“No one could look at Peter, who had become a nearly unbearable sight on grounds of posture alone: shoulders drawn together, body trembling, back of neck brilliant red. Sokolov was favorably impressed by the fact that he had not yet shit his pants. Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, […]
“The brain, as far as Richard could determine from haphazard skimming of whatever came up on Google, was sort of like the electrical system of Mogadishu. A whole lot was going on in Mogadishu that required copper wire for conveyance of power and information, but there was only so much copper to go around, and […]
“The natural thing for Zula to be asking herself at this moment was What did I ever see in this guy? Other than his physical beauty, which was pretty obvious. Those occasional left-handed insights, like the arches. Another thing: he worked very hard and knew how to do a lot of things, which had put […]
“Gold, he learned, was considered to be a reliable store of value because extracting it from the ground required a certain amount of effort that tended to remain stable over time. When new, easy-to-mine gold deposits were found, or new mining technologies developed, the value of gold tended to fall. It didn’t take a huge […]
“She turned to face south and the whole field lifted to her eyes as a single reflected sheet of brightness. An ocean, stippled and roiling in waves over submerged rock and rill, rising as she watched. She felt the reckless thrill of being at sea. Like Columbus on his ship, maybe, after he’d spent his […]
“Tina blinked once, twice. ‘Scientists tell us they can’t predict the exact effects of global warming.’ ‘Correct. We tell you that, because we are more honest than other people. We know evidence will keep coming in. It does not mean we ignore the subject until further notice. We brush our teeth, for instance, even though […]
“‘Why does everybody want to be famous,’ Dellarobia asked, ‘and at the same time they want to hear the ugliest trash about famous people?’ ‘I guess they hate what they haven’t got.’ ‘Everybody wants to be rich, too, but there’s still some kind of team spirit. You should hear Bear on his rant against raising […]
“‘Humans are in love with the idea of persisting,’ he said. ‘We fetishize it, really. Our retirement funds, our genealogies. Our so-called ideas for the ages.’ ‘I really hate this. What you’re saying. Just so you know.’ ‘Sorry. I am a doctor of natural systems. And this looks terminal to me.’ In the branches over […]
“Correlation, cause. She would write the words in the corner of her lab notebook, which was starting to fill with small, encrypted notes to herself. ‘Is the parasite sapping the monarch’s strength and preventing a long migration?’ Ovid asked. ‘We don’t know. We are seeing a big increase in these parasite infestations. And we have […]
“In 1996 a SWAT team in Fitchburg, Massachusetts (population 39,102) burned down an entire apartment complex with a flash-bang they used during a drug raid. Six police officers were injured and twenty-four people were left homeless. Several of the officers were later cited for bravery.” ––Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police […]