Longform?s Top 10 Stories of 2011

"The fine system is the Institute's latest innovation. Khrzhanovsky decreed it a few months ago, fed up with staffers smuggling cell phones and talking about Facebook. Other finable offenses include tardiness, which costs a whole day's pay, and failure to renew the fake Institute pass. The program has been a hit. Not only has morale improved, a whole new euphemistic vocabulary has sprouted up. ('Google' is now 'Pravda,' as in 'Pravda it.') The fine system has also fostered a robust culture of snitching. 'In a totalitarian regime, mechanisms of suppression trigger mechanisms of betrayal,' the director explains. 'I am very interested in that.'

"Khrzhanovsky throws open the front door of one of the residential buildings, and here I gasp again. The guts of the set are as elaborate as the set itself. There are hallways that lead to apartments, and in the apartments there are kitchens, and in the iceboxes food, fresh and perfectly edible but with 1952 expiration dates. Again and again, Khrzhanovsky opens cupboards, drawers, closets, showing me matchboxes, candles, loofahs, books, salami, handkerchiefs, soap bars, cotton balls, condensed milk, p?t?. He proudly flushes at least three toilets. ?The toilet pipe is custom width,? he says, 'because it makes a difference in the volume and the tenor of the flushing sound.' He looks completely, utterly delighted."

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=4db40eafcefd9b937e391cb715c7103f

nfl nfl jets air jordans pecan pie recipe prince philip david wright