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.'”
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.
Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class
How the U.S. lost out on iPhone manufacturing work, and what it means for the future of job creation in the United States:
“But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
“Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
“Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
“Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. ‘Those jobs aren’t coming back,’ he said, according to another dinner guest.”
George Lucas Is Ready to Roll the Credits
The next phase of George Lucas’s career, the making (and studios’ rejection) of his new Tuskegee Airmen film Red Tails, and who’s really to blame for the “nuking the fridge” idea in the last Indiana Jones film:
“When I told Lucas that Spielberg had accepted the blame for nuking the fridge, he looked stunned. ‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘He’s trying to protect me.’
“In fact, it was Spielberg who ‘didn’t believe’ the scene. In response to Spielberg’s fears, Lucas put together a whole nuking-the-fridge dossier. It was about six inches thick, he indicated with his hands. Lucas said that if the refrigerator were lead-lined, and if Indy didn’t break his neck when the fridge crashed to earth, and if he were able to get the door open, he could, in fact, survive. ‘The odds of surviving that refrigerator — from a lot of scientists — are about 50-50,’ Lucas said.”
A Young, Cold Heart
Judith Clark was a new mom when she was arrested, along with three other militants, for armed robbery and murder in 1981. She remains in prison—and her daughter Harriet has no memory of her mother any other way:
“The prison’s visiting center was her second living room. ‘When they got a new vending machine, it felt like new furniture in my house,’ Harriet said. The other children she met visiting their inmate moms fell into two groups: those who lost them to prison ‘within memory or before memory.’ She was puzzled when some were anguished that their mothers weren’t home for holidays and family events. Harriet had never had that experience to miss. ‘My mother lived in prison,’ she explained. ‘That was always the reality going backward and going forward.’
“Harriet and her mother spent hours making creations with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks. ‘I have no memories of not having my mother’s undivided attention,’ she said.”
On the Trail of an Intercontinental Killer
In 1990, a trash bag with human remains was found in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The investigation soon expanded to killings in Albania and Belgium, and focused on the activity of a Yugoslavian former cab driver named Smajo Dzurlic:
“Smajo Dzurlic, who is now 71, shuffled into the room, his wrists and ankles unbound. He wore a brown argyle V-neck sweater, and his head barely came up to the guard’s chest. ‘Do I look dangerous to you?’ he asked, as we sat beside each other at the end of a long, rectangular table. ‘They figured I was some big man, like Son of Sam or something,’ Dzurlic said in rusty English. ‘But they gave me time for no reason. I’m not a murderer. Not a murderer whatsoever.'”
How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?
The making of a comedian and his super PAC:
“In August, during the run-up to the Ames straw poll, some Iowans were baffled to turn on their TVs and see a commercial that featured shots of ruddy-cheeked farm families, an astronaut on the moon and an ear of hot buttered corn. It urged viewers to cast write-in votes for Rick Perry by spelling his name with an ‘a’ — ‘for America.’ A voice-over at the end announced that the commercial had been paid for by an organization called Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which is the name of Colbert’s super PAC, an entity that, like any other super PAC, is entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t ‘coordinate’ with them, whatever that means. Of such super-PAC efforts, Colbert said, ‘This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.'”
Navigating Love and Autism
From the beginning, their physical relationship was governed by the peculiar ways their respective brains processed sensory messages. Like many people with autism, each had uncomfortable sensitivities to types of touch or texture, and they came in different combinations.
Jack recoiled when Kirsten tried to give him a back massage, pushing deeply with her palms.
“Pet me,” he said, showing her, his fingers grazing her skin. But Kirsten, who had always hated the feeling of light touch, shrank from his caress.
“Only deep pressure,” she showed him, hugging herself.
He tried to kiss her, but it was hard for her to enjoy it, so obvious was his aversion. To him, kissing felt like what it was, he told her: mashing your face against someone else’s. Neither did he like the sweaty feeling of hand-holding, a sensation that seemed to dominate all others whenever they tried it.
The Pakistanis Have a Point
If you survey informed Americans, you will hear Pakistanis described as duplicitous, paranoid, self-pitying and generally infuriating. In turn, Pakistanis describe us as fickle, arrogant, shortsighted and chronically unreliable.
Neither country’s caricature of the other is entirely wrong, and it makes for a relationship that is less in need of diplomacy than couples therapy, which customarily starts by trying to see things from the other point of view. While the Pakistanis have hardly been innocent, they have a point when they say America has not been the easiest of partners.
Derek Boogaard: A Brain ‘Going Bad’
[Part Three of “Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer.”] It did not take long for Dr. Ann McKee to see the telltale brown spots near the outer surface of Boogaard’s brain — the road signs of C.T.E. She did not know much about Boogaard other than that he was a 28-year-old hockey player. And the damage was obvious.