we meet no ordinary people

And so I didn’t really convert. Convert is to change and I didn’t change. I simply discovered the continuity that had been there all along.

WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF.

By treating violence as if it were a communicable disease and changing the environment in which it propagates, the United States has not only helped to make these places safer, but has also reduced the strain on our own country.

I cried because it’s not fair, and I’m so tired, and every woman I know is so tired. I cried because I don’t even know what it feels like to be taken seriously—not fully, not in that whole, unequivocal, confident way that’s native to handshakes between men. I cried because it does things to you to always come second.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this fundamental flaw in poverty policy, i.e., the assumption that there is an ample supply of perfectly good jobs out there that poor people could tap if they just wanted to do so. To this day, this misguided notion underlies the conservative policy agenda that views anti-poverty policy as a narcotic that weans people away from the jobs awaiting them. Kill the programs, and they’ll get out of their hammocks (Rep. Paul Ryan’s term for the safety net) and get to work.

The penalty for violating the individual mandate has not been very effective. If it were effective, we would have higher enrollment, and the population buying policies in the insurance exchange would be healthier and younger.

When we’re notified a patient we discharged has been readmitted, it’s generally a mark of shame, generating a sense that we failed to do enough to restore our patients to good health. But discharging a patient from the hospital is among the most difficult and dangerous aspects of providing medical care. It’s a tumultuous time, when the results of many lab tests may still be pending, medication regimens have been disrupted, and the doctors in charge are often left speculating about whether a patient is truly ready to leave. In the meantime, most patients who are feeling better just want to go home – and they let us know.

Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice. But it's there. It's unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds.

Heme/Onc nights mantra

But a few years after I left Wall Street, when my wife was pregnant with our first child, and we learned that it was going to be a girl, I burst into tears. My daughter would soon enter a world not just of unequal pay and unequal opportunity, but one in which almost 20 percent of women are raped, and a quarter of girls are sexually abused. If you think that this violence has nothing to do with bro talk, you’re wrong. When we dehumanize people in conversation, we give permission for them to be degraded in other ways as well. And even if we don’t participate, our silence condones this language. I deeply regret remaining quiet while women were being disparaged during my eight years as a trader.

I met a 15-year-old boy, Alex, a lawyer’s son from a well-off family, who came to Mexico on his own after a gang tried to recruit him as he went to and from school. Alex was a good student — his favorite subject was English — and he politely tried to decline, because the last thing he aspired to become was a gangster. That’s when the gang knifed him in the stomach and broke his nose. After that, Alex didn’t dare attend school any more, and he quickly arranged to take a bus north to safety in Mexico. Except that Mexico may not be safe, because the U.S. is trying to solve a political crisis on our border in ways that only increase the risk to children like Alex.

It’s particularly dispiriting because much of the extremist funding seems to come from charity: One of the most admirable aspects of Islam is its emphasis on charity, yet in countries like Saudi Arabia this money is directed not to fight malnutrition or child mortality, but to brainwash children and sow conflict in poor and unstable countries.

Instead, as with Syria, Obama has been disengaged. The U.S. could also do more to encourage Mexico to screen refugees rigorously and provide asylum to those who deserve it; instead, according to Human Rights Watch, less than 1 percent of Central American children in Mexico receive refugee status or formal protection.