Now here's a man with a good project:

Several months ago, I decided to read every issue of The New Yorker in search of chiastic observations and insights. This project will take many years to complete, but what an exhilarating time I've had already! I'm getting a whole new education, as I read articles I would've never glanced at before. Some wise person, whose name I can't recall, once said that when you study one thing deeply, you tap into a vein of knowledge that extends infinitely beyond your original scope of interest. That has happened again and again over the past ten years, and will surely continue as my quest continues. As I find chiastic quotes in The New Yorker, I'll post them here.

I didn't know the word either (it's pronounced ky-AZ-mus), but we all know the trick: a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases, as in this one by Malcolm Gladwell (on Herta Herzog): "She wouldn't ask about hair-color products in order to find out about you...she would ask about you in order to learn out about hair-color products." Ah, I see! It stands to reason that all such phrases would be collected on one website, and indeed many are. This is the gift of psychologist and word sleuth Dr. Mardy Grothe, whose mission (according to his bio) is to bring the yin-yangy word

out of the closet of obscurity and into the world of popular usage. If there's a precedent for what he's trying to do, it's oxymoron, a once-obscure word that is now known by almost all literate English speakers. Grothe stumbled upon the word chiasmus nearly ten years ago and has spent the greater part of the past decade in the grip of this fascinating literary and rhetorical device.

Gripped by a device for devising quips, Grothe discovered lethal pits in pithy ledes by James Atlas, Nancy Franklin, Joe Klein, Jane Kramer, Daphne Merkin, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Rosen, Alex Ross, Andrew Solomon, and more. He wants us to send more in to him, and to refrain would indicate a want of sense. Say it along with me once more: ky-AZ-mus. We learn to blog, we blog to learn.

Chiasmus in The New Yorker [Chiasmus]
Oxymorons [Oxymorons]