The 1990s culture wars were fought over many social issues that many on the right thought were being redefined from their traditional normals by progressive activists and the liberal media for the next generation.
In the extended Norton household, which currently boasts five coeliacs and three vegans (and two "normals" – although one mostly subsists on Coco Pops), we have Christmas dinner down to a fine art.
This may be accomplished most simply by choosing a plane through the centre of the sphere and projecting the points on its surface along normals, or perpendicular lines, to that plane.
When viewers "read" this relationship (and Sherlock's relationship with his other intra-show fans, who include the morgue employee, Molly, and Lestrade, the admiring police inspector), it's similar to the way Sherlock "reads" a crime scene: intuiting clues that "normals" might dismiss.
But the passages apparently "narrated" by Philip sound just like the passages unwitnessed by Philip, and these, in turn, sound like the David Gilbert of "The Normals," whose protagonist, Billy Schine, sits in a fancy Swedish office chair, which — to give an example of that novel's prose — "reacted to his every gesture with either a swivel or a recline.
Signed in 1990 to Geffen Records, Sonic Youth represented one of the underground music movement's important test cases: what happens when coastal weirdos meet flyover-state normals in the mall and on MTV? Watching the video, one feels that it was all worthwhile, if only in giving Hanna the enormous audience she deserved.
This untethering from time is unsettling, because it is a persistent reminder that one's life is different from the people whom Morris calls "the normals".
His previous novel, "The Normals," veered uneasily between the influences of Jonathan Franzen and Don DeLillo.
11 a.m. 5. BESIDE THE POINT The more artistically minded can walk breakfast off with a trip to Normals (425 East 31st Street; 410-243-6888; normals.com), a trove of used records and books.
For climate geeks like me, the new normals offer a fascinating and disturbing snapshot of a restless climate.
In "The Normals" Billy Schine, in his 20s, unemployed and not sure what to do with his life, avoids a debt collector by entering a two-week clinical trial of an antipsychotic treatment at a drug-testing center in Queens.
