November 11
eirenicon (n.) A statement or proposal intended to bring peace; an attempt at reconciliation.

November 9
parietines (n.) Fallen or ruined walls.

If you're interested in the subject matter, watch the author's TED talk instead. She offers nothing of particular value in either platform, but at least the TED talk will save you a lot of time. #2025Book50

Ideological crusaders often fall into the trap of thinking that they are living in a revolutionary moment and that the standard political rulebook no longer applies. The Weather Underground in the 1960s and the Gingrich revolutionists in the 1990s both thought that they could dispense with politics as usual. They were both wrong. And they both did a lot of damage in the process.

“Freedom is more important than equality, and the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom.“ --Karl Popper

“Those who can, build. Those who can't, criticize.“ --Robert Moses

Many (most?) of us long to be “on the right side of history.“ But this way of thinking suggests there is a bright line between right and wrong. Things are rarely that simple. Ideas are not so easy to sort into clear categories marked “good“ and “bad.“ Objectivity may be a platonic ideal that no human can ever achieve, but “moral clarity“ is a false god that can easily lead to extremism and intolerance.

Our default setting should be to admit the obvious: our problems are big and our brains are small. If we knew how to solve difficult social problems, we would have done it by now. A better civic discourse would acknowledge our limitations and commit to a process of learning by trial and error in an effort to build knowledge over time. That's why humility is essential to our brand of incrementalism.

November 8
decussate (v.)-- to mark with X; to cross or intersect in an X-shape.

November 5
quaquaversally (adv.) Moving, pointing or protruding in all directions

November 4
leggism (n.) Swindling; cheating at games or gambling

November 3
dragsman (n.)-- A thief who steals from vehicles

November 2
spurcity (n.)-- Obscenity, uncleanness

This might be the worst novel I've ever read. Hitler escaped to Argentina at the end of WWII, and now, at the age of ninety, Israeli nazi hunters have found him and have to figure out what to do with him. One would think that it would be hard to mess up a novel with such an interesting plot, but Steiner does just that. Until the last six pages of the book, NOTHING. HAPPENS. I only found that out by looking for spoilers on Goodreads. #2025Book48

Scene changes always presented the greatest challenge to the masque designer in the seventeenth century as they were virtually impossible to achieve without the audience noticing. One Italian producer solved this by having stooges at the back of the audience shout 'Help! Fire! Murder!' or snap a piece of wood to simulate the crackling of a gallery support. While the audience turned around to investigate he would change scenery. It was a great...

'Stand By Me' is the only song with its own fan club. It's true. There's a whole group of people who scour the world for different versions of the song and have meetings where they play newly discovered versions, discuss the lyrics and drink a toast to Ben E. King.

This feels as if it could have been written by the great Jonathan Tropper, one of my favorite novelists. Maybe that's why this was the best novel I've read this year. Or maybe it's because it's funny. And sad. And beautiful. All I know is that it's everything you could want in a novel. #2025Book47

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.
--Virginia Woolf

Stand out on the sidewalk on Broadway, smoking, hating yourself for smoking, looking at the faces, all those lovely faces, all those lives and friends and families and loves and thinking you are all going to die one day and wondering what we are going to do with that knowledge we daily ignore.

That's the beauty of New York. If you pay enough, anything is possible. I couldn't afford this, but that's what high-interest credit cards are for.

“What happened?“ I asked.
“Do you know what deep vein thrombosis is?“
“An English punk band?“

It's remarkable what you can do when you don't care what anyone thinks anymore.

A small crowd of my colleagues had formed behind him, looks of concern on their pale faces. It dawned on me that journalists are pale. I wasn't sure why. Maybe all that indoor work. We didn't look like handsome TV people.

October 30
panshite (n.)-- A state of panic, confusion, or uproar

October 27
ananym (n.)-- A word formed by reversing the letters of an existing word

October 26
xenotransplantation (n.)-- The transplantation of non-human material into a human patient

October 24
hardiment (n.)-- Courageousness, audacity; a daring exploit or stunt

October 23
thrimble (n.)-- To grudgingly repay a debt

October 21
stradametrical (adj.)-- Pertaining to the size and measurement of streets and roads

October 20
limitrophe (n.)-- A borderland, a neighboring country

October 19
auripotent (n.)-- Rich and powerful

#2025Book46

And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do.

In 2001, Texas became the first state to offer reduced in-state college tuition to undocumented young people. Subsequent efforts to change the law have failed repeatedly, perhaps because of its economic benefits: the advocacy organization the New America Economy estimates that each new class of undocumented graduates (who have to have lived in Texas for three years and apply for legal status after graduation) provides $400 million in...

“The stereotype of the illiterate, poor and rural migrant reaching the borders of affluent countries has to be abandoned,“ writes Francesco Castelli, a professor at the University of Brescia in Italy. “The poorest people simply do not have the means to escape war and poverty and remain trapped in their country or in the neighboring one.“

On bail reform in New York:

Controversially, the new law did not allow judges to consider whether someone was a risk to public safety in making a decision on whether to set bail or not. (Almost every other state in the country permits judges to do so).

October 16
idioticon (n.)-- A dictionary of a minority or geographically localised language.

#2025Book45

The original Mr. Potato Head kit in fact had no potato. It was sold as a set of plastic body parts and accessories to be poked into an actual potato supplied by parents. After years of complaints--rotting potatoes in the playroom, children poking themselves and choking on tiny mustaches and pipes--Hasbro began including a plastic “potato body“ and accessories large enough to pass choke-tube tests.

October 14
Parthian (adj.)-- Describing or akin to a shot fired while in retreat

For reasons that remain a mystery, a heart needs a brain. When a person is declared brain-dead, their heart--along with their other organs--begins to fail around after twelve hours, even if the body is being oxygenated on a ventilator. The blood vessels lose tone, the capillaries start to leak, and within forty-eight hours its all over.

With the 1914 discovery of the anticoagulent sodium nitrate and the pressing demands of world wars, public blood donation began to go mainstream. Whereupon the new challenge was human squeamishness. Up through the 1940s, donor centers would set up chairs alongside arm-sized holes cut into a wall-sized partition. Donors would slide their arm through a hole, making a donation without ever having to see the blood, the needle, or the...

Burn survivors can develop hypothermia in a 70 degree room. ICUs and ORs for survivors of major burns are often kept at 90 or even 105 degrees, nurses and surgeons sweating under their scrubs and sterile gowns.

Between 13 and 25 percent of surgeons grapple with substance abuse at some point in their careers.

Like almost everything else that has been written by Dan Barry, this was amazing.
#2025Book44

On the stool to my right was a sweat-drenched comic named Sammy, talking about how he had killed that night; if this were true, humor had been the victim.

October 11
Xanthippe (n.)-- A scolding, quarrelsome woman

As far back as 1500 BC, in India, and extending through the Roman Empire and ninth century Ireland, nasal mutilation was a form of punishment. Because of the organ's visibility, sitting as it does in the middle of the face, nasal disfigurement served as both humiliation and a warning to the populace. Noses were hacked off for thievery, tax evasion, adultery, disloyalty. Bounties were placed on enemy noses. Entire towns denosed.

Rhinoplasty was the original plastic surgery.

For every step forward, three go nowhere. Progress doesn't march, it lurches.