These pockets form around public subjects: politics, law, economics and knowledge professions.

ECONOMIST: The evolving blogosphere

With a new US president with very little if any knowledge of world politics and a potentially unstable domestic platform after the recent, highly political judgement reached by the American Supreme Court, the time has never been better for Europe to take up its historic responsibility to put its own house in order.

BBC: What future for the EU?

The book, pamphlet and newspaper have spread knowledge (and nonsense), transforming economies, politics and religion.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: COMMUNICATION

And Jobs to my knowledge never attended one of these global elites gatherings to opine on world politics and other matters that are far afield from his area of technology.

FORBES: What Is Up With Eric Schmidt's Revisionist History of His Relationship With Steve Jobs?

His knowledge of Italian politics, public finances and financial markets may make him willing to play games of brinkmanship, says Marco Annunziata, the chief economist at GE.

ECONOMIST: The European Central Bank

As a general rule, younger case officers do better intelligence-collection work than older colleagues, whose zeal for Third World field work declines precipitously as their knowledge and expertise in CIA bureaucratic politics increases.

WSJ: Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent

This may be wishful thinking, but his essential point is a good one: namely that the boom years before the great recession put far more wealth in the hands of highly educated professionals than in earlier times, and that this class--Ivied, cosmopolitan, sophisticated in the ways of the knowledge economy--naturally gravitates toward liberal values and politics.

FORBES: Medialand

Appointment to them now requires some knowledge of engineering and hydrology, not simply a friend in politics.

ECONOMIST: New Orleans five years after Katrina

It is through politics that the teams with the most relevant knowledge in addressing a particular problem or situation exert their influence and guide the organization to the best outcome available.

FORBES: The New Corporate Power Couple