We're told we can get this disease and we believe it and vow to protect ourselves, and intend (really, truly) to stick by this rule, until we don't because we just can't, because it's just not fair, because our sense of entitlement exceeds our sense of vulnerability. So we blow off precaution again and again, and then we get scared and get tested, and when it comes out O.K., we run out of the clinic, pamphlets in hand, eyes cast upward, promising ourselves we'll never be stupid again. But of course we are stupid, again and again. And the testing is always for the same reasons and with the same results, and soon it becomes more like fibbing about S.A.T. scores 10 years after the fact than lying about whether we practice unsafe sex, a lie that sounds like such a breach of contract with ourselves that we might as well be talking about putting a loaded gun under our pillow every night.

We see this tension in socially dictated beauty standards—the right way to be a woman is to be thin, to wear make up, to wear the right kind of clothes (not too slutty, not too prude, show a little leg, ladies

Like most people, I’m full of contradictions

groundbreaking women and industry leaders, are afraid to be labeled feminists, afraid to stand up and say, “Yes, I am a feminist,” for fear of what that label means, for fear of how to live up to it,

I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don’t, I think, have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that.

And while I may be a bad feminist, I am deeply committed to the issues important to the feminist movement.

I very much like men. They’re interesting to me, and I mostly wish they would be better about how they treat women so I wouldn’t have to call them out so often.

Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink.

I sometimes cringe when someone refers to me as a feminist, as if I should be ashamed of my feminism or as if the word feminist is an insult. The label is rarely offered in kindness.

When I drive to work I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core.

Essential feminism suggests anger, humorlessness, militancy, unwavering principles, and a prescribed set of rules for how to be a proper feminist woman, or at least a proper white, heterosexual, feminist woman—hate pornography, unilaterally decry the objectification of women, don’t cater to the male gaze, hate men, hate sex, focus on career, don’t shave.

Trailblazing female leaders in the corporate world tend to reject the feminist label, too. Marissa Mayer, who was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012, said in an interview, I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don’t, I think, have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it’s too bad, but I do think that feminism has become in many ways a more negative word. You know, there are amazing opportunities all over the world for women, and I think that there is more good that comes out of positive energy around that than negative energy.

we see this fear of categorization, this fear of being forced into a box that cannot quite accommodate a woman properly.

If labeling and categorizing ourselves is going to shut the world down, it has been a long time coming.

the movement has been warped by misperception for so long that even people who should know better have bought into this essential image of feminism

Good women work but are content to earn 77 percent of what men earn. Depending on whom you ask, good women bear children and stay home to raise them without complaint. Good women are modest, chaste, pious, submissive. Women who don’t adhere to these standards are the fallen, the undesirable.

any determined kid with a ball, a bat and a sandlot to play in stands a chance of making it big.

But by all accounts the level of play in youth baseball, as well as the degree of competitiveness and the investment of time and money required of parents, has escalated dramatically in the past 10 years or so — primarily owing to the rising popularity of tournament-oriented travel teams.

But from the very start, Jarrod had an especially determined arm

rec-ball

Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver."

the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy

Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose.

More than 70 percent of those who scored high on the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale correctly picked out the handkerchief-smuggling associate, compared with just 30 percent of the low scorers. Zeroing in on weakness may well be part of a serial killer's tool kit. But it may also come in handy at the airport.

detractors

recalcitrance

Such a profile allows those who present with these traits to do what they like when they like, completely unfazed by the social, moral or legal consequences of their actions.

In its wake, the global average temperature, which had been climbing steeply, suddenly fell by roughly half a degree Celsius—a drop accurately predicted by climate models. The cooling was only temporary, however. Within a couple of years, the mercury was climbing once again. To date, the fourteen warmest years on record have all occurred since 1990.

That “second option”—most often referred to as stratospheric sulfate injection—is hardly the only climate engineering proposal on the drawing board. Other schemes range from the merely goofy-sounding to the wildly implausible

global warming is an energy problem, and solving it will require nothing less than a complete and radical transformation of the world’s energy infrastructure, something most energy experts believe will take decades, if it happens at all.

But while seemingly everyone agrees that society should be hitting the brakes on fossil fuel consumption, we appear to be stepping on the gas instead.

The eruption killed at least ten thousand people instantly, entombing a culture and wiping out a language in the process.

“manmade dust and aerosols”—the very stuff of acid rain and nuclear winter

that as the economy slowly recovers, today’s young people will eventually want to buy cars as much as their parents and grandparents did

“I don’t believe that young buyers don’t care about owning a car,

Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both.

Ultimately, if the Millennial generation pushes our society toward more sharing and closer living, it may do more than simply change America’s consumption culture; it may put America on firmer economic footing for decades to come.

In an ideas economy, up-to-date knowledge could be a more nimble and valuable asset than a house.

Also, it could be women find infected men more attractive

We'll see then how the flowers of rage, planted and nurtured so carelessly for three decades, have sprung up and who will harvest them.

The Advancement Project, a civil-rights advocacy group, calls the move "the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century."

We will hold our tongues lest we seem ageist, lest we seem bitter,

The money borrowed from the future paid for massive tax cuts, with no serious reductions in domestic spending, two expensive wars, and a prescription-drug benefit added to Medicare.

The 2011 report by the Social Security trustees estimates that, under its current administration, the fund will run out in 2036, so there's just enough to get the oldest Boomers to age ninety.

There is a young America and there is an old America, and they don't form a community of interest.

He resisted Republican efforts to slash Pell grants by $845 per student, but then made other changes to the program that will save the government — or cost students, depending on your perspective — a projected $100 billion over ten years.

But to show he was really serious about belt tightening, relatively cheap programs that help young people like the Adolescent Family Life Program and the Career Pathways Innovation Fund were killed.

The graying of Congress has obvious political ramifications, although generalizations can be deceiving.

the predictable outcome of thirty years of economic and social policy that has been rigged to serve the comfort and largesse of the old at the expense of the young.

A Great Disappointment will no doubt follow.

The father, too busy playing, doesn’t hear him. “He’s losing his mind,” the son says.

I thought it was important, more important than anything else in the world.

[He] quickly became enamored with making money

games, my lazy eye didn’t matter anymore because the screen I was playing the games on had no depth; it was flat.

I had recently been skipped ahead from first grade to second grade and the new teacher was worried about me. I was keeping up with the class fine, I was having no problem with that, she said in the note, but she was worried about me because all I would ever write or talk or draw about in class or in my journal or for homework were video games

hirdWorldnations;they'reinthatdeeply.

Thecrowdmovesatoneslowpace,eating,denselypackedbetweentherowsofbooths.

Thefairgroundstakeup3oo-plus.acresonthenorthsideofSpring-field,adepressedcapitalof109,000whereyou.can'tspitwithouthittingaLincoln-siteplaque.Thefairspreadsitselfout,andvisuallyso.Themaingateisonarise,andthroughthetwosaggedhalvesofribbonyougetaspecularvan-tageonthewholething-virginandsun-glit-tered,eventhetentslookingfreshlypainted.Itseemsgarishandendlessandaggressivelyspecial

pithhelmet

HelpMeGrowtentisdifferent-pine-greenandprickly-looking

I'm so scared. I mean, I won't lose it. I'm just addicted.

She says, I hate myself. She says, This is thrilling.

More than the illicitness of the sexuality, there's a sexuality to the selfishness. To doing precisely what you want to do.

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

Days after she'd been told by her husband that he's leaving not for anyone in particular but only because he doesn't love her anymore,

More than guilt, there is fear. You don't want to be found out, he says. Guys who tell you they feel bad, I think it's bullshit

The first time there's a strange hand on your pants, Dorian says, I don't know that there's a better feeling on the planet, I don't care who you are or who you're married to.

he cheats because he wants to feel like his old self

The idea of someone thinking of you, then, who shouldn't be. In bed with his wife. In bed with your fiancé. Nothing has happened, except everything in your head.

where he knew everyone and he likened me to a jar of cherries beside his glass of Scotch and he kissed me there at the bar

I've been with married men, which I feel taught me to be careful not to get hurt, to know that one day it could happen to me.

It’s not that sweet and oily foods have become less expensive; it’s that they’ve been reëngineered while we weren’t looking.

If it’s cheap to consume too many calories’ worth of ice cream or Coca-Cola, it’s even cheaper to consume fewer.

there’s no more basic tenet of economics than that price matters.

If, instead of sweetened beverages, the average American drank water, Finkelstein calculates, he or she would weigh fifteen pounds less.

Between 1983 and 2005, the real cost of fats and oils declined by sixteen per cent. During the same period, the real cost of soft drinks dropped by more than twenty per cent.

humans are genetically programmed to put on weight whenever they encounter plenty, it would seem that by this point virtually everyone in America should be fat.

“We evolved on the savannahs of Africa,” Power and Schulkin write. “We now live in Candyland.”

In America today, by contrast, obtaining calories is very nearly effortless

As a consequence, a person with a genetic knack for storing fat would have had a competitive advantage.

The result of this self-reinforcing process was a strong taste for foods that are high in calories and easy to digest; just as it is natural for gorillas to love leaves, it is natural for people to love funnel cakes.

Something big must have changed in America to cause so many people to gain so much weight so quickly.

Hospitals have had to buy special wheelchairs and operating tables to accommodate the obese, and revolving doors have had to be widened—the typical door went from about ten feet to about twelve feet across.

Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines?

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight.

how mature adaptations are a real-life alchemy, a way of turning the dross of emotional crises, pain, and deprivation into the gold of human connection, accomplishment, and creativity. “Such mechanisms are analogous to the involuntary grace by which an oyster, coping with an irritating grain of sand, creates a pearl,” he writes. “Humans, too, when confronted with irritants, engage in unconscious but often creative behavior.”

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” He replied: “But the knot was tied so long ago, and I have been hanging on tight for such a long time.”

This means that a glimpse of any one moment in a life can be deeply misleading. A man at 20 who appears the model of altruism may turn out to be a kind of emotional prodigy—or he may be ducking the kind of engagement with reality that his peers are both moving toward and defending against. And, on the other extreme, a man at 20 who appears impossibly wounded may turn out to be gestating toward maturity.

When they were between 50 and 75, Vaillant found, altruism and humor grew more prevalent, while all the immature defenses grew more rare.

“Much of what is labeled mental illness,” Vaillant writes, “simply reflects our ‘unwise’ deployment of defense mechanisms. If we use defenses well, we are deemed mentally healthy, conscientious, funny, creative, and altruistic. If we use them badly, the psychiatrist diagnoses us ill, our neighbors label us unpleasant, and society brands us immoral.”

Vaillant’s work, in contrast, creates a refreshing conversation about health and illness as weather patterns in a common space.

The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).

His central question is not how much or how little trouble these men met, but rather precisely how—and to what effect—they responded to that trouble.

“Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.” The other boy runs to him and says, “Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!”

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

His wife found him by the pool, a revolver next to him and a fatal wound through the mouth.

But it turned out that the lives were too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of “successful living.”

medicine, physiology, anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, and social work

His study would draw on undergraduates who could “paddle their own canoe,” Bock said, and it would “attempt to analyze the forces that have produced normal young men.” He defined normal as “that combination of sentiments and physiological factors which in toto is commonly interpreted as successful living.”

What happened to you?

hoping to learn the secrets of the good life.

Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life?

exley said that one Saturday morning, when there were ninety people waiting outside, a local resident asked permission to gather signatures along the line for a petition, only to return a few minutes later with the information that there wasn’t one person there from Lee County.

In the weeks after the Texas Monthly feature was published, Snow’s went from serving three hundred pounds of meat every Saturday to serving more than a thousand pounds.

In central Texas, you don’t hear a lot of people talking about the piquancy of a restaurant’s sauce or the tastiness of its beans; discussions are what a scholar of the culture might call meat-driven.

some barbecue fans visit the way the devout of another sort walk the Camino de Santiago.

like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L.

barbecue tradition that developed during the nineteenth century out of German and Czech meat markets

the equivalent of Matt Damon and George Clooney and Brad Pitt would be establishments like Kreuz Market and Smitty’s Market, in Lockhart

While Lucy's parents' expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it's just a matter of time and choosing which way to go.

So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better --

The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase "a secure career" has gone out of style, just as the phrase "a fulfilling career" has gotten hot.

Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.

Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.

They wanted her parents' careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy's parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves

when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy.

aged war against them.

the flyers inevitably warn parents to watch out for a fixation on rock music and its iconography, for abrupt shifts in hairstyle and dress and, most importantly, for unexplained changes in an adolescent’s circle of friends

They all have written messages and phone numbers on their forearms, the ink: sinking into their skin like homemade tattoos. Once the administrator stalks past their table, they begin to complain about the way they are treated: “You know, it’s like, ‘hair and black, you lose,’ ” says Chris Angelo, leader of the pack. “Just because you don’t fit in, then they [the administration] are like, ‘You don’t even exist here.’ ”

A few weeks earlier a food fight had rocked the calm of the cafeteria, a bowl of mashed potatoes had been upended on a coach’s head, and these boys with the long hair and the black heavy-metal T-shirts – these freaks – had shouldered the blame.

“If you wanted a name for yourself,” says Eric, “you either had to be real good at football, real good-looking or real fucked up. I was the third.” 

he had to hit bottom

dossiers

it – so do the teachers, counselors and administrators – to describe what happens to the loners, druggies, dropouts and suicides. They look around at the masses scarfing pizza and salads and baked potatoes in the lunchroom, and they say, “In a school this big, it is easy for kids to fall through the cracks.”

High school, by definition, is a time of turmoil and transformation. It is a rite of initiation, and very few who participate in its mysteries emerge unchanged or unscathed. With their hormones in riot and the cherished purity of childhood receding like a dream, high-school students find themselves called upon to establish a stronghold in the precarious gap between innocence and experience.

Falling through the cracks. For a cliché, the phrase is mighty versatile and descriptive, and at Walton it is part of the lingo. The kids use

Does chemical dependence run in the family? Has either parent’ struggled with addiction? Does the child exhibit emotional dependence, a fondness for medication, a bottomless self-image?

his parents expelled him from their home

One survived high school. The other did not.

Whenever the captain informed us we were descending for landing, Corky always cupped his hands about his mouth megaphone-style and announced in a loud voice, as if over the intercom: “Please return all seats, tray tables, and stewardesses to their original upright and locked positions.”That always cracked us up.

We never had to deal with airports like O’Hare or J.F.K. and their intestines of roadways looping over and under one another on the way to terminals teeming with the aforementioned ordinary people. No, we always left from small general-aviation airports.

Because of his arm, and because of his team, Jarrod has a list of things that he won't do, or can't do, by decree of his parents, who are usually thinking ahead to the next baseball game. He will not, for example, jump on a trampoline. When his friends from school hold their birthday parties at a rock-climbing facility, Jarrod does not go. He does not play pickup basketball at school, and if it is the week before a tournament, he sits out of gym class. If he goes swimming in the backyard pool, he's careful not to get sunburned or tired out. He is not allowed to skateboard or ride a scooter.

Due largely to its reputation, the team now has players on its roster whose parents think nothing of driving an hour and a half each way from Tampa or Gainesville for the twice-weekly practices

Welcome aboard!

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who were all, "Heeeeeey bros, we were thinking that maybe if you're not busy we could get the right to vote and stuff please maybe?" Then they proceeded to righteously fuck shit up until the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, which gave American women the vote

To deny these things makes you, at worst, a bad person who hates women, including but not limited to: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, your mother, Jennifer Lopez's mother, Jennifer Garner's Aunt Marcy, Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Cher, Julie Andrews, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kraken Kardashian, Karphone Kardashian, Kickball Kardashian, Kornkob Kardashian, and THE VIRGIN FUCKING MARY. At best, it makes you a complacent idiot

If you are a person alive in the world, other people, both men and women, have told you that all feminists are hairy, reactionary, undersexed, man-hating bitches who need to quit cryin' (because we have suffrage now! And Roombas!)

If you are a person alive in the world, other people, both men and women, have told you that all feminists are hairy, reactionary, undersexed, man-hating bitches who need to quit cryin' (because we have suffrage now! And Roombas!).

It also served to increase the individual's sense of disassociation. One moment the soldier was part of a group. The next, in sudden battle, he could find himself alone. A man's world compressed to a frantic and companionless space, punctuated by the disorienting roars and blasts of incoming and outgoing fire.

To close the gun gap, the Pentagon rushed the M16 into service.

a design so simple that their basics could be mastered in a matter of hours.

the AK-47. China had set up assembly lines to make its own version — the Type 56

Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise.

I was unaware of it, but an epidemic had broken out across the country. Late adolescents in suburbs like ours had suddenly gone berserk, running away to other cities to have sex and not attend college, ingesting every substance they could get their hands on, not just clashing with their parents but rejecting and annihilating everything about them.

Up in the bedroom that he and I shared

distant of these schools

(you could even say forced him

"You know," Baron-Cohen says, looking around his office for a ready example, "you and I just say, 'It's hot, we need a fan,' and turn it on. That isn't systemizing. A child with autism would look at the fan, and very likely would become fascinated by the rotation. What happens when light hits the blades, the kinds of reflections you get. So the child ends up staring at the fan for hours every day, because it is a form of mechanical motion that is systemizable—and that obsession gets described as purposeless. I actually think the child is doing something very intelligent."

way of helping autistic people through a computer program. On a CD-ROM, trained actors demonstrate the facial expressions and vocal inflections that correspond to 412 distinct emotions or mental states, arranged under 24 headings, such as "sneaky" or "happy." The idea is that people with autism can bone up on their mind-reading skills without the stress of having to attend a group-therapy session.

"A few drops more of this little chemical could affect your sociability or your language ability. I found it extraordinary."

how much testosterone a female fetus is exposed to—which is much less than a male fetus

the evidence for sex differences in behavior right back to the womb

Proving with scientific data that sex differences in behavior are innate is notoriously difficult.

that gap

Autism affects far more boys than girls. At the Asperger's end of the spectrum, the ratio is about 10 to 1

A rival theory,

why they do jigsaw puzzles without the picture: They just don't seek the pattern in a mass of details.

mindblindness

Autism is perfectly compatible with a high IQ—yet some degree of social disconnectedness, of extreme self-centeredness,

"We all have some autistic traits," he says. "It's just a matter of degree."

there are many more male ones: In Baron-Cohen's theory, autism is a case of the "extreme male brain."

The essential difference between men and women, according to Baron-Cohen, is that women are better at empathizing and men at systemizing

Baron-Cohen's theory of what characterizes autism.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism in which individuals are able to function normally, but have difficulty reading the emotions of others.)

systemizing may take the form of a seemingly purposeless obsession

"systemizing ability." They are lousy at understanding people but relatively good, he says, at making sense of the world.

surfeit

Autistic people, says Baron-Cohen, a psychologist who has studied and treated them for 20 years, lack empathy.

an autistic person would not have been able to see through my polite fib, put himself in my shoes and decipher my concerns.

he can look up and down the line, “read” the defense, and decide where to throw the ball before anyone has moved a muscle

he can look up and down the line, “read” the defense, and decide where to throw the ball before anyone has moved a muscle

school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design

replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality

starts to become predictable

imparts to his or her students can be captured on a standardized test

“value added” analysis

That's because when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong.

uture always seems like something that is going to happen rather than something that is happening;

cognitive dissonance between changing-reality-as-experienced and change as imagined

A majority of Americans say, for the first time ever, that this generation will not be better off than its parents.

I wanted to say that it had been my mistake, the chill in our friendship,

I could never compose my face carefully enough to hide the unhappiness I felt on seeing him

He was only 49 when he and my mother divorced,

It was just that I put him in the position of always being the one to make the effort. It was punishment

being close like this – was better than being seen or heard.

ndure a special torture during their school years

(It wasn’t the lost revenue; it was that you’d squandered some animal: the rearing, cleaning, caring, fattening, slaughtering, transporting, and now butchering, and, at the end of a disciplined line of purposefulness, you’d lost your concentration

But for all the fibbing and fudging that go on, outright lying about who you are is generally regarded as uncool and self-defeating