May 2010
61 posts
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Pope Benedict XVI and Church Abuse Crisis: How to... →
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition? Joseph Ratzinger attempted to do just that for the Roman Catholic Church during a grandiose display of Vatican penance — the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000, a ritual presided over by Pope John Paul II and meant to purify two millenniums of church history.
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No Secrets →
Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency.
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There Was 'Nobody in Charge' →
After the Blast, Horizon Was Hobbled by a Complex Chain of Command.
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The Unbelievable Story of Extreme Diver Dave Shaw →
Ten minutes into his dive, Dave Shaw started to look for the bottom. Utter blackness pressed in on him from all sides, and he directed his high-intensity light downward, hoping for a flash of rock or mud.
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BP Decisions Made Well Vulnerable →
A Wall Street Journal investigation provides the most complete account so far of the fateful decisions that preceded the blast. BP made choices over the course of the project that rendered this well more vulnerable to the blowout, which unleashed a spew of crude oil that engineers are struggling to stanch.
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The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains →
The real revelation was how quickly and extensively Internet use reroutes people’s neural pathways. “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate,” Small concluded, “but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.”
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“It’s BP’s Oil” →
Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana’s crude-covered beaches.
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The Man Who Could Unsnarl Manhattan Traffic →
[Charles Komanoff]’s a traffic expert who has taken up the Borgesian task of re-creating, in precise detail, the economic and environmental impact of every single car, bus, truck, taxi, train, subway, bicycle, and pedestrian moving around New York City.
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All The Dirt That's Fit To Print →
We’re used to National Enquirer stories on “shocking” plastic surgery, but in 2010 the rag almost won a Pulitzer. Alex Pappademas chronicles its evolution from tabloid to breaking-news contender.
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MMR – autism scare: so, farewell then, Dr Andrew... →
It is with a gladness of heart and much rejoicing that I note that Dr Andrew Wakefield, the gastric surgeon and one of the principal authors of perhaps the stupidest and most unnecessary health scare of recent Western history, has been struck off the General Medical Council for being “dishonest”, “misleading” and “irresponsible” in his research into the MMR vaccine and its purported links to...
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Why Humans Triumphed →
How did one ape 45,000 years ago happen to turn into a planet dominator? The answer lies in an epochal collision of creativity.
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Polari, a vibrant language born out of prejudice →
British gay men developed the eclectic, secretive slang at a time when society stigmatised them. Luckily it is no longer needed.
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To Die of Having Lived →
A neurological surgeon reflects on what patients and their families should and should not do when the end draws near.
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The Secret Lives of Professors →
I came to Harvard 7 years ago with a fairly romantic notion of what it meant to be a professor — I imagined unstructured days spent mentoring students over long cups of coffee, strolling through the verdant campus, writing code, pondering the infinite.
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Revisiting ‘Main St.,’ Rethinking the Myth →
I can’t see it as a masterpiece, not only because I distrust the idea of masterpieces, but because I especially don’t want one from the Stones, who make songs and albums like birds’ nests — collaborative tangles with delicate internal balances — and have a history of great triage work, assembling bits and pieces recorded over a long period. But “Exile” remains the preference of the most...
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The Longest Night →
One Easter Sunday, the Alaska Ranger—a fishing boat out of Dutch Harbor—went down in the Bering Sea, 6,000 feet deep and thirty-two degrees cold. Forty-seven people were on board, and nearly half of them would spend hours floating alone in the darkness, in water so frigid it can kill a man in minutes. Forty-two of them would be rescued. Here’s how.
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The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson →
The third volume in Stieg Larsson’s immensely successful Millennium trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” finally goes on sale here this month. Except for “Harry Potter,” Americans haven’t been so eager for a book since the early 1840s, when they thronged the docks in New York, hailing incoming ships for news of Little Nell in Charles Dickens’s “Old Curiosity Shop.”
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Treasure Island →
How TV serials achieved the status of art.
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Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas →
In trailers just minutes away from the slot machines, Air Force pilots control predators over Iraq and Afghanistan. A case study in the marvels—and limits—of modern military technology.
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How They Did It →
The inside account of health care reform’s triumph.
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They Get to Me →
A young psycholinguist confesses her strong attraction to pronouns.
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Letters From an Arsonist →
Thomas Sweatt torched Washington for decades. He killed more people than we thought.
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Double Blind →
The untold story of how British Intelligence infiltrated and undermined the IRA.
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Look at Me! →
A writer’s search for journalism in the age of branding.
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My Philosophy: Ben Goldacre →
Ben Goldacre tells Julian Baggini why he expects rigour in the reporting of science.
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All Souls, Oxford Should Continue to Put Genius to... →
For more than a century, prospective Fellows of All Souls, Oxford have had to sit a frightening exam paper that contains no questions and just one word. Now it has been dropped – and Harry Mount (failed, 1994) says the college is the poorer for it.
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China’s Arranged Remarriages →
Looming over the physical reconstruction, however, has been another question: How can society rebuild? In China, one answer has been to pair grieving men and women to create instant families that will help ensure social and economic stability. For Westerners, marriage choices tend to be based on individual notions of love or romance, or at least that is how we see it. But in Sichuan, marriage...
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The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand →
Over the last several months, Schnur and the well-positioned fellow travelers on his speed dial have seen the cause of their lives take center stage. Why the sudden shift from long-simmering wonk debate to political front burner? Because there is now a president who, when it comes to school reform, really does seem to be a new kind of Democrat — and because of a clever idea Schnur had last year...
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The Most Widely Read Magazine in the World →
It’s the first Saturday of March and a perfect day for Jehovah’s Witnessing. The sky is clear, the air is crisp and a fresh copy of The Watchtower, stamped March 1, 2010, is ready to be distributed.
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America's Cocaine King Hid From Drug Cartels for... →
It took a screenwriter to find him.
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Brain Gain →
The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs.
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Remember This →
There have been a handful of people over the years with uncommonly good memories. Kim Peek, the 56-year-old savant who inspired the movie Rain Man, is said to have memorized nearly 12,000 books (he reads a page in 8 to 10 seconds). “S,” a Russian journalist studied for three decades by the Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, could remember impossibly long strings of words,...
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When Washington Took On Wall Street →
Nearly 80 years ago, on Capitol Hill, Ferdinand Pecora forced J. P. Morgan Jr. and other “banksters” to reveal the corruption that had fueled the Great Depression—bringing shame on the financial industry and resulting in new laws to curb abuses. Today, with Republicans having threatened to block reform and Goldman Sachs fighting fraud charges, the author looks back at the Pecora Commission...
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The secret life of your home →
Ever wondered why forks have four prongs? Or why we choose salt and pepper over other spices? For his new book, Bill Bryson took a trip around his own house to find out why we live the way we do
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The story of the electric light →
For centuries, we hunched over candles after dark. Then gas and electricity arrived – and the world lit up. In the latest extract from his new book, the acclaimed writer reveals the bizarre story of how artificial light came to transform our lives
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Whodunnit? →
Criminal profilers were once the heroes of police work, nailing offenders with their astonishing psychological insights. So why did it all fall apart?
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The Genius of QVC →
How the shopping network became one of the most effective retailing machines ever invented.
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The Enemy Within →
When the Conficker computer “worm” was unleashed on the world in November 2008, cyber-security experts didn’t know what to make of it. It infiltrated millions of computers around the globe. It uses an encryption code so sophisticated that only a very few people could have deployed it. For the first time ever, the cyber-security elites of the world have joined forces in a...
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The No-Stats All-Star →
Seldom are regular-season games in the N.B.A. easy to get worked up for. Tonight, though it was a midweek game in the middle of January, was different. Tonight the Rockets were playing the Los Angeles Lakers, and so Battier would guard Kobe Bryant, the player he says is the most capable of humiliating him.
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The New Sheriffs of Wall Street →
A few weeks back, at an event to celebrate the role of women in finance, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to get things started with a joke. He said he had recently come across a headline that asked, “What If Women Ran Wall Street?”
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Sex, lies and splitting up →
Want to dump a troublesome husband, or unsuitable boyfriend? Just call Osamu Tomiya and his team of splitter-uppers, but you’ll have to move to Japan
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How to Save the News →
Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it
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The White House's Dinner Theater →
A White House state dinner can serve as diplomatic overture, fund-raising tool, or cultural statement. As Obama social secretary Desirée Rogers discovered, it can also be a P.R. fiasco. Talking to the sisterhood of former social secretaries about how styles and traditions have changed—from Jacqueline Kennedy’s high-glamour evenings to the Nixons’ white-tie restoration, to the...
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The Crisis Comes Ashore →
Why the oil spill could change everything.
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Black, Brown, and Beige →
Duke Ellington’s music and race in America.
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The hunt for universal music →
All cultures make music, though no one knows why; it’s not obviously useful in the way cooking or language are. A number of musicians, including some notable composers, claim that music is a universal form of human communication which transcends barriers of culture and language. Now psychologists are putting this universality back on the agenda, and are investigating whether certain...
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Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct →
Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.
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That Pill You Took? It May Well Be Teva’s →
Last year, the company’s medicines filled nearly 630 million prescriptions in the United States, making it a larger domestic supplier than such pharmaceutical heavyweights as Pfizer, Novartis and Merck — combined. And as low-cost generics continue to make inroads with consumers, Teva occupies a pivotal position in a health care industry undergoing seismic changes that will give millions of more...
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The Data-Driven Life →
For a long time, only one area of human activity appeared to be immune. In the cozy confines of personal life, we rarely used the power of numbers. The techniques of analysis that had proved so effective were left behind at the office at the end of the day and picked up again the next morning. The imposition, on oneself or one’s family, of a regime of objective record keeping seemed ridiculous....
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To Be or Not to Be? →
More people die of suicide in King County than from traffic accidents or murder, but no one likes to talk about it. A few words about the history, meaning, and practice of suicide, from third-century Christian death cults to the Aurora Bridge.