This Life Does Not Meet Earthquake Safety Standards But I'm Living It Anyway

The book Harris refers to as "EQ" is an eclectic, unique set of essays that combine storytelling with data, sociology with dreamscapes, scholarship with flights of fancy. Along with the diverse and unexpected subject matter, bits of Harris' biography can be glimpsed: educator and rebel; data analyst and intuitive speculator; father and vagabond, scholar and sinner ........ "EQ" contains all of this and more as Harris tackles election politics, orthodox ideas about Big Data and War, The 7 Deadly Sins then and now, and an examination of language as manifested in the clichés we use to keep ourselves from falling into the abyss. In the story destined to be a creative non-fiction classic, "Mendacity", Harris gives us a taxonomy of lying, the landscape of the story ranging from Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof to adventures with his daughter in Disneyland, depositing us in a modern day high school classroom where a group of rebellious and brilliant kids redefine truth, accuracy and concepts like blame and responsibility, leaving the author, 29 years old at the time, realizing: To be late was no longer a factual assertion; the clock was now subject to the Uncertainty Principle. I was in unknown territory, a place with its own logic that rejected Truth as a rigid and tyrannical tool of imperialists. Despite my best efforts at sharing power and appointing a student ombudsman to represent their interests, I was part of a system of oppression, obsolete before I had turned thirty. I was somehow in the role of an authority in a place which reveled in anti-authoritarianism (San Francisco) and a time in which institutions were being considered for the wrecking ball. And all I had done was try to enforce a tardy policy meant to protect learning, a policy they helped shape, voted on and endorsed. 'I look for the unique, the authentic, and the bizarre to illuminate the depth and mystery of this world - looking to write that one true thing that will have it all make sense,' Harris has said. 'It's a lifetime pursuit.'