Students in school cheat not to get the 'A,' but to avoid the 'C.'

In the 1970s, New York City defaulted on its debt, and yes, the consequences were painful. Enrollment plummeted at City University campuses, which until then had offered free education. Seven thousand police officers were laid off. Crime skyrocketed. Services for the poor disappeared.

Technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age.

You have to actually believe in your capacity to change for habits to permanently change.

Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks.

Prosecutors say it would be next to impossible to get one teen to testify in court that another had slipped him or her a copied disc at lunchtime. And besides, isn't sharing music a time-honored part of teen friendship?

We know there are certain chemicals that are designed to give us a rush of pleasure. But, one of the most amazing things about being human is our capacity to override that pleasure. To either say, 'I don't need that pleasure right now. I'm going to ignore the craving.' Or to find something else that we find a deeper sense of reward from.

I am going to pick on 'Huffington Post.' A lot of its content is great. They are doing a lot of original content now, but historically, a lot of what they did was aggregation. Newspapers don't want to become that, and yet 'Huffington Post' is incredibly popular. It's incredibly successful.

Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions drilled into their brains.

Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months.

For years, agency officials said that atrazine in drinking water posed almost no risk to humans or the environment.

The biggest moment of flexibility in our shopping habits is when we have a child, because all of your old routines go out the window, and suddenly a marketer can come in and sell you new things.

At some point, if you're changing a really deep-seated behavior, you're going to have a moment of weakness.

If you need five minutes every hour to look at tweets or to just surf the Internet, you need to schedule that into your schedule, allow yourself to do that. Because when people start procrastinating, what they've done is, they've tried to ignore that urge. They try to deny themselves time on Facebook or time surfing the web.

You can't suddenly say, 'I want a brand new habit tomorrow,' and expect it to be easy and effortless.

What studies say the number one best way to start an exercise habit is to give yourself a reward that you genuinely enjoy.

Your brain will eventually enjoy exercise for exercise sake, right; endorphins and endocannabinoids will create a sense of reward, but it doesn't know that at first.

Back when Detroit was the head of auto manufacturing, it was clear where profits were created. Right? A car was made in Detroit. There was little argument that you could make that some of the money from that should be sent overseas to Ireland.

Entrepreneurs do not try and create new types of smartphone technologies now because they know it's pointless: They're going to get sued almost immediately.

Patents are being used to wage war in the digital world, and as a result, patents have become a toll gate on the road of innovation.

I think there's a lot of people who right now are worried that people are going down frivolous paths, like inventing new social networks or new games, instead of inventing the cures for cancer or fundamental technologies that will change the world.

Someone will write a resolution that says, 'I want to exercise more,' or 'I want to lose 15 pounds' - which is great, that's a great goal to have - but every study tells us that if you pose things in abstract, goal-related terms, it's much less likely that you will accomplish it than if you structure it as an actual activity.

When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important.

Often in companies, you'll see tensions between sales and marketing. Sales people will want to give discounts to clients because they often get paid a commission based on how much they sell. So they're always pushing to give discounts because that will increase sales. Marketing, however, is judged by overall profitability.

Most people probably don't even know what toothpaste they buy; they just recognize the box on the shelf.

Conditions in Chinese factories are harsh. They're much harsher than they are in, for instance, the United States or any Western nation.

There are supply chains that exist in China and Asia now which the U.S. simply can't replicate.

Foxconn is hugely important, not only in China - it's the largest employer in China - Foxconn is important around the world.

Forty percent of all electronics sold are assembled by Foxconn.

Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again.

We love to receive praise, but usually we're not certain what message, precisely, we should take from it. On the other hand, when someone points out our flaws, we realize immediately that something needs to change.

You're much better off creating positive rewards, complimenting people for acting correctly, rather than punishing them when they act incorrectly.

The discovery of the habit loop is important because it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks.

Consumer habits are key to understanding how to launch a product.

The specific steps for changing a specific habit differ from person to person and habit to habit, but the steps - the formula - is essentially the same, and once you learn it, you can do amazing things.

For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.

In 1688, Edward Lloyd opened a coffeehouse on London's seafront popular among underwriters, men in powdered wigs with mathematical minds and steely constitutions who offered to compensate owners if their boats were lost at sea.

Bank of America is the story of some of the most ambitious, aggressive bank builders on the face of the planet.

There are systems called zero discharge emission systems that would prevent any pollution from making it into the water or the air.

Way back in 2000, the EPA was poised, and, in fact, had drafted a rule, to specially regulate pollution - water pollution and other types of pollution - from power plants, but the energy industry pushed back pretty significantly.

Actually, attorneys say, copying a purchased CD for even one friend violates the federal copyright code most of the time.

Most shoppers don't buy everything they need at one store.

The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores.

Charles Wyly was born Oct 13, 1933, in Lake Providence, La., and for a period lived with his family in a shack without electricity or plumbing.

America has always had an apocalyptic strain. Yet it also seems to believe that if, or when, The End comes, it will still come out on top.

Union leaders argue that pension shortfalls account for a proportionally tiny portion of governments' financial problems, and by all accounts, there are plenty of parties to blame for the growth in payrolls and obligations.

Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

There is no central government database that allows officials to monitor water tests by local systems.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

The Great Bailout is mostly over for the banks. But for those troubled behemoths of the nation's housing bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lifeline from Washington just keeps getting longer.