February 2012
84 posts
Mother’s Boys →
In court and visiting prison with the parents of young Russian Nationalists who’ve killed.
Olesya Gerasimenko |
Open Democracy |
Feb 2012
Left Behind →
How Yvette Vickers, a B-movie starlet who had appeared in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, ended up mummified in her Los Angeles home last year.
Steven Mikulan |
Los Angeles Magazine |
Feb 2012
The Book of Jobs →
What it means to stay true to the Steve Jobs brand.
Maureen Tkacik |
Reuters |
Feb 2012
A Question of Identity →
On the “unfair significance” of Jeremy Lin.
Jay Caspian Kang |
Grantland |
Feb 2012
KINSHASA →
Kinshasa was a magical place for young party-goers in the 60s. But outside the capital rebel armies led by foreign mercenaries engaged in ruthless war. “Mad Mike” Hoare proved to be too much for Che Guevara:
Che spent his days waiting in the mountains for the rebel leader Laurent Kabila to turn up. He gave the rebels classes in how to be “new men” but they laughed at him, he got dysentery, he...
Resurrecting The Champ →
A newspaper writer’s attempt to solve the mystery of a homeless man who claims to be a once-famous boxer.
J. R. Moehringer |
LA Times Magazine |
May 1997
Cable: A Caucasus Wedding →
The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance.
In a cable brought to light by Wikileaks, the Ambassador to Russia describes a raucous three-day Dagestani wedding attended by Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov.
William Burns |
The Guardian |
Aug 2006
Absent Things as if They Are Present →
A history of erasure as literature.
Jeannie Vanasco |
The Believer |
Jan 2012
Anatomy of the Great Adderall Drought →
Last Fall, America’s favorite focus drug suddenly went into short supply.
Kelly Bourdet |
Motherboard |
Feb 2012
The Comedians, The Mob and the American Supperclub →
It didn’t matter if these clubs were in Cleveland, Portland, Corpus Christi or Baton Rouge—if it was a nightclub, the owners were the Mob. For a good forty years the Mob controlled American show business.
Kliph Nesteroff |
WFMU |
Feb 2012
Listening to Books →
An essay on audio books.
Maggie Gram |
N+1 |
Feb 2012
America is Bull →
On the rodeo.
Jeanne Marie Laskas |
Esquire |
Jan 1999
Party Crasher →
A profile of Ron Paul.
Kelefa Sanneh |
New Yorker |
Feb 2012
Between Roses in Mumbai →
The story of a young man on the run in the slum he dreams of escaping.
Katherine Boo |
NY Review of Books |
Feb 2012
60 Lives, 30 Kidneys, All Linked →
The stories of a record-setting chain of transplants.
Kevin Sack |
New York Times |
Feb 2012
How I Killed My Mother →
Exploring the relationship between authors and their parents.
It mattered to her that she could have, or might have, been a writer, and perhaps it mattered to me more than I fully understood. She watched my books appear with considerable interest, and wrote me an oddly formal letter about the style of each one, but she was, I knew, also uneasy about my novels. She found them too slow and sad and...
The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories... →
“In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.”
Jonah Lehrer |
Wired |
Feb 2012
Gone Fishing →
A profile of New York chef and fisherman David Pasternack.
Mark Singer |
New Yorker |
Sep 2005
How First Baptist’s Robert Jeffress Ordained... →
Before I met Robert Jeffress, I wanted to hate him. Jeffress is the conservative preacher who made national headlines in October, when he called Mormonism a cult. He’s the senior pastor at First Baptist Dallas, the oldest megachurch in America, and I am certainly not a Baptist. He endorsed Rick Perry for president, and I’m definitely no fan of Perry’s. As a matter of fact, Robert Jeffress and I...
Gaudi From The Grave →
Contemplating Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia church, as the controversial finishing work is completed.
Stephen Crittenden |
The Global Mail |
Feb 2012
The Living Nightmare →
The story of Olympic boxing hopeful Quanitta Underwood, who was sexually abused by her father as a child.
Barry Bearak |
New York Times Magazine |
Feb 2012
Trashed →
An investigation into how a 19-year-old college freshman ended up buried in a landfill.
Dan P. Lee |
Philadelphia Magazine |
Jun 2008
In the City of Cement →
As the U.S. Army withdraws, Baghdad in ruins.
Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. While on assignment for the New York Times, Anthony Shadid died today in Syria.
Anthony Shadid |
Washington Post |
Jul 2009
Kim Dotcom, Pirate King →
Dotcom didn’t look like a criminal genius. With his ginger hair, chubby cheeks, and odd fashion sense—he often wore black suits and white-on-black wingtip shoes—he looked like he should be setting up a magic table.
How Kim Schmitz, the proprietor of Megaupload, made his fortune and landed in a New Zealand prison.
Bryan Gruley,Cornelius Rahn,David Fickling |
Businessweek |
Feb 2012
How Companies Learn Your Secrets →
Inside the world of targeted marketing.
Charles Duhigg |
New York Times Magazine |
Feb 2012
The Slap of Love →
On House Xtravaganza and the life and death of its house mother Angie Xtravaganza, one of the stars of the documentary Paris is Burning, which brought vogueing and New York City’s transgendered ball culture into the spotlight.
Michael Cunningham |
Open City |
1995
Susan B. Anthony’s Hit List →
On the Susan B. Anthony List, the anti-choice power broker:
In a year when 11 women are running for the U.S. Senate, including six pro-choice Democratic incumbents, the efforts of a group founded by second-wave feminists, named for a first-wave feminist, could once again be a major force in reducing female representation in Congress.
Monica Potts |
The American Prospect |
Feb 2012
St. Leonard’s Passion →
Leonard Cohen’s 2 A.M. set at the disastrous Isle of Wight festival, 1970.
Liel Leibovitz |
Tablet |
Jan 2012
The Legacy of Wes Leonard →
The story of a high school star who died minutes after hitting a game-winner to end an undefeated season, and the family and friends he left behind.
Thomas Lake |
Sports Illustrated |
Feb 2012
Man in Full →
On Mike Powell, a Chicago-area high school wrestling coach who hasn’t allowed a life-threatening illness to interrupt his life’s work.
Chris Ballard |
Sports Illustrated |
Feb 2012
The Montauk Grifter: How One Con Man Used OkCupid... →
He has worked for Apple, Google, AOL, the Rainbow Room. He hangs out with Steve Case, Gordon Ramsey, Tim Armstrong. He’s a world-class surfer, a AAA baseball legend, the founder of a seminal punk band. He’s one of the more persistent and obsessive grifters to ply the streets of New York City—not to mention online dating sites—in recent decades.
John Cook |
Gawker |
Feb 2012
The Plagiarist’s Tale →
A profile of Quentin Rowan, a.k.a. Q. R. Markham, ‘author’ of last fall’s short-lived spy novel hit Assassins of Secrets, which was pieced together using more than a dozen sources.
Lizzie Widdicombe |
New Yorker |
Feb 2012
How Carrots Became The New Junk Food →
How the industry responded to the recession by rebranding the carrot as anything but vegetable.
Douglas McGray |
Fast Company |
Mar 2011
Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead →
A report from the freediving word championships.
James Nestor |
Outside |
Feb 2012
Quitting the Paint Factory →
Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press.
Mark Slouka |
Harper’s Magazine |
Nov 2004
Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust →
How an industry that couldn’t miss did just that.
Juliet Eilperin |
Wired |
Feb 2012
Muscle Beach and the Dawn of Huge →
On a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and the body-building culture of Venice Beach in the 1970s.
Paul Solotaroff |
Men’s Journal |
Feb 2012
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education →
What happens when top universities focus on careers rather than minds.
William Deresiewicz |
The American Scholar |
Jun 2008
The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician →
The search for an anonymous amateur philosopher.
James Ryerson |
Lingua Franca |
Jul 2001
The Morning-After Pill: A Well-Kept Secret →
“Look, people’s lives are people’s lives, and some of them can’t cope or be as organized as some of us might like. But it’s only in the area of sex that we get involved in the ethics of promoting risk-taking, the idea that we should withhold information or devices because we don’t want people to need them. Would you make the same argument about cholesterol drugs? Saying, If we give people a drug...
“I See Everything Through This Tragedy” →
An essay on “how we ignore the long-term effects of violence on children, adults and our communities.”
Alex Kotlowitz |
Frontline |
Feb 2012
Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put the... →
On the popular iPhone app.
Just the day before, President Barack Obama had signed on and begun sending out photos. This seemed like a real sign that Instagram had arrived. Obama already has accounts on Flickr and Facebook. He (or his people) must have seen something unique and wonderful in Instagram’s audience, some way to reach people via that channel that it couldn’t through others. When the...
Earth Station: The Afterlife of Technology at the... →
A visit to the newly on-the-market Jamesburg Earth Station, a massive satellite receiver that played a key role in communications with space, and its neighbors in an adjacent trailer park.
Alexis Madrigal |
The Atlantic |
Feb 2012
The Me Who Knew It →
On Alison Winter’s Memory: Fragments of a Modern History, and issues of memory in the 20th century.
Underlying the compelling feeling that we are our memories is a further common-sense assumption that our entire lives are accurately retained somewhere in the brain ‘bank’ as laid-down memories of our experience, and that we retrieve our lives and selves from an ever expanding stockpile of...
My Debt to Ireland →
An essay on heritage, history and literature.
John Jeremiah Sullivan |
New York Times Magazine |
Feb 2012
How Your Cat is Making You Crazy →
Jaroslav Flegr and his theory about Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite found in cat feces:
If Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car...
Cheating, Incorporated →
On the adultery website AshleyMadison.com.
Sheelah Kolhatkar |
Businessweek |
Feb 2011
Much Ado About Nothing →
The legacy of Barry Levinson’s 1982 movie Diner.
S.L. Price |
Vanity Fair |
March 2012
Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off. →
Inside the attempt to turn a World War II-era antiaircraft deck (that its owner claims is an independent nation) into “the world’s first truly offshore, almost-anything-goes electronic data haven.”
Simson Garfinkel |
Wired |
Jul 2000