Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.

Behind his right shoulder was a wall, with a corner of a painting in its frame, the naked leg of Cupid just visible — “Jesus God!” Jan shouted, having recognized himself at last.

It is natural to claim that there are no such things as incars and outcars. We cannot just stipulate such things as incars and outcars into existence.

You will conceive a bunch of grapes, said he, which are covered by some infinitesimal but noxious bacillus.