I was a child with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and remember enjoying all of my courses almost equally. When it came time at the end of my high school career to choose a major in which to specialize, I was in a quandary.

Although I never married, my brother fortunately did, and I have had the pleasure of watching his three sons and daughter grow up. Several of them now have children of their own. We have been a close-knit family, although often separated by distance, and have shared each other's happiness, sorrows, and aspirations.

I was born in New York City on a cold January night when the water pipes in our apartment froze and burst. Fortunately, my mother was in the hospital rather than at home at the time.

My father emigrated from Lithuania to the United States at the age of 12. He received his higher education in New York City and graduated in 1914 from the New York University School of Dentistry. My mother came at the age of 14 from a part of Russia which, after the war, became Poland; she was only 19 when she was married to my father.

I was always getting told off by my choir teacher for, you know, riffing when I shouldn't.

My great-grandfather was a man of great vision, drive, and native intelligence, with some human flaws amplified by limited education, limited social range, and questionable influence from some of his advisers.

In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.

Martin Luther King was a misguided leader. He worked to be recognized as the leader of black America when what black America needs isn't a leader, it is education.