In a House by the River

Sixteen years ago, the man who helped raise Megan Michelson was shot to death at a remote kayaking lodge in Northern California. The writer embarks on a painful search to find out what happened, and why. “At the time, Mom told me Jerry had gotten into a fight and that his body had been found in the doorway of the Otter Bar owners’ private residence. The few times I asked for specifics, Mom’s response was short: ‘You don’t want to know.’ But I’m 28 now, and I do want to know.”

Source: Outside
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,098 words)

The Idealist

Jeff Smith was a rising political star. Then the FBI started asking questions about his past. “That evening, Smith gave a speech at a fund-raiser in a downtown loft. He found it difficult to focus. ‘As I was talking, I had an ominous sense of foreboding about what was to come,’ he says. ‘I looked around the crowd and thought to myself, “This is going to be our last fund-raiser.”‘”

Source: Slate
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,150 words)

George Lois on Advertising and the Death of the Magazine Cover

“[Magazine covers] are very carefully researched. They test them: ‘Do you like this line better than this one?’ If you have to depend on blurbs to have people buy your magazine then you’ve got a piece of shit! You don’t have a brand! You don’t design a magazine for your audience; you create a great magazine for yourself. I’ve had this discussion with editors like Graydon Carter. He could do great Vanity Fair covers. Graydon said, ‘We have very intelligent readers.’ And I said, ‘Of course you have very intelligent readers, and you insult them with every cover!'”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)

A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

There was no crusading journalist, no nonprofit group taking up his cause, just Inmate 95A2646, a high-school dropout from Brooklyn, alone in a computerless prison law library. Jabbar Collins pried documents from wary prosecutors, tracked down reluctant witnesses and persuaded them, at least once through trickery, to reveal what allegedly went on before and at the trial where he was convicted of the high-profile 1994 murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack.

Published: Dec 24, 2010
Length: 11 minutes (2,762 words)

Glock: America’s Gun

For all the anguish and outcry in the days after a community college dropout named Jared Loughner allegedly sprayed a Tucson crowd with 33 bullets from a semiautomatic pistol, one response was notably absent: any sense that America’s latest shooting spree, which killed six people and wounded 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, would bring new restrictions on the right to own or carry large-capacity, rapid-fire weapons.

Source: Businessweek
Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,507 words)

The Man Who Wouldn’t Die

Olympic hero (and 2011 “Biggest Loser” contestant) Rulon Gardner has fallen off trucks, tumbled off tractors, and gotten stuck in a baler. He has been impaled on an arrow, broken his neck, and gashed his knee clean to the bone. He has survived several catastrophic high-speed accidents, endured a frostbitten night in subzero temperatures, and most recently, swam away (barely) from a plane crash in Lake Powell. In between, he pulled off one of the great upsets in sports history and became an American legend. Meet Rulon Gardner, the luckiest man on earth.

Source: GQ
Published: Aug 1, 2007
Length: 35 minutes (8,753 words)

Europe’s Odd Couple

While the agonies of the European Union — sovereign defaults, deficits and bubbles — unfold like a great wonk drama, at their core is something more intimate: the fractured tale of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. They have been photographed across Europe giving the appearance of happy partnership. They are the best hope Europe has for continued unity. But they do not like each other at all.

Published: Jan 13, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,154 words)

Gram Junkies: In Transportation Design the Key Issue Is Not Speed, but Weight

Transport economist Chris Bradshaw wants planners and designers to respect what he calls “the scalar hierarchy.” This is when trips taken most frequently are short enough to be made by walking (even if pulling a small cart), while the next more frequent trips require a bike or street car and so on. “If one adheres to this, then there are so few trips to be made by car, that owning one is foolish.”

Source: Change Observer
Published: Jan 12, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,527 words)

President Obama’s Address in Tucson

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

Published: Jan 13, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,591 words)

The Terminator Scenario: Are We Giving Our Military Machines Too Much Power?

Robots will come to possess far greater intelligence, with more ability to reason and self-adapt, and they will also of course acquire ever greater destructive power. So what does it mean when whatever can go wrong with these military machines, just might?

Author: Ben Austen
Source: Popular Science
Published: Dec 14, 2010
Length: 18 minutes (4,631 words)