“Americans continue to shake their heads over new revelations of widespread data mining and near-universal phone tapping, while Unamericans righteously defend these tactics and call for punishment of the leakers who revealed them. Were I to be shown in accurate detail why it was necessary for me to be kept under surveillance, possibly for the […]
Quotes
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Difference Between Being 'Trusted' and 'Trustworthy'
“Rupert Murdoch, an animatronic al-Qaida recruitment poster, in his private letter to Sun staff, after the News of the World was briefly closed for a makeover (not through remorse, or shame, no, because they couldn’t sell advertising space and because he wanted to launch the Sun on Sunday anyway because it’s cheaper to run one […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Difference Between Being 'Trusted' and 'Trustworthy'
“Rupert Murdoch, an animatronic al-Qaida recruitment poster, in his private letter to Sun staff, after the News of the World was briefly closed for a makeover (not through remorse, or shame, no, because they couldn’t sell advertising space and because he wanted to launch the Sun on Sunday anyway because it’s cheaper to run one […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happened to Tech Jobs in Silicon Valley
“Google is visually impressive, but this frenzy of energy and hipness hasn’t generated large numbers of jobs, much less what we think of as middle-class jobs, the kinds of unglamorous but solid employment that generates annual household incomes between $44,000 and $155,000. The state of California (according to a 2011 study by the Public Policy […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How a Calf Head Roasted in a Pit Became a Popular Mexican Delicacy
“The historical method of preparation of calf head developed from the practice of baking an entire calf in the ground overnight, a practice designed to feed a significant number of people with a single large protein source, baked in the only structure available everywhere for free: the earth itself. This was a crude but effective […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Stories that Magazine Editors Are Afraid Of
“It’s probably worth saying that there are editors at all sorts of magazines (myself included) who know they should never assign a story on a certain kind of subject—a Phish tour, say, or Mitt Romney, or what’s up with Cuba?—and yet they do so despite their better judgment. A writer tells you he or she […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When the State Separates a Mother From Her Child
“Sacha Coupet, a professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, who used to work as a guardian ad litem and as a psychologist, worries that the Adoption and Safe Families Act, by promoting ‘adoption as the normative ideal,’ has made it easier to avoid ‘dealing with the enormously complex root causes of child neglect and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How a Bubble Sheet Killed Learning
“‘There was this transformation of the whole culture—and curriculum,’ Andrea says. ‘I could see it mostly through the homework. It really looked like test prep. There were even bubble sheets.’ Oscar had more than a year before the third-grade test, when students start taking the New York State English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests—but […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Who Invented Skiing?
“Serik describes a hunt when Tursen skied down on a bounding deer, leaped on its back, grabbed its antlers, and wrestled it down into the snow, the animal kicking and biting. It is a scene that has been repeated for thousands of years in these mountains. Within the Altay, a handful of petroglyphs have been […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When Your Business Partner Becomes Your Rival
“The Dodge brothers already made two fortunes from their relationship with Ford, by 1913 they were not thrilled about continuing to make parts for the Model T. Ironically, by the time the T started selling in really huge numbers in the nineteen teens it was obsolete and being technologically surpassed by by more modern cars. […]