GPS is a technology with far more merits than simply helping you find your way around the city.
Yet so far, both merit-pay efforts and programs that recruit a more-elite teaching corps, like Teach for America, have thin records of reliably improving student learning.
Iceland's last-16 victory will go down as one of the greatest upsets in European Championship history, though that game proved that this Iceland side have made it this far on merit.
But their merits far outweighed their drawbacks.
Mr Haugen is right: violence in poor countries merits far more attention from donors in the rich world even if only for reasons of self-interest.
And the administration also knows that the Europeans are less united than some of them might wish.The European split over Iraq went far beyond the merits of deposing Saddam Hussein.
SO far, the financial merits of the Simons' $17.50-a-share offer have yet to be examined in depth, but analysts say they expect a higher offer from them.
The story taken just this far, whatever its merits, appears to allow the possibility of moral knowledge grounded in consequentialist reasoning.
Talking last fall at a conference in Saudi Arabia, Thiel suggested that an underrated trend that merits far more attention is telecommuting and how its rise will change the physical landscape.
To summarize where we left off last time: both the iPhone and the Droid are absolutely incredible for their own reasons, and both have far too many merits for one to truly "defeat" the other.
