Vox Sentences: Special abbreviated Boxing Day edition

1. Misc.

• The Interview made $1 million on Christmas Day — pretty good, but not great.

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]

• Someone patented a "Santa Claus detector" in 1994.

  [The Atlantic / Robinson Meyer]

• How much do taxes discourage work, really?

  [Bloomberg View / Noah Smith]

• Real line from a Department of Homeland Security border security official: we can't legalize drugs because then criminal organizations will sell WMDs instead.

  [BuzzFeed / Jose M. Orduna]

• Certainly the only profile of Buzz Aldrin you'll ever read that's written in the second person.

  [GQ / Jeanne Marie Laskas]

• Major Hollywood studios have released or will release only three movies directed by women this year.

  [NYT / Manohla Dargis]

• Robotic jockeys have become mainstream in camel racing.

  [NYT / Sam Borden]

• What the just-concluded fourth season of Homeland teaches us about Max Weber.

  [Washington Post / Michael Cornfield]

2. Verbatim

• "The first thing ever bought and sold across the Internet was a bag of marijuana."

  [Matter / Mike Power]

• "Nearly 40 percent of identical twins develop a secret language as kids."

  [Nautilius / Eric Hansen]

• "The past 12 months have blurred together for Seegers. He’s gone from living in a homeless shelter to topping Sweden’s sales charts."

  [The Bitter Southerner / Tamara Reynolds]

• "Well, hello! I mean, of course you help a friend."

  [Arnold Schwarzenegger on commuting the prison sentence of a political ally's son via LA Times / Christopher Goffard]

• "My simple defense of Kwanzaa is that in the short time that we celebrated the holiday, it brought my family together."

  [Slate / Meloncyce McAfee]

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