It sounded like a place where the teen-age years went on forever, all gray days by the water and strange-tasting sweets that fizzed in your mouth, making you think of the possibility of sex.

NEWYORKER: The Cold Outside

Those short winter days must have seemed strange to me in town, the lights came on at dusk.

NEWYORKER: Gravel

Which is very strange indeed for only a few days ago we had news from the World Bank showing that child mortality rates in those same countries are, in general, falling swiftly.

FORBES: Jeff Sach's Lancet Paper on Millennium Villages: Actual Scientists Seriously Unimpressed