The New Public Face of American Assisted Suicide

Lawrence Egbert, a retired anesthesiologist from Baltimore, has been present for 100 suicides in the last 15 years. But he is more reluctant in his leading role, in contrast to the late Jack Kevorkian:

“I ask Egbert how much helium it takes to kill a person. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. He recommends buying 50-liter tanks. ‘I know we have two tanks, and we run them to zero. Until they stop hissing. … It’s better to have too much than too little.’

“I find myself staring at one of the hoods, turning it over and over, trying to comprehend how someone could spend the final moments of life with this thing over his head. I tell Egbert that the hoods make me feel uncomfortable.

“He responds in a reed-thin voice, with the manner of a country doctor: ‘I hope so.'”

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jan 20, 2012
Length: 23 minutes (5,871 words)

Motherfuckerland (Chapter 1)

[Fiction] A trip from the Jersey Shore to jail:

“My usual connection wasn’t by the pier on the beach. It started to rain, so I pulled my shirt over my head and ducked under the pier. It stank like hell under there, like fish guts and piss. Thunder boomed and the sky tore open. It couldn’t last, though. These summer showers only run about 10 minutes. I was squeezing out my shirt when a homeless guy came up to me from out of the back.

“‘Hey, you smoke pot?’ he asked. The man was hunched over and wasted. He looked like Keith Richards without a guitar.

“‘Why do you want to know?’ I asked.

“‘Some guy was here and he dropped a bag by accident.’

Author: Ed Lin
Source: Giant Robot
Published: Jan 20, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,059 words)

Will Israel Attack Iran?

Inside Israel’s attempts to slow Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and whether it may ultimately take military action:

“Matthew Kroenig is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011. One of his tasks was defense policy and strategy on Iran. When I spoke with Kroenig last week, he said: ‘My understanding is that the United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike. Israel responded negatively to both requests. It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.’ Kroenig went on, ‘My hunch is that Israel would choose to give warning of an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.'”

Published: Jan 27, 2012
Length: 30 minutes (7,693 words)

The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers

Meet Martin, the I.T. guy who’s helped everyone from drug dealers needing to dodge wiretaps, to restaurants looking to inflate their Foursquare numbers:

“If you’ve seen that episode of The Wire, you know principle behind Martin’s system: ‘Burners,’ prepaid cell phones drug dealers use for a short time then abandon to thwart wiretaps. Prepaid phones have become so associated with drug trafficking and crime that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to require an I.D. to buy one. (Martin said if I.D.s were required he could still run his business ‘but I would probably charge triple because I’d have to make fake I.D.s’)

“But burners can be a pain. For maximum security, phones need to be switched as often as possible—a top Cali cartel manager was once reported to use 35 cell phones a day. Martin’s system makes it easy for a crew to switch all their phones rapidly.”

Source: Gawker
Published: Jan 25, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,956 words)

The Fourth State of Matter

Personal recollection of a life about to be transformed, from one day to the next:

“In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor’s house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 24, 1996
Length: 28 minutes (7,204 words)

Amazon’s Hit Man

Former Time Warner Book Group CEO Larry Kirshbaum jumps from the traditional publishing world to “the dark side,” heading up Amazon Publishing. Meanwhile, the Big Six watch closely:

“Amazon could be an unstoppable competitor to big publishing houses. If history is any guide, Jeff Bezos, who declined to comment for this story, doesn’t care whether he loses money on books for the larger cause of stocking the Kindle with exclusive content unavailable in Barnes & Noble’s Nook or Apple’s iBookstores. He’s also got almost infinitely deep pockets for spending on advances to top authors. Even more awkwardly for publishers, Amazon is their largest retailer, so they are now in the position of having to compete against an important business partner. On the West Coast people cheerfully call this kind of arrangement coopetition. On the East Coast it’s usually referred to as getting stabbed in the back.”

Author: Brad Stone
Source: Businessweek
Published: Jan 26, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,406 words)

Swallowed by a Whale — A True Tale?

One man’s quest to determine if human beings can be — and have ever been — swallowed alive by whales:

“If, I’ll pretend for a moment, you were swallowed, it would happen like this: You would first be chewed. Sperm whales’ teeth are 8 inches long – longer than most blades in your knife drawer. Then you would be gulped to the fauces, the back of the mouth, and forced down. Here is where Bartley apparently touched the quivering sides of the throat. You would also touch the throat, perhaps claw at the sides of the throat like you would sliding down an icy slope. There would be no air, and you’d suffocate in acid and water, but, we’re saying, you somehow survive. Imagine a black and mucous-smothered tube sock slipping over you.

“You would then enter the first stomach, coined by 19th century naturalist Thomas Beale as the holding bag. It’s lined with thick, soft and white cuticle. At 7 feet long by 3 feet wide and shaped like a big egg, the first stomach would easily fit you. If you were kept in the holding bag for over 24 hours, you would likely be joined by squid, but a coconut or shark might come, too.”

Source: Salon
Published: Jan 15, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,763 words)

Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

The harsh working conditions inside factories that make products for Apple:

“‘We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,’ said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. ‘Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.’

“’If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?’ the executive asked.

Published: Jan 26, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,493 words)

The Long Goodbye

The emotional and financial challenges in providing assisted living for parents, who are now living longer:

“Since then, Daddy’s long goodbye has drained his retirement income and life savings of more than $300,000. Where’s that money gone? Assisted living, mostly. Of course, that amount doesn’t account for his medical bills, most of which have been paid by Medicare and insurance policies that were part of his retirement. Daddy’s income—Social Security, plus monthly checks from two pensions—pays for the facility where he lives, his taxes, his life insurance policy premiums, and such incidentals as a visiting podiatrist to clip his nails.

“And he has been kicked out of two hospices for not dying.”

Published: Jan 24, 2012
Length: 11 minutes (2,886 words)

The Power of Female Friendship

Reflecting on the bonds between women, often overlooked or underappreciated, and how these bonds will help the writer in her time of need:

“I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had worked for the same organization in various administrative capacities for the length of time I’d been alive. After one lengthy, boozy dinner of fondue and buckets of white wine, they quickly took me into their friendship fold and jokingly referred to themselves as ‘the Wrinklies.’ We met once a week for dinner, and saw one another every day at the espresso machine in the hallway, in the fabulously lush cantina, on the expertly-tended grounds of our superluxe office building outside the city limits. We had inside jokes and secret looks. We gave each other little gifts: a cookie, a note, a bar of chocolate, a little token of affection spotted at a shop and slipped underneath an office door.”

Author: Emily Rapp
Source: The Rumpus
Published: Jan 22, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,592 words)