Search Results for: This Magazine

Featured Longreader: Ron Nurwisah, news editor for The Huffington Post Canada. See his story picks from The Dependent Magazine, Maisonneuve Magazine, plus more on his #longreads page.

A trip to John Madden’s man cave, and whether sports video games can ever be described as “art”:

Clearly, the way sports games are played, and the way Madden in particular is played, is ripe for some massive paradigm shift. Why doesn’t the quarterback position feel as visceral and pinpointy as firing a rifle in a first-person shooter? Could you make the experience of being an offensive lineman as interesting as anything on the ball? Why, for that matter, is running the ball such an isometric experience? When I put these and other questions to the Madden team in Florida, many of them smiled.

“Kickoff: ‘Madden NFL’ and the Future of Video Game Sports.” — Tom Bissell, Grantland

See also: “Hey, Wait a Minute! I Want to Talk.” — Sarah Pileggi, Sports Illustrated, Sept. 1, 1983

[Not single-page] The case of the “Waffle House terrorists,” which included 73-year-old Fred Thomas and three other 60-something men charged with plotting to commit acts of terror—and an FBI informant previously arrested on charges of molestation: 

It is the central mystery of the case, one even more perplexing than the mystery of whether the old conspirators would ever have been capable of doing what they were talking about doing, or whether, if they weren’t capable, they could be guilty of any crimes. By all accounts, Fred Thomas had lived an exemplary life of loyalty and leadership, with a devoted wife, a son nearby, a secure pension income, and a dream home to show for it. Joe Sims, by all accounts, had lived a slippery and slovenly life that made him the equivalent of his cell-phone stamp — unknown. He was a man of unsavory associations and catastrophic divorces, a man who when he tells the truth, tells it slant, a man who stands accused of raping his stepdaughter in a house with her old swing set still planted in the backyard.

And yet Fred Thomas called him and still has his phone number on his speed dial. When Sims called Thomas, Thomas picked up the phone, and even when Charlotte took an icy message, Thomas always called Sims back.

“Counter-Terrorism Is Getting Complicated.” — Tom Junod, Esquire

See also: “Homegrown Terror.” — Garrett M. Graff, 5280 Magazine, Nov. 1, 2011

Announcing the ‘Longreads: Best of 2011’ Ebook

Longreads Pick

Longreads: Best of 2011 includes seven of our favorite stories from the past year.

The ebook is a unique partnership with the writers and publishers—we want to help celebrate outstanding storytelling, and this is just another way for us to do it. Additionally, money from the ebook sales will be shared with the creators, and we’re excited to have them participating.

Publishers involved include: New York magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, This Recording, Popular Mechanics, The New York Times, GQ, and The Awl.

Source: longreads.com
Published: Jan 18, 2012

The next phase of George Lucas’s career, the making (and studios’ rejection) of his new Tuskegee Airmen film Red Tails, and who’s really to blame for the “nuking the fridge” idea in the last Indiana Jones film:

When I told Lucas that Spielberg had accepted the blame for nuking the fridge, he looked stunned. ‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘He’s trying to protect me.’

In fact, it was Spielberg who ‘didn’t believe’ the scene. In response to Spielberg’s fears, Lucas put together a whole nuking-the-fridge dossier. It was about six inches thick, he indicated with his hands. Lucas said that if the refrigerator were lead-lined, and if Indy didn’t break his neck when the fridge crashed to earth, and if he were able to get the door open, he could, in fact, survive. ‘The odds of surviving that refrigerator — from a lot of scientists — are about 50-50,’ Lucas said.

“George Lucas Is Ready to Roll the Credits.” — Brian Curtis, The New York Times Magazine

Related: “Interview: Steven Spielberg on Jaws.” — Ain’t It Cool News, June 7, 2011

On the encouraging signs of change in Burma—from the end of press censorship to the release of some political prisoners. A report from inside, and questions about why the government is doing it:

Ever since the country’s longtime dictator, Than Shwe, stepped aside early last year, a remarkable thaw has appeared to be underway in Burma—and journalists have been among the prime beneficiaries. In June 2011, the government announced that magazines focusing on sports, technology, entertainment, health, and children’s topics no longer had to be submitted for censorship. Later, publications covering business, economics, law, or crime were also exempted. In October, U Tint Swe, head of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department, made a mind-boggling statement during a rare interview with Radio Free Asia (RFA). ‘Press censorship,’ he said, ‘is nonexistent in most other countries as well as among our neighbors, and, as it is not in harmony with democratic practices, press censorship should be abolished in the near future.’ For the head of the censorship board to say this at all was astonishing, but for him to say it to a news organization like RFA, which is funded by the U.S. government and has been banned in Burma, was unthinkable. (Until recently, state media spouted melodramatic slogans about RFA and other external radio services running Burmese-language programs, calling them ‘killers in the airwaves’ and accusing them of producing a ‘skyful of lies.’)

“Drifting House.” — Emma Larkin, The New Republic

See also: “On Libya’s Revolutionary Road.” — Robert F. Worth, New York Times, March 30, 2011

The Awakening

Longreads Pick

On the encouraging signs of change in Burma—from the end of press censorship to the release of some political prisoners. A report from inside, and questions about why the government is doing it:

“Ever since the country’s longtime dictator, Than Shwe, stepped aside early last year, a remarkable thaw has appeared to be underway in Burma—and journalists have been among the prime beneficiaries. In June 2011, the government announced that magazines focusing on sports, technology, entertainment, health, and children’s topics no longer had to be submitted for censorship. Later, publications covering business, economics, law, or crime were also exempted. In October, U Tint Swe, head of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department, made a mind-boggling statement during a rare interview with Radio Free Asia (RFA). ‘Press censorship,’ he said, ‘is nonexistent in most other countries as well as among our neighbors, and, as it is not in harmony with democratic practices, press censorship should be abolished in the near future.’ For the head of the censorship board to say this at all was astonishing, but for him to say it to a news organization like RFA, which is funded by the U.S. government and has been banned in Burma, was unthinkable. (Until recently, state media spouted melodramatic slogans about RFA and other external radio services running Burmese-language programs, calling them ‘killers in the airwaves’ and accusing them of producing a ‘skyful of lies.’)”

Published: Jan 10, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,462 words)

Judith Clark was a new mom when she was arrested, along with three other militants, for armed robbery and murder in 1981. She remains in prison—and her daughter Harriet has no memory of her mother any other way:

The prison’s visiting center was her second living room. ‘When they got a new vending machine, it felt like new furniture in my house,’ Harriet said. The other children she met visiting their inmate moms fell into two groups: those who lost them to prison ‘within memory or before memory.’ She was puzzled when some were anguished that their mothers weren’t home for holidays and family events. Harriet had never had that experience to miss. ‘My mother lived in prison,’ she explained. ‘That was always the reality going backward and going forward.’

Harriet and her mother spent hours making creations with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks. ‘I have no memories of not having my mother’s undivided attention,’ she said.

“A Young, Cold Heart.” — Tom Robbins, New York Times Magazine

More Robbins: “Tall Tales of a Mafia Mistress.” — Village Voice, Oct. 23, 2007

Before Wonder Woman there was Miss Fury, the first female superhero, introduced in 1941:

Miss Fury was created, written, and drawn by a woman, June Tarpé Mills, who published under the more sexually ambiguous Tarpé Mills. Had Miss Fury entered an enduring canon like DC’s, it’s possible that the template for female superheroes, as well as for superhero comic readership, would have depended more on the influence and perspective of actual women.

“Heroine Chic.” — Evie Nagy, Los Angeles Review of Books

See also: “Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe in Yourself.” — Dan Kois, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27, 2011

The early origins of separation of church and state in America. Williams was a Puritan minister, banished from Massachusetts, before creating the settlement Providence: 

He bought the land from the Narragansett Indians and wrote that “having, of a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, [I] called the place PROVIDENCE, I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience.”

By “conscience” he meant religion. His family and a dozen or so men with their families, many of them followers from Salem, joined him. Few as they were, Williams soon recognized the need for some form of government. The Narragansetts had sold the land solely to him, and in all English and colonial precedent those proprietary rights gave him political control over the settlement. Yet he drafted a political compact for Providence, and in it he demonstrated that his thinking had taken him into a new world indeed.

“God, Government and Roger Williams’ Big Idea.” — John M. Barry, Smithsonian magazine

See more #longreads from Smithsonian magazine