A Basketball Carol

The Washington Generals always lose: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. They lose on indoor basketball courts and outdoor courts. They lose on ships, they lose on aircraft carriers, they lose in prisons and they lose on the back of trucks. … This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come from the story I’m about to relate. If we were to believe that the Generals mostly lost to the Harlem Globetrotters, or almost always lost, or even won only as rarely as the Detroit Lions, then there would be nothing more remarkable about that day 40 years ago than a Lions upset victory over one of the unlucky three or four or five teams most years who happen to haplessly run into it.

Published: Jan 5, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,722 words)

The Web After You’re Dead

Mac Tonnies’s digital afterlife stands as a kind of best-case scenario for preserving something of an online life, but even his case hasn’t worked out perfectly. His “Pro” account on the photo-sharing service Flickr allowed him to upload many — possibly thousands — of images. But since that account has lapsed, the vast majority can no longer be viewed. Some were likely gathered in Plattner’s backup of Tonnies’s blog; others may exist somewhere on his laptop, though Dana Tonnies still isn’t sure where to look for them.

Author: Rob Walker
Published: Jan 5, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,052 words)

Infopocalypse: The Cost of Too Much Data

Our nation is drowning in data. At any given time, federal agencies use more electronic storage units than could fill every NFL stadium from Oakland to Foxboro. At last count, the US government owns or leases at least 2100 data centers, and spends about half of its multi-billion dollar IT budget on digital storage. The United States Census Bureau alone maintains about 2560 terabytes of information — more data than is contained in all the academic libraries in America, and the equivalent of about 50 million four-door filing cabinets of text documents. In addition to the federal deluge, tens of thousands of municipal and state facilities maintain data ranging from driver’s-license pics to administrative e-mails — or at least they’re required to.

Source: Boston Phoenix
Published: Dec 29, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,264 words)

Man of Mystery: Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson’s Novels?

However much the book was revised, it should have been revised more. The opening may have been reworked, as Gedin says, but it still features an episode—somebody telling somebody else at length (twelve pages!) about a series of financial crimes peripheral to the main plot—that, by wide consensus, is staggeringly boring. Elsewhere, there are blatant violations of logic and consistency. Loose ends dangle. There are vast dumps of unnecessary detail. When Lisbeth goes to IKEA, we get a list of every single thing she buys. The jokes aren’t funny. The dialogue could not be worse. The phrasing and the vocabulary are consistently banal.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 4, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,070 words)

Can You Live Forever? Maybe Not—But You Can Have Fun Trying

When I asked these skeptics about the future, even their most conservative visions were unsettling: a future in which people boost their brains with enhancing drugs, for example, or have sophisticated computers implanted in their skulls for life. While we may never be able to upload our minds into a computer, we may still be able to build computers based on the layout of the human brain. I can report I have not drunk the Singularity Kool-Aid, but I have taken a sip.

Published: Dec 22, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,467 words)

The Rise of the New Global Elite

F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind. … “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20 [million] is, 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding. …”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jan 4, 2011
Length: 29 minutes (7,475 words)

The Dubai Job

One year ago, an elite Mossad hit squad traveled to Dubai to kill a high-ranking member of Hamas. They completed the mission, but their covers were blown, and Israel was humiliated by the twenty-seven-minute video of their movements that was posted online for all the world to see. Ronen Bergman reveals the intricate, chilling details of the mission and investigates how Israel’s vaunted spy agency did things so spectacularly wrong

Source: GQ
Published: Jan 4, 2011
Length: 26 minutes (6,504 words)

Like Cormac McCarthy, But Funny

Charles Portis, author of True Grit, got John Wayne his only Oscar. He once had Karl Marx’s old gig (as the London bureau chief for the New York Herald-Tribune). He’s written four other novels, three of them masterpieces, though which three is up for debate. Here’s 7,000 words about a guy you’ve never heard of. But should, we say.

Author: Ed Park
Source: The Believer
Published: Mar 1, 2003
Length: 26 minutes (6,711 words)

Allen Iverson: Fallen Star

With his NBA career over, his marriage in trouble, and rumors swirling about drinking and money problems, the greatest Sixer of his era finds himself playing minor-league basketball in Turkey and spending his nights at a T.G.I. Friday’s in Istanbul. Isn’t it, weirdly, exactly how we always thought it would end for Allen Iverson?

Published: Jan 3, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,515 words)

The Toppling: How the Media Inflated a Minor Moment in a Long War

“I realized this was a big deal,” McCoy told me. “You’ve got all the press out there and everybody is liquored up on the moment. You have this Paris, 1944, feel. I remember thinking, The media is watching the Iraqis trying to topple this icon of Saddam Hussein. Let’s give them a hand.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 3, 2011
Length: 35 minutes (8,919 words)