A batch of the best highlights from what Jophin's read, .
That’s all a story is, really: a continual system of escalation. A swath of prose earns its place in the story to the extent that it contributes to our sense that the story is (still) escalating.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
George Saunders
The imperative towards opening up public services to markets and market-like principles remains strong, in part because of pressure from multi-national service industries to capture new markets, but also because of competition between states in the global marketplace of service industries.
Publics, Politics and Power
Janet Newman and John Clarke
Sometimes bigger squashes smaller
But you can not crush a bacterium between your fingers
Separation of scales: when two scales of behavior are far enough apart, they can only interact indirectly