Longreads

Stamatis Moraitis tending his vineyard and olive grove on Ikaria. More Photos » In 1943, a Greek war veteran named Stamatis

Image Design: Giles Revell No one but Hector Xavier Monsegur can know why or when he became Sabu, joining the strange and chaotic Internet collective known as Anonymous. But we know the moment he…

Late in the afternoon on April 2, 1991, Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano on the Philippine island of Luzon, began to rumble with a series of the powerful steam explosions that typically precede an eruption. Pinatubo had been dormant for more than four centuries, and in the volcanological world the mountain had become little more than a footnote. The tremors continued in a steady crescendo for the next two months, until June 15th, when the mountain exploded with enough force to expel molten lava at the speed of six hundred miles an hour. The lava flooded a two-hundred-and-fifty-square-mile area, requiring the evacuation of two hundred thousand people.

May 12, 2008

Inside a grad student's apartment at the University of Pennsylvania sits a slightly faded blue-and-white wooden sign from a post office in Malone, Wash., that no longer exists. If this were any…

Most Americans are probably unaware, for example, that the US Air Force now trains more UAV operators each year than traditional pilots. (Indeed, the Air Force insists on referring to drones as “remotely piloted aircraft” in order to dispel any suspicions that it is moving out of the business of putting humans into the air.) As I write this, the US aerospace industry has for all practical purposes ceased research and development work on manned aircraft. All the projects now on the drawing board revolve around pilotless vehicles. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies around the country eagerly await the moment when they can start operating their own UAVs. The Federal Aviation Administration is considering rules that will allow police departments to start using them within the next few years (perhaps as early as 2014).

Tarn Adams was in the carpeted spare bedroom that serves as his work space, trying to avert an apocalyptic outbreak of vampire dwarves. “If they just run wild biting people, half the dwarves in the colony will be infected in no time,” he said, shaking his head. “That would be no fun.” He was silent for a moment. “Maybe they have to bite you three times before you’re infected?”

The New York Times' new executive editor, Jill AbramsonCan we return for a minute to Jill Abramson's ascension to the top of the Times? I don't think there's been nearly enough serious…

Recently, I overheard a fellow Amtraker back off a conversation on politics. "You know, it's because I'm a libertarian," he said, sounding like a vegetarian politely declining offal. Later that afternoon, in the otherwise quite groovy loft I sometimes crash at in SoHo, where one might once have expected, say, Of Grammatology or at least a back issue of Elle Decor, there sat not one but two copies of something called The Libertarian Reader. "Libertarianism" places one—so believes the libertarian—not on the political spectrum but slightly above it, and this accounts for its appeal to both the tricorne fringe and owners of premium real estate.