The Force

A history of America’s military spending:

“If any arms manufacturer today holds what Eisenhower called ‘unwarranted influence,’ it is Lockheed Martin. The firm’s contracts with the Pentagon amount to some thirty billion dollars annually, as William D. Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, reports in his book ‘Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex’ (Nation). Today, Lockheed Martin spends fifteen million dollars a year on lobbying efforts and campaign contributions. The company was the single largest contributor to Buck McKeon’s last campaign. (Lockheed Martin has a major R. & D. center in McKeon’s congressional district.) This patronage hardly distinguishes McKeon from his colleagues on Capitol Hill. Lockheed Martin contributed to the campaigns of nine of the twelve members of the Supercommittee, fifty-one of the sixty-two members of the House Armed Services Committee, twenty-four of the twenty-five members of that committee’s Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces—in all, to three hundred and eighty-six of the four hundred and thirty-five members of the 112th Congress.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 23, 2013
Length: 17 minutes (4,444 words)

Living the American Dream in the West Bank

Meet the families who have moved from America to West Bank settlements:

“In 2010, 269 Jews moved from America to West Bank settlements, many of which are marketed as ‘bedroom communities’ to families and white-collar professionals in the US. The migration is called ‘making aliyah,’ which translates roughly from the Hebrew as ‘movin’ on up.’ Never mind that it’s a violation of the Geneva Conventions for Israel, as an occupying power, to install civilians in the West Bank, one-fifth of which, according to the Oslo Accords, falls under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.

“To encourage Jews to illegally settle there, the Israeli government subsidizes home purchases and offers reduced rates for leasing land, in addition to the perks all new Israeli citizens get such as free health care, upward of a 90 percent reduction in property taxes, tuition waivers for earning advanced degrees, and a payment of about $14,000 spending money for a family of five. The first installment is paid on arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport—in cash.”

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Jan 22, 2013
Length: 8 minutes (2,202 words)

What Choice?

The problems within the pro-choice movement:

“Some of these leaders and their similarly aged deputies have been reluctant to pass the torch, according to a growing number of younger abortion-rights activists who say their predecessors are hindering the movement from updating its strategy to appeal to new audiences. This tension had been brewing for years, but in 2010, Keenan told Newsweek that she worried that the pro-choice cause might be vulnerable because young people weren’t motivated enough to get involved. The complaint struck young activists like Steph Herold, 25, as an effort to place blame on others for mistakes the establishment pro-choice movement has made along the way. ‘They are the generation that gave us legalized abortions, but they also screwed up,’ says Herold, pointing to the pro-choice establishment’s failure to stop the 1976 Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits federal funding of abortions and disproportionately affects poor women. At a conference last May, Herold heard a women’s-clinic owner who has worked in the abortion field for some 40 years echo Keenan’s complaint–that young people aren’t involved enough in the pro-choice movement. Herold was furious. She stood up and, trembling, walked to a microphone. ‘We’re counseling your patients and stuffing your envelopes,’ Herold told the clinic owner. ‘You should be talking to us and not just about us.'”

Source: Time Magazine
Published: Jan 14, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,625 words)

The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll, Part 3: Bon Jovi

Rethinking the legacy of one of the most ridiculed hair bands of our time:

“I have no insight into the goings-on of Jon Bon Jovi’s headspace, but I like to imagine him having a ‘Once in a Lifetime’ moment during the Springsteen duet: ‘This is not my classic-rock staple, this is not my classic-rock backing band. Well, how did I get here?’ Maybe I’m projecting: In many people’s minds (certainly many critics’ minds), perceptions of Bon Jovi will forever be fixed in the late ’80s, the band’s most commercially successful period, when Slippery When Wet and 1988’s New Jersey spun off seven top-10 singles — an unprecedented run for what’s ostensibly a hard-rock band — including four no. 1’s. ‘Blaze of Glory,’ the breakout song from Jon Bon Jovi’s ‘solo’ soundtrack for Young Guns II, also hit the top of the charts during this period.

“Susan Orlean’s1 1987 profile of Bon Jovi for Rolling Stone was typical of how the press treated the band at the time. The piece begins with an extended, oddly reverential treatise on Jon Bon’s ‘fourteen inches’ of hair: ‘Its color is somewhere between chestnut and auburn, and the frosty streaks in it give it a sizzling golden sheen,’ Orlean writes. ‘Truth is, it would be safe to say that Jon Bon Jovi has the most wonderful hair in rock & roll today.’ Orlean describes Jon Bon’s locks as an oedipal metaphor for rebellion against his dad, a hairdresser, though her poker face doesn’t quite hold. She doesn’t really take this guy seriously, and the implication is that we shouldn’t either.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jan 22, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,546 words)

The Trials of Art Superdealer Larry Gagosian

How the global art market works:

“The negotiations among Gagosian, Mugrabi, and the Sotheby’s team reflect the sort of favored-client privileges many gallerists who don’t speculate in the secondary market claim can be dangerous to collectors and artists. Mugrabi told Rotter that if Froehlich, the seller, didn’t agree to their price, he ought to take the piece off the market rather than risk a buy-in. ‘I’ll tell you what the bottom price is, and if the guy wants it, we can at least have a secure bid on it,’ he told Rotter. ‘And if he doesn’t, then maybe he withdraws it from the sale.’

“Then Mugrabi called his father. ‘Froehlich está muy stubborn,’ he complained. He proceeded to have a conversation, mostly in Spanish, about which pictures were covered (‘El Tuna, sí. El Hammer and Sickle, no. Los Zapatos tampoco…’). He took his father’s remarks as instructions to make an offer ‘por los dos.’ When Mugrabi called back to Rotter at Sotheby’s, he said, ‘What’s up, Alex? My dad said that he can pay for the two pictures—for the Hammer and Sickle and the shoes—£2 million, all-inclusive.’ Then he said, ‘Okay, cool. Okay, okay.’ They hung up.”

Published: Jan 21, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,944 words)

President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

Published: Jan 21, 2013
Length: 8 minutes (2,116 words)

Bones of Contention

Inside the fight over a 24-foot-long Mongolian dinosaur skeleton, and efforts to crack down on the black market for fossils:

“As the bidding opened, at eight hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, Robert Painter, an attorney from Houston, stood up, a BlackBerry in his hand. Painter is six feet three and forty-two, with dark hair, rimless eyeglasses, and a deep voice. ‘I hate to interrupt this,’ he told the room. ‘But I have the judge on the phone.’ The previous day, Carlos Cortez—a state district judge in Dallas, where Heritage has its headquarters—had signed a temporary restraining order forbidding the company to auction the T. bataar, on the ground that the dinosaur was believed to have been stolen from Mongolia. The judge, defied, was not pleased.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jan 21, 2013
Length: 41 minutes (10,499 words)

Mutants

Scientists track down a killer superbug by sequencing its genome:

“In late August, as word of the outbreak circulated among the NIH staff, Snitkin and his boss, Julie Segre, approached the Clinical Center with an unusual offer. In their jobs at the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, the two scientists had previously sequenced genomes from a bacterial outbreak long after it had died out. But today, sequencing technology had become so fast and so cheap. Why not analyze the bacteria in the middle of an outbreak? By tracking the bug’s transmission route through the hospital, they might be able to isolate it and stop its lethal spread. They put this question to the center’s top brass, who immediately accepted their offer. ‘It was a no-brainer,’ says Tara Palmore, the center’s deputy epidemiologist, who headed up its fight against KPC.”

Source: Wired
Published: Jan 17, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,433 words)

Edge and the Art Collector

On Steven Cohen, an embattled hedge fund manager who is one of the biggest art collectors in the world:

“It was a startling request. The Art Collector wasn’t that interested in what we thought about companies or industries, competitive advantages or long-term growth. No, the Art Collector’s trading strategy was based on the thesis that one could make money trading stocks by anticipating whether Wall Street’s equity research analysts, collectively, were going to increase or decrease their estimates of how much a company was going to make the next quarter. The Art Collector didn’t invent the estimate revisions strategy. But the Art Collector had figured out that even if one worked tirelessly to discover the patterns of analysts’ opinions (or of the companies themselves), one still had no fundamental edge over other smart traders doing the same thing. What one could do—brazenly, unprecedentedly—was to pay the banks as much—more—than than any other client to get information first. This would potentially allow the Art Collector’s traders to hear some nuance from the analysts or the broker that would move a stock a sixteenth or two when the information was better propagated. This was not a restaurant’s biggest customer demanding a better table. This was a restaurant’s biggest customer demanding that other patrons get worse food.”

Source: n+1
Published: Jan 16, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,473 words)

The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show

Loving alternative music, but feeling like an outsider:

“One day in gym class, sitting on the bleachers adjacent to the football field, the popular kids in class came to sit next to me as we waited for everyone to suit up. Among hushed whispers, one of them turned around and asked me who my favorite musicians were. I rattled off Nirvana, the Ramones, and a host of third-tier grunge bands whose names I’m now far too embarrassed to mention publicly. (I’m fairly sure I also talked about how much I wanted to move to Seattle because of grunge; how I actually ended up here was by happenstance.) My intrepid interviewer smiled and mouthed ‘I told you so’ to his friends, who reacted with a small eruption of snide giggles.

“When I listened to rock music as a kid, it often felt like I was sneaking past the guards of racial barriers and into a cool party I wasn’t invited to. But I didn’t want to feel that way. I just wanted to enjoy the music just like everybody else.”

Source: MTV Hive
Published: Jan 16, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,170 words)