A Mormon Reporter On The Romney Bus

How the Mitt Romney campaign, its supporters and the media addressed the candidate’s Mormon faith:

“On the night of the South Carolina Republican primary in January, I sat near the front of a dark campaign press bus and listened to reporters talk about Mitt Romney’s underwear.

“Earlier in the day, one of them had happened upon the candidate and his wife doing laundry in the basement of our Columbia, South Carolina, hotel, and a small cluster of colleagues had now gathered to listen to him relate the anecdote, lapping up every mundane detail of this rare interaction with the closed-off couple.
Finally, another reporter interrupted.

“‘Did you see their underwear?’ she asked, grinning mischievously as though she had just said something naughty.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Nov 13, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,838 words)

Can You Die From a Nightmare?

People who suffer from parasomnias, or sleeping disorders, often sleepwalk and experience night terrors, putting them in potentially dangerous situations:

“My research tells me that most people who suffer from night terrors describe episodes that sound familiar: They feel suffocated, they are about to die, there is someone in the room with them. That doesn’t, of course, make my individual night terrors any less scary, and it crosses my mind that I could actually scare myself to death.

“The prevailing theory about Tobias Wong’s death was that he hanged himself while experiencing a night terror. I imagine that something in his mind told him that hanging himself was the only way to escape whoever, or whatever, was chasing him, in the same way that I have thought that the only way to save myself was to jump out of a window or smash a pane of glass.

“I realize that I want to talk to Dubitsky, both to find out what it was like for him and also to see how closely my experiences dovetail with his. If unintended suicide is the logical extreme of a sleep disorder, am I in imminent danger?”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Sep 5, 2012
Length: 28 minutes (7,118 words)

Tracking The Biggest Star In The World

David Johnson has sent more than 260 emails to Jay-Z, but has yet to receive a single reply. That may not mean his messages aren’t being read:

“‘[Jay] has opened every single one of my emails, even re-opening them to re-read,’ says Johnson. ‘He has clicked on links and had emails open for as long as 20 minutes.’ He knows this because he uses a tool called ReadNotify, which embeds a small, unique invisible image in every message he sends. When the message is opened, the image loads from ReadNotify’s servers, which record the time of the view, its duration and rough location. ReadNotify then gives the sender a read receipt, confirming that the message was seen. These services have been around for years, and they work — this kind of “bugging” is an old email marketing trick.”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Jul 19, 2012
Length: 9 minutes (2,319 words)