Thomas Friedman

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.

When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo.

When you get up into the crown of a redwood tree, you lose sight of the ground entirely. You also lose sight of the sky. And you're in a lost world. You're in an undiscovered, unexplored ecosystem, somewhere between Heaven and Earth, filled with forms of life, not all of which have been given names by scientists yet.

I am often asked the question: 'What is your favorite type of food?' Although I always answer Japanese, the real response should be and is pierogi, the delectable Polish dumplings that my mother, Big Martha, made so well in many incarnations: potato, sweet cabbage, blueberry, peach, plum, and apricot.

Supplying fuel for a Mars expedition from the lunar surface is often suggested, but it's hard to make it pay off - Moon bases are expensive, and just buying more rockets to launch fuel from Earth is relatively cheap.