The cancer had not spread beyond the thyroid, and, in eighty-six minutes, we removed the fleshy, butterfly-shaped organ, carefully detaching it from the trachea and from the nerves to the vocal cords.

NEWYORKER: Personal Best

Our own sense of who we are, and what we are, is overwhelmingly shaped by our sense of nation, as it is for every Western country.

BBC: A Point Of View: Making sense of China

The alternative is to drift in the wake of the conventional wisdom of the day and we need to decide whether we shape the world around us or are content to be shaped by it.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: From fashion to fortitude: the road to resilience

It wasn't long after that meeting, as we shaped this economic plan, that we began to see some of these forecasts materialize.

WHITEHOUSE: Job Creation and Economic Growth

The idea of a Blank Slate has distorted our values in child rearing, sentencing, politics and education, he says, and we have nothing to fear from the idea that we are shaped to some extent by our genes, only a more realistic understanding of what it means to be human.

BBC: Aventis science prize 2003 - Pinker

When we hear about alien-shaped skulls being exhumed in mexico, on this weekend of all weekends, it's hard not to get a little bit "X-Files".

ENGADGET: Alt-week 12.22.12: strange skulls, solar portraits and 17-minute code cracking

We hope moms in Little Rock and Seattle share how the economic crisis has shaped their sense of what it means to be a mom.

FORBES: Woman And The Bump: State Of The American Mother Survey - Forbes

It's not a W shaped recession, let's say, but V shape, and we're starting to power out of it, as some economists believe we're going to do.

MSN: Read the transcript to the Monday show