Longreads

If you thought the official New York marathon statement about being cancelled was tone-deaf, just wait until you hear this — on video, no less: Gail McGovern, chief executive officer and…

The Awl’s Choire Sicha, Carrie Frye, Alex Balk: Our Top Longreads of 2011 (Left to right: Choire, Carrie, Alex) Because there are three of us, we trilaterally decided to go for 15. But…

1. “THE CASE IS CLOSED” “For general use the single-tone [black-and-white] pictures will enormously prevail." — Rupert Hughes, screenwriter, 1923 “[Sound film] is an…

by Eric Benson July 2011 On the fiftieth anniversary of Borgess first visit to Texas, Eric Benson searches for traces of the fabulist in the Lone Star State. Photograph via…

"Brain time," as David Eagleman calls it, is intrinsically subjective. "Try this exercise," he suggests in a recent essay. "Put this book down and go look in a mirror. Now move your eyes back and forth, so that you're looking at your left eye, then at your right eye, then at your left eye again. When your eyes shift from one position to the other, they take time to move and land on the other location. But here’s the kicker: you never see your eyes move." There’s no evidence of any gaps in your perception—no darkened stretches like bits of blank film—yet much of what you see has been edited out. Your brain has taken a complicated scene of eyes darting back and forth and recut it as a simple one: your eyes stare straight ahead. Where did the missing moments go?