.. I think that’s the fundamental difference between a plant and an animal, is that if an animal doesn’t like where it is, it can get up and move away. Plants have to stay there and take it. There are a lot of other differences between plants and animals of course, but I believe that seeps into everything about how different they are and I believe that I can look around me and see the things that stay. Better than a person who hasn’t devoted themselves to the same activities I have. I believe I know things about what it means to stay and endure and watch and grow.
.. You can do it too you know, look around you and think about the things that stay. And when you walk away, they’ll still be there and night will fall and rain will fall and the snow will melt and … in your mind you can inhabit another life and that’s the ultimate transcendence of yourself.
.. I have three older brothers and we went to my father’s laboratory in the evenings after school and we played in the laboratory while he graded or set things up for the next day or repaired the demonstrations. And we played with all the stuff, and he never, ever said “don’t touch that,” and we always wanted to take out the lasers and clap erasers in front of them.
.. Being in a laboratory was always just the most wonderful, comforting, familiar, happy, safe place—and I still feel that way.
.. When I got to college I learned very quickly that if I became a writer society would let me die on the street. And if I became a scientist I would always have a roof over my head and a job, and my labor would be something that people needed. That difference has always struck me as so arbitrary, because I was willing to put my soul into all those activities but it became very clear to me that society viewed one of them as important and one of them as optional. So, let’s think about that for a minute.
.. The most fulfilling thing that I hear about the book is that people tell me “I understood this stuff: I’m not a scientist but I understood it,” and they’re somehow surprised at that. Somehow along the way science stopped writing stuff that people could understand and we’ve somehow got the reader blaming themselves that they can’t understand it. I mean what a scam. So that gives me great joy, is that people will even say “I was told I’m not good at science” or “I never did any of this stuff, but gosh, I liked your book.
.. . We have this discomfort between enlightenment and romantic views of nature. Is it something that we manipulate or is it something that’s bigger and more expansive than we are? So who’s on top? In the romantic version, nature is bigger than we are, it knows more, it’s been here longer, it has ways of sustaining itself and healing itself that we cannot understand. In the enlightenment version, we’re able to control everything about nature, we can fix it, it’s our duty to make it yield, etc.
.. The real challenge is living with the dissonance
.. I love oak trees because there’s pretty much a species of oak that can live almost anywhere. They just seem so indestructible, and they just have so many things figured out that we don’t, like how to live on the planet for 100 million years without substantially wrecking everything or wrecking themselves. I wonder if we’ll be able to go 5 million more. So in some ways I feel like I can transcend all the stuff that human beings worry about, each other and money and how men and women treat each other, and all that kind of stuff. I feel like I can transcend that by looking at a being that figured it out.
.. . I call that the Costco effect. If you go buy 100 rolls of toilet paper you’re going to use toilet paper at your house very differently than if you’re buying it roll by roll.
.. It’s a different world when money is free. And thinking about a world where plants operate utterly unconstrained by that particular resource is very interesting. One thing that happens of course is that other things come into play. I mean if I quadruple your salary but I don’t give you any more vacation time, you can’t take that around-the-world tour even if it seems cheap to you, because you can’t get the time off. So now it’s not money that’s limiting; it’s time. Plants have a similar thing in that nitrogen can become limiting, water can become limiting when temperatures go up.
.. So I can say well, I won’t give these little guys water for a few days, and then I’ll measure how much they didn’t grow, and then I’ll compare the stress between them. But I’ve already projected my own assumption about what stress should be into that experiment—lack of growth. I’m having a lot of fun thinking really deeply about how subjective the experience of stress is.
.. I wanted to be a surgeon very, very badly. I didn’t have the money to go to medical school. Medical school is expensive, and graduate school in science—it’s free, and that’s the most important thing to tell people to make them be scientists. Law school is expensive, medical school is expensive, business school is expensive, graduate school in science is free with a capital “F.” So that’s why I didn’t go to medical school.
In Conversation: Antonin Scalia
textualism (that statutes must be interpreted based on their words alone)
..It was a time when people were talking about “the imperial presidency.” I knew very well that the 900-pound gorilla in Washington is not the presidency. It’s Congress. If Congress can get its act together, it can roll over the president.
.. I am something of a contrarian, I suppose. I feel less comfortable when everybody agrees with me. I say, “I better reexamine my position!” I probably believe that the worst opinions in my court have been unanimous. Because there’s nobody on the other side pointing out all the flaws.
.. Let’s put it this way: Do you think the same level of scrutiny that applies to race should apply to sex?
I am not a fan of different levels of scrutiny. Strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, blah blah blah blah. That’s just a thumb on the scales... We just get The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times. We used to get the Washington Post, but it just … went too far for me. I couldn’t handle it anymore.
What tipped you over the edge?
It was the treatment of almost any conservative issue. It was slanted and often nasty. And, you know, why should I get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly, shrilly liberal.So no New York Times, either?
No New York Times, no Post.And do you look at anything online?
I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio.Not NPR?
Sometimes NPR. But not usually.Talk guys?
Talk guys, usually.Do you have a favorite?
You know who my favorite is? My good friend Bill Bennett. He’s off the air by the time I’m driving in, but I listen to him sometimes when I’m shaving. He has a wonderful talk show. It’s very thoughtful. He has good callers. I think they keep off stupid people... The Gipper may have been the one who started it. He’s the one who brought in people he would recognize in the audience, and things of that sort—made it a television spectacle. And once it becomes a television spectacle, it’s nothing serious.
.. I’m nervous about our civic culture. I’m not sure the Internet is largely the cause of it. It’s certainly the cause of careless writing. People who get used to blurbing things on the Internet are never going to be good writers. And some things I don’t understand about it. For example, I don’t know why anyone would like to be “friended” on the network. I mean, what kind of a narcissistic society is it that people want to put out there, This is my life, and this is what I did yesterday? I mean … good grief. Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I think it’s strange.
.. I’m not inviting you to run down the pope. But what do you think of his recent comments, that the church ought to focus less on divisive issues and more on helping the poor?
I think he’s absolutely right. I think the church ought to be more evangelistic.But he also wanted to steer its emphasis away from homosexuality and abortion.
Yeah. But he hasn’t backed off the view of the church on those issues. He’s just saying, “Don’t spend all our time talking about that stuff. Talk about Jesus Christ and evangelize.” I think there’s no indication whatever that he’s changing doctrinally... In Lawrence v. Texas, you said Americans were within their rights in “protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”
I would write that again. But that’s not saying that I personally think it’s destructive. Americans have a right to feel that way. They have a democratic right to do that, and if it is to change, it should change democratically, and not at the ukase of a Supreme Court... Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, “Who am I to judge?” He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?.. Can we talk about your drafting process—
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.No.
It’s because he’s smart.So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.Well, you’re saying the Devil is persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.Right.
What happened to him?He just got wilier.
He got wilier.Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, soremoved from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.I read newspapers that I think are good newspapers, or if they’re not good, at least they don’t make me angry, okay?
.. That sheds new light on your famous odd-couple friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Do you think it’s easier to be close to a colleague who is so ideologically different?
There may be something to that. If you have low expectations, you’re not disappointed. When it’s somebody who you think is basically on your side on these ideological controversies, and then that person goes over to the dark side, it does make you feel bad... Who was or is your favorite sparring partner on the bench? The person who makes or made your ideas and opinions better?
Probably John Paul Stevens. There are some justices who adopt a magisterial approach to a dissent. Rehnquist used to do it. [He turns his nose up theatrically, flutters his hand in dismissal.] Just, Don’t even respond to the dissent. This is the opinion of the Court, and the hell with you. I am not like that. I think you should give the dissenter the respect to respond to the points that he makes. And so did John Stevens. So he and I used to go back and forth almost endlessly... How do you choose your clerks?
Very carefully. What I’m looking for is really smart people who don’t necessarily have to share my judicial philosophy, but they cannot be hostile to it. And can let me be me when they draft opinions, can write opinions that will follow my judicial philosophy rather than their own. And I’ve said often in the past that other things being equal, which they usually are not, I like to have one of the four clerks whose predispositions are quite the opposite of mine—who are social liberals rather than social conservatives. That kind of clerk will always be looking for the chinks in my armor, for the mistakes I’ve made in my opinion. That’s what clerks are for—to make sure I don’t make mistakes. The trouble is, I have found it hard to get liberals like that, who pay attention to text and are not playing in a policy sandbox all the time.
Lars Dalgaard: Build Trust by Daring to Show That You’re Human
I created an education course on weekends, six weeks before the college’s big exam, which a lot of students were failing. My program was very hard, like boot camp, but I was able to charge so much that I could pay the best teachers enough to get them to teach the course. It was an insane model.
The dean was angry with me and said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Who’s got the problem? People aren’t passing your tests and graduating. So if you fix the school, there won’t be any demand for my product.” I was unapologetic about it.
.. I think it’s because we’ve been brought up thinking that when you’re in a business role, if you show any emotion, then that’s the opposite of being tough.
The funny thing is that you’re actually a stronger leader and more trustworthy if you’re able to be vulnerable and you’re able to show your real personality. It’s a trust multiplier, and people really will want to work for you and be on a mission together with you.
.. One of the rules was about email — no blind copying. And if someone emailed me complaining about a colleague, I would add the person they were complaining about to the email string and say something like, “Hi, Kim, it looks like Carl has something to talk to you about. I really look forward to you guys meeting and figuring this one out.” That sends a powerful message.
.. One question I ask about 10 minutes into the interview, after we’ve created some trust, is “What did you learn from your mom?” It’s an incredibly powerful question. And then I’ll ask them about their father.
Mary Karr: Paris Review Interview
The following day, on our way to the airport, Karr drove me past the house David Foster Wallace once rented in Syracuse. Wallace and Karr were involved for a time; he proposed to her and had her name tattooed on his arm.
.. She is a controversial figure in the poetry establishment for her Pushcart Prize–winning 1991 essay, “Against Decoration,” in which she lamented the shift toward neoformalism in contemporary poetry: “the highbrow doily-making that passes for art today.” Karr argued that this sort of poetry—allusive, impersonal, obscure—had “ceased to perform its primary function,” which was to “move the reader.” And she named names.