Too Much Information
When the generation-defining writer David Foster Wallace took his own life in 2008, he left behind an unfinished novel, “The Pale King,” that will either serve to round out his transcendent body of writing or place a haunting question mark at the end of his career. John Jeremiah Sullivan holes up with the new book and considers the legacy.
Unfinished Business
If “The Pale King” isn’t a finished work, it is, at the very least, a remarkable document, by no means a stunt or an attempt to cash in on David Foster Wallace’s posthumous fame. Despite its shattered state and its unpromising subject matter, or possibly because of them, “The Pale King” represents Wallace’s finest work as a novelist.
On Libya’s Revolutionary Road
For the next two hours, Qaddafi lectured the men. He warned them not to encourage the kinds of protests that had overthrown one dictator in Tunisia and would soon topple another, Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt. “Take down your Facebook pages, your demands will be met,” Qaddafi said. At times, he muttered to himself at length, leaving the lawyers baffled and embarrassed. As he listened, Saih felt his fear giving way to a deep and unexpected reassurance. It was not Qaddafi’s drugged, monotone voice that soothed him. Nor was it the Leader’s seeming desperation or his promises of reform, which Saih did not believe. Instead, it was the mere sight of him up close, an old man with a wrinkled, sagging face.
Why You Should Care About Cricket
The guy walking across the parking lot is famous. That’s easy to tell from the reactions. Crowds part for him. Security guards mirror his every step. Other cricketers who made this same trip to the locker room tiptoed around the puddles. He strides over them, head up, confident. I am following an Indian cricket superstar, but I don’t know who he is. That’s the kind of trip this is going to be — one of constant confusion and mystery. … “Who is that?” He looks at me like I’ve got three heads. “Sachin Tendulkar.” Oh.
The History of Cricket in the United States
The rules of the game on this side of the Atlantic were formalized in 1754, when Benjamin Franklin brought back from England a copy of the 1744 Laws, cricket’s official rule book. There is anecdotal evidence that George Washington’s troops played what they called “wickets” at Valley Forge in the summer of 1778. After the Revolution, a 1786 advertisement for cricket equipment appeared in the New York Independent Journal, and newspaper reports of that time frequently mention “young gentlemen” and “men of fashion” taking up the sport. Indeed, the game came up in the debate over what to call the new nation’s head of state: John Adams noted disapprovingly—and futilely—that “there are presidents of fire companies and cricket clubs.”
The Acid Sea
The carbon dioxide we pump into the air is seeping into the oceans and slowly acidifying them. One hundred years from now, will oysters, mussels, and coral reefs survive? “In 2008 a group of more than 150 leading researchers issued a declaration stating that they were ‘deeply concerned by recent, rapid changes in ocean chemistry,’ which could within decades ‘severely affect marine organisms, food webs, biodiversity, and fisheries.'”
Bloodlust: Why We Should Fear Our Neighbors More than Strangers
Civil wars are generally more savage, and bear more lasting consequences, than wars between countries. Many more people died in the American Civil War—at a time when the population was a tenth of what it is today—than in any other American conflict, and its long-term effects probably surpass those of the others. Major bloodlettings of the 20th century—hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths—occurred in civil wars such as the Russian Civil War, the Chinese Civil Wars of 1927-37 and 1945-49, and the Spanish Civil War. More Russian lives were lost in the Russian Civil War that followed World War I than in the Great War itself, for instance.
Stuff Julian Schnabel Told Me In His Ex-Wife’s Living Room Last Night
“he touches Dan Colen’s painting with his fingers, moving his fingers over the birdshit lumps, and looks unimpressed. he asks me if i’ve heard of Dan Colen and i say ‘yeah because i read a lot about Dash Snow after he died.’ as we’re standing next to the bird shit painting, i tell Julian Schnabel about the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, which is the fattest country in the world (97% of men and 93% of women are overweight or obese), because, re: the birdshit painting, the island’s chief export is guano, which is the excrement of bats, birds, and seals. the island got really rich off selling this shit to the rest of the world for fertilizer, and then the rest of the world repaid Nauru by making it the fattest country. Julian Schnabel is entertained”
Microsoft’s Odd Couple
It’s 1975 and two college dropouts are racing to create software for a new line of “hobbyist” computers. The result? A company called “Micro-Soft”—now the fifth-most-valuable corporation on earth. In an adaptation from his memoir, Paul Allen tells the story of his partnership with high-school classmate Bill Gates, until its dramatic ending in 1983.
Man vs. Machine on Wall Street: How Computers Beat the Market
Cliff Asness’s Applied Quantitative Research—which makes its fortune, like other “quants,” by using high-speed computers and financial models of extraordinary complexity—has made a stupendous recovery in the past two years. At the end of 2010, AQR had $33 billion in assets under management. Its funds’ performance was up nearly 20 percent last year, after being up 38 percent in 2009. This is all the more striking because many analysts believe the quants helped cause, or at least exacerbated, the meltdown by giving traders a false sense of security.
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