I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.
One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts... to my surprise... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.
Scientists and academics in particular focus on detail and the minutiae. When they talk to each other, they usually don't focus on the broad ideas; they don't focus on social interconnectedness. They focus on the task that they're doing.
The older I get, the more I realize the importance of maintaining an even temperament - not getting too emotional, focusing on the task at hand. You don't want to make a business deal based on your emotions.
It's much like playing jazz, flying. It's multitasking in real time. You have a number of instruments that alone won't tell you exactly what the airplane is doing but together give you a picture of everything that's going on.
Computers will be able to do all the mundane tasks in our daily lives.
One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.
Filthy abortion clinics are not uncommon, but finding out about health violations at each clinic is no easy task.
When I worked for Planned Parenthood, we had a specific protocol that we had to follow when picking up our abortion doctor. Looking back, I realize how crazy this was, but at the time, I felt like I was a part of some super secret high-level security task force.
Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
