Nanolaw with Daughter

Why privacy mattered. “On a Sunday morning before her soccer practice, not long after my daughter’s tenth birthday, she and I sat down on the couch with our tablets and I taught her to respond to lawsuits on her own. I told her to read the first message. ‘It says it’s in French,’ she said. ‘Do I translate?’ ‘Does it have a purple flag on it?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t actually have to worry about it unless it has a purple flag.'”

Author: Paul Ford
Source: Ftrain
Published: May 16, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,031 words)

Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert

It’s high time people stopped kvetching about Wikipedia, which has long been the best encyclopedia available in English, and started figuring out what it portends instead. For one thing, Wikipedia is forcing us to confront the paradox inherent in the idea of learners as “doers, not recipients.” If learners are indeed doers and not recipients, from whom are they learning? From one another, it appears; same as it ever was.

Source: The Awl
Published: May 17, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,386 words)

The 1993 Profile Of Lenny Dykstra That Warned Us What Was Coming

Originally published as “Lips Gets Smacked” in the January 1993 issue of Philadelphia Magazine and later anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing 1994. “It’s Lenny F-ing Dykstra. What a mouth on this guy — not just the utterances that pass through it, but the actual physical mouth. Never closed, even when its owner is ruminative or silent, it is the control center for heavy traffic. Things go in (filtered tips of cigarettes and clear liquids and fingers, one or two at a time) and things come out (a stream of profanity and filtered tips and gusts of smoke and fingers and a tongue). His tongue loves his lips. You can’t blame it. They are fine lips, bountiful, shapely, ideal for pursing or pouting.”

Source: Deadspin
Published: Jan 1, 1993
Length: 11 minutes (2,968 words)

Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides

Because the wedding was illegal and a secret, except to the invited guests, and because marriage rites in Rajasthan are often conducted late at night, it was well into the afternoon before the three girl brides in this dry farm settlement in the north of India began to prepare themselves for their sacred vows.

Published: May 17, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,411 words)

Don’t Have a Cow, Man

From an exchange of emails in fall 2001 between Judd Apatow, the creator of the sitcoms Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and a successful writer of Hollywood screenplays, and Mark Brazill, the creator of That ’70s Show. Topher Grace is one of the stars of That ’70s Show.

Published: Mar 1, 2002
Length: 8 minutes (2,023 words)

Game On! The Untold Secrets and Furious Egos Behind the Rise of SportsCenter

Have Keith Theodore Olbermann spend a few seasons working at your television network and see how you feel. Sort of like Kansas after a twister. If Olbermann hadn’t been so brilliant and talented, few would have put up with him. But Olbermann has a talent that can’t be taught. He can relate to people on the other side of the camera and, indeed, relate to the camera itself in a way that comes across as second nature. And yet he once told an interviewer that on some level, he’s always making fun of television: “Like, ‘Look how ridiculous this is, me sitting here and you sitting on the other end, watching me—what are you doing that for?’ I think that’s always been my attitude.”

Source: GQ
Published: May 16, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,029 words)

And I Should Know

During the recent and overly publicized breakdown of ­Charlie Sheen, I was repeatedly contacted by the media and asked to comment, as it was assumed that I know a thing or two about starring on a sitcom, fighting with producers, nasty divorces, public meltdowns, and bombing through a live comedytour. I have, however, never smoked crack or taken too many drugs, unless you count alcohol as a drug (I don’t). But I do know what it’s like to be seized by bipolar thoughts that make one spout wise about Tiger Blood and brag about winning when one is actually losing.

Published: May 16, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,532 words)

The Slap that Sparked a Revolution

It is a phrase I will hear again and again, in varying forms across Tunisia. Some will call Mohamed Bouazizi “the drop that tipped over the vase”; others will insist that his death “lit the touchpaper” for the Arab spring revolts. But listen closely and there is also a growing murmur of dissent among those who believe that Mohamed was not a political hero but a media creation, manufactured by a myth-making machine that swung into action in the immediate aftermath of his death.

Source: The Guardian
Published: May 15, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,257 words)

The Secret Sharer

On June 13th, a fifty-four-year-old former government employee named Thomas Drake is scheduled to appear in a courtroom in Baltimore, where he will face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic-espionage service, he is accused, in essence, of being an enemy of the state.

Author: Jane Mayer
Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 23, 2011
Length: 36 minutes (9,157 words)

Eat, Pray, Love, Rinse, Repeat

I’ll never forget the moment I heard about Luca Spaghetti’s memoir. It was a late afternoon in early spring. The sunlight pouring into my cubicle, I remember, was the color of artisanal ginger ale. I was about to take the last bite of a carrot-cake doughnut I’d been savoring — a decadent life-gift to myself for a recent spiritual breakthrough — when my editor strode over, holding out a book. “What’s that?” I asked. “A new memoir,” he said.

Published: May 14, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,865 words)