After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it.

Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.

Culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both.

There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests.

Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.

Millions of people have to restore liberty and have to understand the danger and personal risk they face in a police state.

My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do.