February 2010
41 posts
Box of Broken Dreams →
A young photographer’s belongings are abandoned on a Hollywood street, leaving our writer to piece together the fragments of his life.
The Cocktail Renaissance →
The cocktail is a lovely simple thing: a mixture of spirits and flavorings that whets the appetite, pleases the eye, and stimulates the mind. It is one of our conspicuous contributions to cultured living, up there with the Great American Songbook and the tuxedo. Yet, like almost everything else to do with culture in this country, the cocktail fell on hard times in the 1960s. […] By the...
Israel's Hit Squads →
Top-secret assassinations are not unusual for the Mossad. But technology—from cameras to social networks—is making the assignments more difficult.
Brutal Attraction: The Making of Raging Bull →
Raging Bull began as Robert De Niro’s obsession, but the only man he believed could film it, Martin Scorsese, wasn’t interested—until the director’s near-fatal collapse gave him a visceral connection with the story of troubled boxing champion Jake La Motta. Three decades on, the author tells how one of Hollywood’s great friendships, forged by Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, drove Scorsese’s...
Head Case →
Can psychiatry be a science?
(Thanks, Ryan)
The master of Spin Boldak →
Undercover with Afghanistan’s drug-trafficking border police
Mumbai's Shadow city →
Some call the Dharavi slum an embarassing eyesore in the middle of India’s financial capital. Its residents call it home.
Wall Street's Bailout Hustle →
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash
The Jihadist Next Door →
In the three years since Hammami made his way to Somalia, his ascent into the Shabab’s leadership has put him in a class of his own, according to United States law-enforcement and intelligence officials. […] He has also emerged as something of a jihadist icon, starring in a recruitment campaign that has helped draw hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia. “To have an American citizen that...
The Chemist's War →
The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.
A lethal business model targets Middle America →
Sugar cane farmers from a tiny Mexican county use savvy marketing and low prices to push black-tar heroin in the United States.
The Distant Executioner →
During World War II, snipers were seen as a spooky, merciless “Murder Inc.” by other soldiers—the brutal intimacy of their kills made them a breed apart. But in Afghanistan, where avoiding civilian deaths is a top priority, U.S. military sharpshooters may have found the war that needs them most.
In the Land of the Stoner Cops →
On the front lines of Obama’s campaign in Afghanistan.
(Thanks, Mari)
This Place is Not a Place of Honor →
WIPP is located in the desert outside Carlsbad, New Mexico, and its storage areas are located 2,150 feet underground. Yucca Mountain’s facilities in the Nevada desert are intended to house waste at 1,000 feet deep. Between the two, they are meant to entomb tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste, most of which will remain dangerous for centuries. Each of these locations was selected...
The Essential Man →
It has been nearly four years since Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw and his ability to speak. Now television’s most famous movie critic is rarely seen and never heard, but his words have never stopped.
Death Becomes Him →
Over the past decade, Ludwig Minelli has helped more than 1,000 people kill themselves and has turned Zurich into the undisputed world capital of assisted suicide. Minelli sees himself as a crusader for what he calls “the last human right”—and he believes that helping more and more people to die advances his cause. Even if you believe in an absolute right to die on your own terms, how far is...
How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America →
The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for...
The Great Grocery Smackdown →
Will Walmart, not Whole Foods, save the small farm and make America healthy?
A Nation without Hangmen →
India does not have a single active hangman today. Which should not be surprising; 300 prisoners are awaiting death.
Cyber Warriors →
When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon—China doesn’t even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks—not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere—on America’s electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of...
Should We Clone Neanderthals? →
The scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles
How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo →
Anybody can become a consultant. But not everybody does it well. Here’s what you need to know to thrive.
Debunking the Myth of Lady Jane Grey →
Known as the “nine-day queen”, Lady Jane Grey has become an iconic Tudor victim: virginal, sweet and beheaded at 16, largely because of the machinations of her evil mother. But is any of this true?
The Wonder Drug Myth →
Even the pharmaceutical industry’s best products are imperfect, working in only half—or fewer—patients. It’s time for better targeting.
How to Get Our Democracy Back →
If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress
When your brain gets the joke →
Two polar bears are perched on a block of floating ice. One says to the other: “Do you know, I keep thinking it’s Thursday…”
The Real Rules for Time Travelers →
Time travel may in fact be possible, but it wouldn’t work like in Back to the Future. (For one thing, you don’t have worry about your parents failing to create you—you already exist.)
Wole Soyinka's British Problem →
As religious violence deepens in his home country, Nobel laureate and Nigerian political activist Wole Soyinka shares his unbridled thoughts on Islamic terrorism and why England is a “cesspit”
The End of the Beijing Consensus →
Since China began undertaking economic reforms in 1978, its economy has grown at a rate of nearly ten percent a year, and its per-capita GDP is now twelve times greater than it was three decades ago. Many analysts attribute the country’s economic success to its unconventional approach to economic policy — a combination of mixed ownership, basic property rights, and heavy government...
Lawyers, Guns, and Money →
How big banks, powerful lobbyists, sneaky attorneys, and a host of businessmen funnel dirty cash into the US.
Pecking order →
Peter Lennox keeps chickens, and they have taught him a great deal about behaviour, ethics, evolution and the psychopathic nature of modern ‘efficiency’
Our world may be a giant hologram →
According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is...
Crash Blossoms →
In their quest for concision, writers of newspaper headlines are, like Robert Browning, inveterate sweepers away of little words, and the dust they kick up can lead to some amusing ambiguities.
Azzam the American →
The making of an Al Qaeda homegrown.
Easy = True →
How ‘cognitive fluency’ shapes what we believe, how we invest, and who will become a supermodel
How to Survive a 35,000-Foot Fall →
You’re six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale. Here’s PM’s 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide.
The Quiet Revolution →
Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine.
(Thanks, Heather)
Neighbors' Keeper →
A woman feeds her community in Port-au-Prince.
China Battles the Information Barbarians →
China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google.
Arab society's crunch points →
To understand Arab society, and indeed its politics, we have to understand Arab concepts of the family. The family is the basic molecule of society and, in many ways, a microcosm of the Arab state. It is the primary mechanism for social control – or, put another way, the point where liberty begins to be constrained.
Lady Gaga's Lessons for the Music Business →
With digital dominance, business savvy, a niche-busting sound and 1,001 wardrobe changes, she is a new model for success