Search Results for: The Nation

What the Tech Industry Can Teach Agriculture

Myers contends that, when applied to plants, patents are stifling. They discourage sharing, and sharing is the foundation of successful breeding. That’s because his work is essentially just assisting natural evolution: He mates one plant with another, which in turn makes new combinations of genes from which better plants are selected. The more plants there are to mix, the more combinations are made, and the more opportunities there are to create better plants. Even some breeders who work for the companies that are doing the patenting still believe in—indeed, long for—the ability to exchange seed.

“It’s this collective sharing of material that improves the whole crop over time,” Myers told me. “If you’re not exchanging germplasm, you’re cutting your own throat.”

If all of this seems like the concern of a specialized few, consider that plant breeders shape nearly every food we eat, whether a tomato from the backyard or the corn in the syrup in a Coke. Because of intellectual-property restrictions, their work increasingly takes place in genetic isolation and is less dynamic as a result. In the short term, that can mean fewer types of tomatoes to plant in the garden, or fewer choices for farmers and, by extension, consumers. In the long term, it could hinder the very resilience of agriculture itself.

Lisa Hamilton, in the Virginia Quarterly Review, on how plant breeders are adapting open source principles from the tech industry to guarantee the sustainability of our food systems.

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VQR in the Longreads Archive

Photo: Agriculture in Israel, Wikimedia Commons.

The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking

Longreads Pick

Somaly Mam has saved countless girls in Cambodia. Does it matter that her campaign is built on a web of lies?

Mam claims to have rescued thousands of girls and women from sex trafficking, a dangerous and formidable feat. Her story becomes even more inspiring when you hear her shocking tale of being sold into sexual slavery. In 2005, she published her autobiography, The Road of Lost Innocence, which became an international best-seller. Mam was one of Time’s 100 most influential people in 2009 and has over 400,000 followers on Twitter.

She has done so much for so many, does it matter that key parts of her story aren’t true? This is a story about a story—but not quite the amazing one Mam has been telling at cocktail parties in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, or on The Tyra Banks Show. Nonetheless, it’s an astonishing tale.

Source: Newsweek
Published: May 21, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,694 words)

How ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Keeps Paying, 20 Years Later

“Shawshank” only began to get moviegoers’ attention after the Oscars, where it received seven nominations (but won no awards) and promptly was rereleased in theaters. The second run grossed an additional $10 million and primed it for its debut on home video, which at the time was still a robust revenue source.

If Andy Dufresne was the movie’s on-screen hero, off screen it was Ted Turner, whose Turner Broadcasting System had acquired Castle Rock in 1993. His TNT channel took the cable-broadcast rights to the film in 1997 and made “Shawshank” an anchor of its “New Classics” campaign.

Over the next few years, TNT and other Turner channels ensured that “Shawshank” never again would suffer from a lack of exposure. “Mr. Turner, bless his heart, chose to show the movie every five minutes,” Mr. Darabont said.

Russell Adams, in the Wall Street Journal, on how a movie that failed to perform at the box office became a huge money maker anyway.

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More on Hollywood in the Longreads Archive

The Case for Reparations

Longreads Pick

Coates traces the history of slavery in America, in all its forms, and how reparations can signal “a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal”:

We must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 21, 2014
Length: 63 minutes (15,836 words)

Ta-Nehisi Coates Calls for Reparations, and a 'Spiritual Renewal' for America

We must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is—the work of fallible humans.

What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Atlantic, on the history of slavery in America—in all its forms—and why reparations are necessary to make the country whole.

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The Atlantic in the Longreads Archive

Photo: Children of a sharecropper, 1935, Wikimedia Commons

Adrift

Longreads Pick

As NASA seeks their next mission, Russia holds the trump card: access to the International Space Station.

Mastracchio’s unglamorous return home last week in a Soyuz capsule has been described by some veteran astronauts as akin to going over Niagara Falls, in a barrel, on fire.

Around the world, in Houston, mission control could only watch for critical signs of success, such as parachute deployment, listen to Russian flight directors and review the data being relayed from Kazakhstan.

When he finally reached the ground Mastracchio remained far from home, but at least it was spring, and the landing spot on. All Soyuz astronauts undergo two nights of winter survival training in case their spacecraft landing goes awry, and they’re stranded in the central Asian hinterlands for a couple of days. It’s a far cry from the handshake with the NASA administrator on a sunny Florida runway that awaited most shuttle astronauts.

Published: May 18, 2014
Length: 11 minutes (2,923 words)

The Worst Day Of My Life Is Now New York’s Hottest Tourist Attraction

Longreads Pick

Nearly 13 years after his sister’s death, Kandell visits the 9/11 Memorial Museum:

I am allowed to enter the 9/11 Museum a few days before this week’s grand opening for the general public, but why would I want that? Why would I accept an invitation to a roughly $350 million, 110,000-square-foot refutation of everything we tried to practice, a gleaming monument to What Happened, not What Happened to Us? Something snapped while reading about the gift shop — I didn’t want to duck and hide, I wanted to run straight into the absurdity and horror and feel every bit of the righteous indignation and come out the other side raw. I call my mother to tell her I’m doing this but that she shouldn’t come, and she doesn’t disagree. I find the ticket booth, exhale deeply, and say the magic words.

#sept11

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: May 20, 2014
Length: 8 minutes (2,224 words)

Meet the Godfather of Wearables

Longreads Pick

Alex Pentland has carved a career path somewhere between the social sciences and science fiction, spearheading the development of everything from Google Glass to fitness trackers.

It all started with beavers. When Alex Pentland was three years into his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, in 1973, he worked part-time as a computer programmer for NASA’s Environmental Research Institute. One of his first tasks — part of a larger environmental-monitoring project — was to develop a method for counting Canadian beavers from outer space. There was just one problem: existing satellites were crude, and beavers are small. “What beavers do is they create ponds,” he recalls of his eventual solution, “and you can count the number of beavers by the number of ponds. You’re watching the lifestyle, and you get an indirect measure.”

The beavers were soon accounted for, but Pentland’s fascination with the underlying methodology had taken root. Would it be possible, the 21-year-old wondered, to use the same approach to understand people and societies, or use sensors to unravel complex social behavior? And in so doing, could we find a way to improve our collective intelligence — to create, in a sense, a world that was more suited to human needs, where cities and businesses alike were developed using objective data to maximize our happiness and productivity?

Source: The Verge
Published: May 16, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,535 words)

It's Never Too Late, Vol. 1

Continuing to brave the Indian Ocean, and continuing to die, only illustrates their desperation in a new, disturbing kind of light. This is the subtext to the plight of every refugee: Whatever hardship he endures, he endures because it beats the hardship he escaped. Every story of exile implies the sadder story of a homeland.

-From Luke Mogelson’s National Magazine Award-winning story, “The Dream Boat,” in The New York Times Magazine (November 2013).

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Britney Spears's Lost Album

A decade ago, Britney Spears worked on an album called “Original Doll” that she hoped would prove herself as a songwriter. Her record label denied the album existed even though Spears did a radio interview where she previewed one of the songs. At Buzzfeed, Hunter Schwarz writes about Spears’s lost album:

On “Take Off,” Spears sang about tolerance, love, and peace. Bell called it her version of Michael Jackson’s “Black or White.” “It was about being tolerant about gay people. It was gay people, discrimination, basically loving yourself and being connected,” Bell said. “I think it was ahead of Lady Gaga. I think people would have looked at her and thought she had something to say. It was ahead of its time. She talked about war and how war is wrong.” In 2013, Bell tweeted some lyrics from the song: “They say get ready for the revolution / I think we oughta find some sorta solution.”

But Jive wasn’t impressed. “I think maybe they thought it was not close enough to her brand,” Bell said. She called In the Zone “the filtered-down version of Original Doll, or the more pop version.” She “wanted to make a record that was more vibey and more personal and honest,” Bell said. Ultimately, Spears still hoped her songs would have their day. “I think she knew, I can come back to these songs later,” Bell said.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons