One time at D&D camp…

Author: Mj Harnish
Source: Gaming Brouhaha
Published: May 19, 2009
Length: 9 minutes (2,310 words)

The Taliban in Their Own Words

Source: Newsweek
Published: Sep 26, 2009
Length: 25 minutes (6,286 words)

Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?

Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function.

Author: Paul Tough
Published: Sep 25, 2009
Length: 16 minutes (4,175 words)

Confessions of a home-schooler

Call us crackpots, but our kids spend their days at beaches and museums, not in school

Source: Salon
Published: Sep 28, 2009
Length: 13 minutes (3,468 words)

The Last of the Wasps

In an excerpt from Tad Friend’s new memoir, Cheerful Money, he explains the proper way to say “tomato,” where his family’s money went, and what makes him a Wasp.

Author: Tad Friend
Source: The Daily Beast
Published: Sep 27, 2009
Length: 12 minutes (3,177 words)

The Snakehead

The criminal odyssey of Chinatown’s Sister Ping.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Apr 24, 2006
Length: 32 minutes (8,098 words)

Tigertown

No city has been harder hit by the economic downturn than Detroit, and that forced Tigers owner Mike Ilitch to take a most drastic measure: He raised the payroll and reinvested dramatically in his franchise.

Published: Sep 28, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,951 words)

Coming Out in Middle School

Austin didn’t know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. “I don’t have any clean clothes!” he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.

Published: Sep 23, 2009
Length: 27 minutes (6,850 words)

Detroit: The Death — and Possible Life — of a Great City

Source: Time
Published: Sep 24, 2009
Length: 10 minutes (2,608 words)

The Shadow Editors: When Did Perez Hilton Become More Famous Than Paris Hilton And Why Were We Not Informed?

“That is a good point. They were eager, historically, to cover Paris, but they are exceedingly less eager to cover Perez. In part, I think because he has a platform via which to castigate, undermine and rebut? I think publications dislike both Hiltons equally. But they were never afraid of Paris, because she had no editorial product of her own.”

Author: Tom Scocca
Source: The Awl
Published: Sep 23, 2009
Length: 9 minutes (2,470 words)