American - Writer | January 14, 1960 -
There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the argument goes, as clever programmers circumvent controls.
Virginia Postrel
InnovationSayingInternetArgument
Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel pressure to fake it, at least in public. Nobody wants the stigma of being thought poor.
PeopleRichThoughtFakePressure
By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'
SelfDecoratingSenseLikeOur
Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration. It evokes an audience's hopes and dreams and makes them seem attainable, all the while maintaining enough distance to sustain the fantasy.
DreamsProcessEnoughDistanceSeem
Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.
LifeAmericanNewStarbucksUrban
In mid-July 2007, after a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. As cancer diagnoses go, mine wasn't particularly scary. The affected area was small, and the surgeon seemed to think that a lumpectomy followed by radiation would eradicate the cancerous tissue.
SmallThinkRoutineGoSurgeonMine
Cosmetics makers have always sold 'hope in a jar' - creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them.
LoveBeautyWomenHopeYouthSex
'CSI' has not only remained a top-rated show through seven seasons; it has had real-world consequences. Police and prosecutors complain of a 'CSI' effect' that leads juries to demand more physical evidence than they used to expect. College officials use the same term to describe spiking enrollment in forensic-science programs.
PoliceCollegeSeasonsConsequences
Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well.
LifeOpportunityFreedomScienceArt
The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of care over time - a.k.a. medical progress.
GrowthTimeProgressMedicalCare
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
PersuasionWantKindBecomeMore
For designers, the rigidity of an alphabet presents a never-ending artistic challenge: How do you do something new and still preserve the letters' essential forms?
ChallengeYouNewLettersSomething
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