The 'Total Information Awareness' project is truly diabolical - mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial ...
I started, actually, as an analyst on African affairs, mainly on Al Jazeera. I remember the first few series were about Saudi students, and the negotiations between the government and the Sudanese rebels in the south. And then, slowly, I was speaking...
And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical tr...
The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturi...
There's nowhere like home for me, but there has been something so interesting about most of the places I've visited. One that sticks out in my mind is traveling around South America. It's a huge continent, and I only got to see a small portion of it,...
I went to drama school and, after that, went to Paris to train at a place called Ecole Philippe Gaulier. When I came home, I realised I'd have to have a serious stab at it. I didn't have an agent and didn't have the traditional drama school showcase,...
Things come in waves, and I'm always more interested in places like, for instance, Chicago, where people don't follow fashion. They're not galloping past your window on the way to the latest anything. They're living their lives. You do a play, they c...
When I first moved to London, I felt very homesick and yearned after the countryside a lot. Because London's hard. It's a big place, and it's lonely. It takes a while to get into it. But once I got into the flow of it and started to grow up, I realis...
My work comes out of a deep psychological place, so it's not like I'm Object Man at home. Theoretically, I'm not against objects, but, personally, I'm not comfortable attaching myself to them - I don't seek them out. What you can say about my home is...
Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.
You go to something like the Golden Globes, and it's the most glamorous place you could ever be, but then you go home and you're still like, 'Urgh, this dress is too tight, I wanna take off these shoes and put on my pyjamas.' At the end of the night ...
I discovered that in a story I could safely dream any dream, hope any hope, go anywhere I pleased any time I pleased, fight any foe, win or lose, live or die. My stories created a safe experimental learning place.
I suppose even when I was growing up, I noticed I was most happy when I was absorbed in something, lost in the moment and forgot the time, whether was conversation, movie, or a game I was playing. That was my definition of happiness. And I was least ...
Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since...
I guess the reason that I'm a horror fan is that I think it gives people the opportunity to enjoy the feeling of being scared in a safe environment. I think that's why, for all of human history, we've been telling each other scary stories: because it...
For much of Toyota's history, we have ensured the quality and reliability of our vehicles by placing a device called an andon cord on every production line - and empowering any team member to halt production if there's an assembly problem. Only when ...
I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumul...
Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine. With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together....
When I lived in Baltimore, I would come down fairly often to go to the Hirshhorn, and one of my good friends from high school went to Georgetown. I actually ended up going to Annapolis a lot. I had a car, and it was such a serene place to drive.
Police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where an individual goes - all they have to do is place a tracking device on someone's car or ask a cell phone company for that individual's locatio...
It is always weird to be in the studio working on Christmas music in June and July, so we decorated the entire studio, we really did. We brought out lights, fake trees and decorated the place to get in the Christmas spirit. You'd leave the studio, an...