Voices from Baghdad
A reporter returns to Iraq after 10 years and, after after speaking with old friends and colleagues, finds a city “traumatized by violence”
They spoke generously and the words lent perspective to these new, unhappy days in Iraq. The first years of democracy were expected to be hard. But this year, with the third national election in April, these men have been frustrated by their terror-torn existence. Every new blast cracks their hopes for a normal life.
“What does it mean if work is good but you have to worry about survival all the time?” said Tharwat al-Ani, the trade ministry official. “Every year, it’s been something new: car bombs or IEDs or kidnappings.
Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney
Ron Suskind explores how his autistic son Owen found a voice through the lessons and sidekicks in Disney films. The story is an excerpt from the journalist’s new book, Life, Animated:
Owen’s chosen affinity clearly opened a window to myth, fable and legend that Disney lifted and retooled, just as the Grimm Brothers did, from a vast repository of folklore. Countless cultures have told versions of “Beauty and the Beast,” which dates back 2,000 years to the Latin “Cupid and Psyche” and certainly beyond that. These are stories human beings have always told themselves to make their way in the world.
But what draws kids like Owen to these movies is something even more elemental. Walt Disney told his early animators that the characters and the scenes should be so vivid and clear that they could be understood with the sound turned off. Inadvertently, this creates a dream portal for those who struggle with auditory processing, especially, in recent decades, when the films can be rewound and replayed many times.
All Aboard: Four Stories About Trains
This week’s reading list by Emily includes stories from The New York TImes, n+1, and Der Spiegel.
For Love & Money
Same-sex marriages could add $43 million in wedding spending to Wisconsin’s economy in three years if they were legal. But the real economic impact goes far deeper than veils, venues and vows.
On a day in late December 2013, Roger and Indy Arteaga-Derenne sat, marriage license in hand, waiting for a 12:15 p.m. appointment with Judge David Piper of the Hennepin County court system. They had driven 350 miles from their home in Bayside to Minneapolis, and they were nervous. They had plenty of questions for this judge, whom they had never met. Would he marry them? Would he waive the required five-day waiting period for all would-be newlyweds?
‘Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?’
Cartoonist Roz Chast’s illustrated memoir on the final years of her parents’ lives.
It’s no accident that most consumer ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. For one thing, they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents’ stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at YOUR stuff in the same way.
The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul
How the College Board revolutionized the most controversial exam in America:
When the Scholastic Aptitude Test was created in 1926, it was promoted as a tool to create a classless, Jeffersonian-style meritocracy. The exam, which purported to measure innate intelligence, was originally adapted from the World War I Army I.Q. test and served as a scholarship screening device for about a dozen selective colleges throughout the 1930s. It was assumed that there was no way to effectively prep for a test geared to inborn intelligence, but as early as 1938, Stanley Kaplan began offering classes that promised higher scores. Today the company Kaplan founded and its main competitor, the Princeton Review, are joined by innumerable boutique firms (not to mention high-priced private tutors), all part of a $4.5-billion-a-year industry that caters largely to the worried wealthy in America who feel that the test can be gamed and that their children need to pay to learn the strategies.
An American Seduction: Portrait of a Prison Town
The High Desert State Prison was supposed to save Susanville, CA, bringing jobs and money to the ailing town. And it did. But the costs were devastating.
It is March 1999. I’ve come home because the new High Desert State Prison needs teachers, and I need a job. At 8 a.m., I stop at the BP for the weekly paper: the first thing I notice is the place is full of prison guards. They’re buying cigarettes and gas, stirring whitener into coffee. Each is decked out in full uniform, army green suit and parka with the California Department of Corrections gold patch, shiny black boots, belt hung with batons and pepper spray. Most are young and beefy; all have the soldier hairdo, trim mustache, crisp creases—these guys would pass any inspection.
Two more walk in. I should feel safe, but I don’t. These uniforms are about keeping people in line. It feels more like a Central American border crossing than a gas station convenience store in rural America. The young man with the ponytail apparently doesn’t like the scene either; he walks in, then pivots coolly right back out.
What Louis Armstrong Really Thinks
A deeper look at the legendary jazz musician’s work and thoughts on race in America:
Armstrong chose his battles carefully. In September, 1957, seven months after the bombing attempt in Knoxville, he grew strident when President Eisenhower did not compel Arkansas to allow nine students to attend Little Rock Central High School. As Teachout recounts in “Pops,” here Armstrong had leverage, and spoke out. Armstrong was then an unofficial goodwill ambassador for the State Department. Armstrong stated publicly that Eisenhower was “two-faced” and had “no guts.” He told one reporter, “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country.” His comments made network newscasts and front pages, and the A.P. reported that State Department officials had conceded that “Soviet propagandists would undoubtedly seize on Mr. Armstrong’s words.”
Doing things Armstrong’s way, no one had to accept responsibility for his actions but Louis Armstrong. When Eisenhower did force the schools to integrate, Armstrong’s tone was friendlier. “Daddy,” he telegrammed the President, “You have a good heart.”
Genome Surgery
Our ability to edit the genome using DNA-cutting proteins may have a profound effect on the way we treat diseases in the future:
It is likely to be at least several years before such efforts can be developed into human therapeutics, but a growing number of academic researchers have seen some preliminary success with experiments involving sickle-cell anemia, HIV, and cystic fibrosis (see table below). One is Gang Bao, a bioengineering researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has already used CRISPR to correct the sickle-cell mutation in human cells grown in a dish. Bao and his team started the work in 2008 using zinc finger nucleases. When TALENs came out, his group switched quickly, says Bao, and then it began using CRISPR when that tool became available. While he has ambitions to eventually work on a variety of diseases, Bao says it makes sense to start with sickle-cell anemia. “If we pick a disease to treat using genome editing, we should start with something relatively simple,” he says. “A disease caused by a single mutation, in a single gene, that involves only a single cell type.”
The Higher Ed Experience in 2014: Our College Pick
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.
You must be logged in to post a comment.