wrote a whole book about this questioning-of-one's assumptions imperative--though the title is pithy enough: Think a Second Time.