“Television is an invention whereby you can be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” Who said it? The answer is at the end of this post. Now on to the links! … “There’s a queasy sense that they just might be avengers from the deep, repaying all the insults we’ve heaped on the world’s oceans” … “Let’s send Navy SEALs into the Planters compound in the middle of the night to shoot Mr. Peanut” … “The night raids and the drone strikes continue, as though the risk of widespread and intense anger toward the United States in those countries doesn’t make any difference to the policymakers” … “Many of these planets are at the upper end of what we might call Earth-like” … “Turkey’s emergence as a regional power and a champion of freedom and democratic values in the Middle East is incomplete until Ankara musters the strength of its own people by empowering its minorities” … “Lawless capitalism leads to scenes like these” … “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do” … “It’s not a ‘drought,’ it’s the new normal” … “We must do our best to document endangered languages before they fall silent” … “I’m still amazed he succeeded in getting them published” … “No one could call suicide a ‘coping strategy,’ but it is one way some people have responded to job loss and debt” … “A democracy is supposed have a progressive tax structure that is in proportion to the means to pay” … “I asked myself whether, one day, I would have the chance to do that” … “Imagine a pill bug weighing over four pounds” … “It’s the worst hell” … “More often than not, scientific discoveries prove to be more spectacular than anything we dare imagine” … “Newsrooms today are anemic and forlorn wastelands” … “No one in America can leave their home, eat a meal, make a phone call or even turn on the lights without paying some sort of a regressive tax that disproportionately affects the poor and working class” … “This never ending quest is in service of our ultimate goal of finding and publishing the Arthur Godfrey Doomsday Message” … “There are forms of teaching that are highly uncreative and where the emphasis on discipline can kill the passion to make art” … “We are witnessing the emergence of a new field of astronomy” … “They decided to do for themselves what their teachers and textbooks had not” … “You get a sense of the global personality of the power system” … “Hearing that their boots may be responsible for spreading a virulent microorganism across the country and around the world is a bit difficult to accept” … “In one castle, the diminutive Rizzuto lay on a medieval rack and asked Pignatano to stretch him” … “This project underlines the importance of maintaining museum collections as well as the role that interested amateurs can play” … “The podium got a little more crowded” … “That’s what you have to do today, because there aren’t enough stars” … “On several important occasions he wrote what appeared to be undiluted truth about the Pakistani state’s deepest dilemmas” … “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them” … “Being rich is a good thing” … “You’ve picked the wrong people!” … “The feeling that most people have is this can’t be right, this can’t be real” … “In 21st century America, upward redistribution seems to be the guiding principle” … “If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army” … “The four universal Fs of evolution are fur, photosynthesis, flight and—mating” … “Can you believe that pompous douchebag tried to tell me that?” … “Biology Prize: Gwynne and Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain ki
nd of Australian beer bottle” … “Just as the world’s spiritual traditions have adapted to the reality that the Earth does not exist at the center of the universe, so too must we now accept, indeed embrace, the fact that we live in a dynamic universe that has been unfolding for billions of years” … This issue’s quote was from David Frost (source)… And finally, “When you grow up, you’re going to be a great writer.” ∞