“Obama’s Bad Cop” by Michael Hirsh
Clinton’s played the heavy with Iran, Russia, and even Israel—and her sometimes hawkish views are finding favor with the president. [Link]
Archive for April, 2010
“Michael Alig” by Christopher Bollen (April 2010)
The lurid Club Kid murder of Melendez is by now one of New York’s best known cautionary tales, a sort of lore story explaining the recklessness and insanity of the downtown party scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, by extension, the official death of nightlife in the city, which has really never been resurrected. One day, Alig will be back on the streets of downtown Manhattan. He may be as surprised by what he finds there as those who once knew him as the master of the Club Kid universe may be surprised by what they find in him.
Read the full interview: [Link]
“Acropolis Now: Europe’s Debt Crisis Spins Out of Control” (4/28/2010)
Europe’s leaders must act fast to stop Greece’s market contagion spreading
Read the article: [Link]
“The National Agenda” by Nicholas Dawidoff (4/19/2010)
It was supposed to be the National’s moment. After years of mostly anonymous struggle, the National’s two previous albums, “Alligator” (2005) and “Boxer” (2007), were so full of strangely isolated songs about friendship, romance and work that they had created for this new release the sort of expectant critical murmur that has been rare to hear since the end of the age of record shops. “Alligator” and “Boxer” did what excellent rock ’n’ roll albums did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s: transcended the sum of their singles to offer something larger. In the National’s case, it was a powerful, probing feeling for the inner lives of average people out in the American heartland. So good was the music that with it came the promise of what might follow, the heady potential that the National would soon take things one step further, go ahead and make the great Middle American novel as music, an album for our time. But now, they seemed intent on holding all that off as long as possible.
Read the full article: [Link]
“The Data-Driven Life” by Gary Wolf (4/26/2010)
Until a few years ago it would have been pointless to seek self-knowledge through numbers. Although sociologists could survey us in aggregate, and laboratory psychologists could do clever experiments with volunteer subjects, the real way we ate, played, talked and loved left only the faintest measurable trace. Our only method of tracking ourselves was to notice what we were doing and write it down. But even this written record couldn’t be analyzed objectively without laborious processing and analysis. Then four things changed. First, electronic sensors got smaller and better. Second, people started carrying powerful computing devices, typically disguised as mobile phones. Third, social media made it seem normal to share everything. And fourth, we began to get an inkling of the rise of a global superintelligence known as the cloud.
Read the full article: [Link]
“Mount St. Helens” by McKenzie Funk (May 2010)
Thirty years after the blast, Mount St. Helens is reborn again. [Link]
“Get Kony” by Ian Urbina (4/27/2010)
The Lord’s Resistance Army – a murderous rebel group made up mostly of Ugandans, and led by a crazed warlord named Joseph Kony – today ranges across the jungles and scrubland of Uganda, Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic. Its ranks may be depleted, but the remnant deals death wherever it goes. U.S.-backed military forces are trying to hunt Kony down. So is a Pennsylvania-based evangelical preacher named Sam Childers – a biker and former drug dealer who has found his calling in this quest for a killer. Last year the author joined Childers as he continued his hunt for Kony. It is a story of pursuer and pursued, each believing that God is on his side.
Read the full article: [Link]
“Who Killed Bambi?” – a screenplay by Roger Ebert (1977)
Ebert: “This, for the benefit of future rock historians, is the transscript of a screenplay I wrote in the summer of 1977. It was tailored for the historic punk rock band the Sex Pistols, and was to be directed by Russ Meyer and produced by the impresario Malcolm McLaren. It still carried its original title, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” although shortly after I phoned up with a suggested title change, which was accepted: “Who Killed Bambi?” I wrote about this adventure in my blog entryMcLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & me. Discussions with Meyer, McLaren and Rene Daalder led to this draft. All I intend to do here is reprint it. Comments are open, but I can’t discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn’t have written. Frankly, I have no idea.”
Read the full screenplay: [Link]
“For Hinckley, Small Steps Towards an Uncertain Freedom” by Annys Shin (4/26/2010)
At 54, the onetime presidential assailant lives like a kid on perpetual spring break. The closest thing he has to a 9-to-5 job is a volunteer gig at the hospital library. He fills his free time strumming on his guitar, crafting pop songs about ideal love, or going on supervised jaunts to the beach or a bowling alley.
Hinckley now enjoys the most freedom he has had since he was arrested in 1981 for shooting President Ronald Reagan, two law enforcement officers and White House press secretary Jim Brady.
Read the full article: [Link]
