1. “In the Details” & “The Fact-Checker Versus the Fabulist”
“It’s called art, dickhead.”
2. “Go Directly, Digitally to Jail? Classic Toys Learn New Clicks”
“Classic toys are becoming much less classic because of upgrades meant to entertain technology-obsessed children.”
3. “Moral Hazard: A Tempest-Tossed Idea”
“Moral hazard sounds like the name of a video game set in a bordello, but in economic terms it refers to the undue risks that people are apt to take if they don’t have to bear the consequences.”
4. “Driven to Worry, and to Procrastinate”
“‘To tell the chronic procrastinator “Just do it,” would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, “Cheer up,”’ he said.”
5. “True Innovation”
“For a long stretch of the 20th century, it was the most innovative scientific organization in the world.”
6. “Why Less Isn’t Always More”
“As an aesthetic category, it’s strangely aspirational. It can become a mode of luxury, even excess.”
7. “‘Salesman’ Comes Calling, Right on Time”
“In both its small details – paying off a mortgage after 25 hard years is a plot point – and its implied questions about the hollowness of some cherished American ideals, the play feels unusually, perhaps unhappily, timely.”
“He doesn’t have that sort of dour, he-man thing to him. He admits fear when he’s fearful.”
9. “For Wallace Stevens, Hartford as Muse”
“It’s all too easy to assume that Stevens was some tortured artist forced into a life of Babbitt-y corporate drudgery. In fact, evidence suggests that he rather liked his peaceful routine in Hartford – his backyard garden, his wine cellar, even his job at the insurance company.”
10. “Why Are Harvard Graduates in the Mailroom?”
“There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday.”
11. “A Mustache for My Son”
“The mustache is a hairy and mysterious creature.”
Submitted For Your Perusal 