The New American Dream: Renting

It’s time to accept that home ownership is not a realistic goal for many people and to curtail the enormous government programs fueling this ambition.

Published: Aug 14, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,142 words)

Kind of Blue

Why the best-selling jazz album of all time is so great.

Source: Slate
Published: Aug 17, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,855 words)

The Geneva conventions at 60 — Unleashing the laws of war

The chasm is still too wide between noble Swiss ideas and the hard reality of locations where war is hell

Source: Economist
Published: Aug 13, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,826 words)

Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger

With Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino has managed to create something entirely new: a story of emotionally uncomplicated, physically threatening, non-morally-anguished Jews dealing out spaghetti-western justice to Nazis.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Sep 1, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,588 words)

How the moving walkway nearly overtook the Metro

When Paris hosted the Exposition Universelle in 1900, it unveiled its vision for the future of transport.

Source: New Scientist
Published: Aug 6, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,588 words)

Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush

Statute of Limitations Has Expired’ on Many Secrets, Former Vice President Says

Source: Washington Post
Published: Aug 13, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,588 words)

Aquarius Wept

And flights of Angels sang Meredith Hunter to his rest. After Woodstock and love came Altamont and disaster, and after Altamont came its definitive history in the pages of Esquire (now available for the first time online).

Source: Esquire
Published: Aug 1, 1970
Length: 47 minutes (11,766 words)

While My Guitar Gently Beeps

The odd recording session in March was one very small contribution to what Apple Corps — the company still controlled by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison — hopes will be the most deeply immersive way ever of experiencing the music and the mythology of the Beatles. The band that upended the cultural landscape of the 1960s is now hitching its legacy to the medium of a new generation: the video game.

Published: Aug 11, 2009
Length: 33 minutes (8,269 words)

Bringing Down the Dogmen

How a pair of undercover cops infiltrated the secret world of Houston dogfighting.

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Aug 1, 2009
Length: 26 minutes (6,715 words)

Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

Published: Jul 8, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,867 words)