I go back to Oberlin in the dead of winter to give a "convocation speech" in Finney Chapel, the largest and most historic of campus structures. In a subconscious nod to my college experience I forget to pack both tights and underwear and have to spen...
Who did the council fight?" "It split in two and fought itself." "That's suicide!" "No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peace...
Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes ...
I don't think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, ...
This is shitty to say, but there's not much pathos involved in a case like that. Think about it: Little So-and-so the Fourth drowns himself Tuesday night after receiving his midterm grades in the school of civil engineering. The body goes back to Wes...
But then, Phillip reminded me of something that happened so long ago, I had completely forgotten it. He reminded of when we were ten, and he gave me my first kiss. We were on the swings out behind school, and right after he kissed me, he got up and r...
His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivided and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the mi...
Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life’s good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and sol...
I knew that iridium-193 was one of two stable isotopes of iridium, a very rare, very dense metal, but I didn't know that the periodic table even existed. I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds. I...
One of the newest figures to emerge on the world stage in recent years is the social entrepreneur. This is usually someone who burns with desire to make a positive social impact on the world, but believes that the best way of doing it is, as the sayi...
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair...
i think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be ...
Thankfully existing only in SMALL pockets within our discipline, is “intellectual” snobbery. It’s a hushed but ugly truth that people are made to feel not worthy to be among a certain set – didn’t attend the right school or don’t have the...
I am charmed by the idea that there is an activity known as work and another as play, although even in grade school the distinction eluded me. I remember how full of hope I was sitting in first-period home room listening to the teacher divide up our ...
Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can't go to my school cause they're not smart enough." I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. "You think I'm dumb?" "No," she whispers hard, like she means it so ...
I can't blame most people if they don't read a lot. Because they have their own preferences. If they find an article long, they won't even finish. So as to say, I am glad I have the love for "reading" for it nourishes your soul and yourself from idea...
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pu...
I don't care about the good grades in school, I'm not afraid of failures. All I want is to do what I want because I know that at the end of our journey in this world, We will end up the same. Yes! you might get a good job if you focus on your studies...
In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight fam...
... I left Caen, where I was living, to go on a geological excursion under the auspices of the School of Mines. The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or ot...
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even...
