The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers
“Some man, 60 years old, that couldn’t take the business and went and killed himself. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that when you’ve got a 16-year-old daughter who gets the call? Huh? And I’ll tell you how you deal with that. You go through it, and you make jokes about it, and you continue with it, and you move forward. That’s how you do it, or that’s how I do it. Everyone handles things differently. How do you make jokes about how to deal with bankruptcy? How do you deal with your fired from Fox when your numbers were still good, and you can’t get a job for a year and a half? You do it. And I do it by making jokes.”
By Terry Gross, NPR (June 2010)
(via NPRFreshAir)
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The Man Who Spilled the Secrets
On the afternoon of November 1, 2010, Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks.org, marched with his lawyer into the London office of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian. Assange was pallid and sweaty, his thin frame racked by a cough that had been plaguing him for weeks. He was also angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to The Guardian just three months earlier. The encounter was one among many twists and turns in the collaboration between WikiLeaks—a four-year-old nonprofit that accepts anonymous submissions of previously secret material and publishes them on its Web site—and some of the world’s most respected newspapers. The collaboration was unprecedented, and brought global attention to a cache of confidential documents—embarrassing when not disturbing—about American military and diplomatic activity around the world. But the partnership was also troubled from the start.
By Sarah Ellison, Vanity Fair
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Longreads Pick
Have we mentioned the ifs? Like all potentially disruptive innovations, gene sequencers could fizzle. Their success depends on unpredictable events: how fast the technology improves, how quickly researchers can make medical discoveries based on the new machines and–most critically–whether drugs can be developed to treat diseases. Gene test prices could drop, becoming a low-margin commodity like medical blood tests (cholesterol, blood sugar and so on), which, at a few bucks a pop, are a $40 billion business. Ultimately Rothberg’s machine may not win. Like the Commodore 64 home computer that dominated in the 1980s and disappeared soon after, the PGM could be quickly eclipsed.
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Published: Dec 30, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,125 words)
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From 1948: Pearl Harbor in Retrospect
nprfreshair:
“Pearl Harbor struck a country satiated with war’s alarms. True, we had put through the draft and had actually reached the shooting stage with German submarines. But as a people we were still talking of war, without really accepting its imminence. Then, into our national complacency, came a surprise blow at our strongest point! We underestimated Japanese military power. So far as military and naval estimates were concerned, Japan had to be judged largely on her past record. Power cannot be gauged solely on strength reports, even if actual strength be known. Japan’s war record was not impressive. She had fought but one great power (if the Russia of 1904-1905 can be so rated), plus a push-over against an isolated German Colony. Most indicative of all were the four years before Pearl Harbor in which she had waged active warfare in China. We knew pretty accurately China’s deficiencies in modern equipment, resources, and training. Our maps and time scales, as we followed the war, clearly indicated a low rating for Japanese military prowess when judged by modern standards. We had a yardstick. No better measure exists of what a power plant can do, if you cannot put your own gauges on it, than what it has done. We had no reason to doubt our yardstick’s approximate accuracy. Yet it was wholly false.”
—
Sherman Miles, “Pearl Harbor In Retrospect” (The Atlantic, July 1948)
Read the whole article here.
(via theatlantic)
“The last twenty-four hours in Washington before the bombs fell have come in for much scrutiny. Why did the President, with most of the Japanese final answer before him, conclude that it meant war and then, after a fitful attempt to reach Admiral Stark by telephone, quietly go to bed? Why was he in seclusion the following morning? Why was no action taken on the Japanese reply by the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy when they met on that Sunday morning? Why did they not consult the President, or he send for them? Where was everybody, including my humble self? Why, in short, didn’t someone stage a last-minute rescue, in good Western style?”
(Miles was Assistant Chief of Staff for Military Intelligence at the time of the attack.)
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Longreads Pick
Many news outlets are doing far less accountability reporting than in the past, bad news indeed for the public. New nonprofit investigative ventures have emerged, but they can’t pick up the slack by themselves.
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Published: Sep 6, 2010
Length: 30 minutes (7,646 words)
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Longreads Pick
Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree.
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Published: Jul 21, 2010
Length: 27 minutes (6,787 words)
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Longreads Pick
Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences
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Published: Aug 1, 2010
Length: 33 minutes (8,493 words)
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Longreads Pick
If not for founder Mark Zuckerberg’s stubborn streak, social-media pioneer Facebook might be just another part of a giant media or tech outfit today. Instead it’s a giant on its own, with close to 500 million users, some $20 billion in market value, and millions of investors eagerly awaiting an IPO. For his new book, “The Facebook Effect: the Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World,” Fortune contributor David Kirkpatrick gained unprecedented access to the company and Zuckerberg, who turns 26 this month. In this adapted excerpt, Kirkpatrick reveals Zuckerberg’s turmoil as he resisted takeover offers from a parade of moguls.
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Published: May 6, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,320 words)
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Longreads Pick
All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable.
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Published: May 1, 2010
Length: 26 minutes (6,656 words)
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