The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder—like the Single Use Digital Camera—had lots of downsides. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn’t even have an optical zoom. But it was small, inexpensive, and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

Source: Wired
Published: Aug 24, 2009
Length: 16 minutes (4,059 words)

Hostages of the Hermit Kingdom

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released last month after being imprisoned in North Korea, tell their story — and remind people of the story they wanted to cover.

Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,927 words)

Baltimore Sun: Stop the Presses

With layoffs, the encroaching Internet, and the recession, is Baltimore’s paper of record on the verge of collapse?

Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 42 minutes (10,520 words)

Closing Time

The History Of America Is The History Of The Automobile Industry— Which Is Far Older And Stranger Than You Might Imagine.

Author: Rich Cohen
Source: The Believer
Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 42 minutes (10,520 words)

LeBron’s Band of Brothers

In an excerpt from his new book, the NBA’s biggest star recalls the team that made him: five kids who challenged themselves, one another, and their community, going all the way to the bittersweet final game that would make them National Champions.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 33 minutes (8,458 words)

Bringing ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ to the Screen

“Where the Wild Things Are” is arguably of a piece with Spike Jonze’s earlier works; it features moments of transcendent beauty and moments of profound silliness. Just as in “Jackass,” characters smash things and throw things at one another.

Author: Saki Knafo
Published: Sep 2, 2009
Length: 29 minutes (7,482 words)

We Are All Madoffs

Our relationship to the natural world is a Ponzi scheme

Published: Aug 31, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,140 words)

The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!

Now one of America’s most legendary authors, Tom Wolfe broke out onto the national literary scene at age thirty-four with this breathless piece — an early step in the so-called New Journalism, a first reference for the term “good ol’ boy,” a deep breath into the future of the New South.

Author: Tom Wolfe
Source: Esquire
Published: Mar 1, 1965
Length: 121 minutes (30,376 words)

Killer@Craigslist

The “Craigslist Murder” was a crime made possible by the Internet, and the prime suspect was apprehended through online sleuthing. But the killing of Julissa Brisman allegedly by Boston University medical student Philip Markoff is still a very human mystery, with dark sexual overtones and surprising contradictions.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 1, 2009
Length: 30 minutes (7,583 words)

The Iraqi Who Saved Norway From Oil

When he boarded his flight from London to Oslo, Farouk al-Kasim, a young Iraqi geologist, knew his life would never again be the same. Norway was a country about as different as it was possible to imagine from his home, the Iraqi port city of Basra. He had no job to go to, and no idea of how he would make a living in the far north. It was May 1968 and al-Kasim had just resigned from his post at the Iraq Petroleum Company. To do so, he had had to come to the UK, where the consortium of western companies that still controlled most of his country’s oil production had its headquarters.

Source: Financial Times
Published: Aug 29, 2009
Length: 12 minutes (3,115 words)