THOMAS FRIEDMAN

Every sport needs its temple, its cathedral.

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.

Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education.

The merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.

What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.

Many authors hate to go on grinding book tours. But I've always found it a useful way to be a foreign correspondent in America and take the pulse of the country.

I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.

I have a daughter who is a sophomore in college and another who is in the 11th grade of high school.

Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.

When it comes to dealing with the world's climate and energy challenges, I have a simple rule: change America, change the world.

No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.

I love America. I think it's the best country in the world. But I also think we're not tending to our sauce.

There's no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student's achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children's education can also make a huge difference in a student's achievement.

I've always enjoyed the communal side of Jewish life.

Capitalism and political systems - like companies - must constantly evolve to stay vital.

No matter where I go - London, Beirut, Jerusalem, Washington, Beijing, or Bangalore - I'm always looking to rediscover that land of ten thousand lakes where politics actually worked to make people's lives better, not pull them apart.

We need better neighbors, neighbors that care about the schools in their neighborhood whether they have kids in them or not, because they know that the health and vitality of that neighborhood depends on it.

Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more.

Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.

We say that necessity is the mother of invention, and no country has more of a necessity to develop clean power than China.

In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny.

Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells.

By 'flat' I did not mean that the world is getting equal. I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. That's why an Indian in Bangalore can take care of the office work of American doctors or read the X-rays of German hospitals.

I've been a critic of the antiglobalization movement, and they've been a critic of me, but the one thing I respect about the movement is their authentic energy. These are not people who don't care about the world.

If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.