“I wanted to get back in government, but everybody said you needed a degree,” said Blackburn, a D.C. resident who once worked as a security consultant for the State Department. “I had the experience, but I needed the degree.”

I’ve had it with people and their smartphones, iPads, Kindles or whatever who are interrupting my experiences at the movies, during a play or while dining at restaurants. I’m fed up with the loud conversations over cellphones on buses and trains.

Do we need more charts? We probably need more charts. Here’s another handy one showing where U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions come from, sector by sector, courtesy of a new report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change:

First, it’s not clear there’s been any movement that needs to be explained. The Washington Post/ABC News poll, for instance, showed 52 percent of the country thought gay marriage should be legal in March, before the president’s comments, and 53 percent though it should be legal in May, which was after the president’s comments. Polling from YouGov also showed no change.

If you’re like most business owners, your days are filled by efforts to make your company successful. Those tasks might be focused on making a great product, generating sales, or building customer relationships. And you might be great at those things.

The roadshow for the upcoming Facebook IPO, together with the heightened public scrutiny into Facebook's inner workings, has opened our eyes to the ways the Internet business as we know it looks a lot like the entertainment industry.