Carolyn Wells

“When Deep Springs went coed, the student body voted to place a two-year moratorium on all media, in an attempt to keep the first class of women from feeling watched. I was the first journalist allowed in after the moratorium lifted, but that happened only after months of back-and-forth and the establishment of ground rules.”

“Our Bommy Nights certainly felt like more of a folk event than being strongly allied to the Gunpowder Plot. And that’s probably because there’s some primal instinct in all of us, some genetic memory, that draws us to a bloody good fire.”

“One thing is certain: cemeteries can play an essential role in hosting ecosystems. Yet they also get a bad environmental rap, and not without good reason. According to a study published in the Berkeley Planning Journal, funerals use enough wood to build 4.5 million houses each year. Two thousand seven hundred tons of copper and […]

“Its flesh fed a full range of terrestrial and marine scavengers. Its fate becomes part of the known record of whale deaths along North America’s west coast, helping to inform ocean managers and enhance a greater database of long-term trends, be they related to disease, human actions, or ocean conditions. And its skeleton is likely […]

“Twenty years on, it’s possible that the world has just finally caught up to Derek Zoolander. With its daft humor, on-point criticism of the fashion industry, and exhaustive list of celebrity cameos, Zoolander has a legacy that has not just lived on with audiences, but grown in accuracy.”

“In his trademark brightly coloured shell suits, scant shorts and string vests, Savile had performed his perversions almost as much as he’d hidden them. His manner almost dared people to challenge him. Because of the UK’s punitive libel laws, no one ever had. On the Monday morning after Savile’s death, in the Newsnight office at […]

“To say that Rogers’ mobile division was successful would be like saying Babe Ruth was pretty good at swinging a bat. The company hit it out of the park—repeatedly. By luck or by design, it leapfrogged over its competitors, Bell and Telus, and became the darling of Bay Street.”

“Today, there are nearly 100 active micronations around the world, although the number fluctuates frequently. They engage in diplomacy, have feuds, military uniforms, and self-fashioned leaders with opulent titles, because—well, why not?”

“Through the narrator Nick, Fitzgerald describes the nightmarish, soul destroying, drunken despair of the mortgaged millions trapped in the conformist suburban sprawl financing their personal versions of the dream on hire purchase.”