Search Results for: New York Times

Featured Longreader: Sathyanarayanan Chandrasekar’s #longreads page. See his story picks from The Caravan Magazine, The New York Times, AlterNet, plus more.

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Featuring The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Wired, a #fiction pick, plus two guest picks from Jalees Rehman, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Photo: Yutaka Tsutano/Flickr

Inside Israel’s attempts to slow Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and whether it may ultimately take military action:

Matthew Kroenig is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011. One of his tasks was defense policy and strategy on Iran. When I spoke with Kroenig last week, he said: “My understanding is that the United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike. Israel responded negatively to both requests. It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.” Kroenig went on, “My hunch is that Israel would choose to give warning of an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.”

“Will Israel Attack Iran?” — Ronen Bergman, New York Times Magazine

More Bergman: “Gilad Shalit and the Rising Price of an Israeli Life.” — New York Times Magazine, Nov. 9, 2011

The harsh working conditions inside factories that make products for Apple:

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.

“Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” — Charles Duhigg, David Barboza, The New York Times

Previously: “Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class.” — Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher, The New York Times

See also this #Audiofiles story: “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.” This American Life, Jan. 6, 2012

Reflecting on the bonds between women, often overlooked or underappreciated, and how these bonds will help the writer in her time of need:

I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had worked for the same organization in various administrative capacities for the length of time I’d been alive. After one lengthy, boozy dinner of fondue and buckets of white wine, they quickly took me into their friendship fold and jokingly referred to themselves as ‘the Wrinklies.’ We met once a week for dinner, and saw one another every day at the espresso machine in the hallway, in the fabulously lush cantina, on the expertly-tended grounds of our superluxe office building outside the city limits. We had inside jokes and secret looks. We gave each other little gifts: a cookie, a note, a bar of chocolate, a little token of affection spotted at a shop and slipped underneath an office door.

“The Power of Female Friendship.” — Emily Rapp, The Rumpus

See also: “All the Young Girls.” — Mary H.K. Choi, New York Times, Nov. 17, 2010

Featured Longreader: Amy O’Leary, reporter for The New York Times. See her story picks from Feministe, National Affairs, ESPN, plus more on her #longreads page.

How the U.S. lost out on iPhone manufacturing work, and what it means for the future of job creation in the United States: 

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

“Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class.” — Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher, The New York Times

See also: “The Untold Story of How My Dad Helped Invent the First Mac.” — Aza Raskin, Fast Company Design, Feb. 14, 2011

How sexual freedom began to spread in the west, and how we moved away from a society that once executed adulterers and prostitutes:

Since the dawn of history, every civilisation had punished sexual immorality. The law codes of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England treated women as chattels, but they also forbade married men to fornicate with their slaves, and ordered that adulteresses be publicly disgraced, lose their goods and have their ears and noses cut off. Such severity reflected the Christian church’s view of sex as a dangerously polluting force, as well as the patriarchal commonplace that women were more lustful than men and liable to lead them astray. By the later middle ages, it was common in places such as London, Bristol and Gloucester for convicted prostitutes, bawds, fornicators and adulterers to be subjected to elaborate ritual punishments: to have their hair shaved off or to be dressed in especially degrading outfits, severely whipped, displayed in a pillory or public cage, paraded around for public humiliation and expelled for ever from the community.

“The First Sexual Revolution: Lust and Liberty in the 18th Century.” — Faramerz Dabhoiwala, Guardian

See also: “The Women’s Crusade.” — Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 17, 2009

Our Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Outside Magazine, The New Republic, Esquire, Grantland, The New York Times Magazine, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Prospect Magazine’s David Wolf.

Photo: moriza/Flickr

The long road to reform the government’s Minerals Management Service, three years after its “sex, drugs and oil” scandal:

One thing that the agency hasn’t done is put to rest the skepticism of its whistleblowers. They claim that schemes similar to the royalty-avoidance techniques at issue in the False Claim Act lawsuits are still being used by major oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in tens of millions in lost revenues.

“I don’t think a lot has changed,” says Little. “Shell isn’t the only company doing this. We turned in several other companies to the inspector general. We gave them our files. We had to force them to take them. And they still have not done one thing. They have not pursued any of those companies.”

“Drilled, Baby, Drilled.” — Alan Prendergast, Westword

See also: “The Fracturing of Pennsylvania.” Eliza Griswold, The New York Times, Nov. 17, 2011