Housewives of God
Priscilla Shirer’s marriage appears to be just the sort of enlightened partnership that would make feminists cheer. Yet Shirer avoids using words like “feminist” or “career woman” to describe herself. She is an evangelical Bible teacher who makes her living by guiding thousands of women through the study of Scripture in her books, videos and weekend conferences — in which she stresses that in a biblical home and church, the man is the head and the woman must submit.
Stray Cat Blues
Liz Phair reviews Keith Richards’ autobiography, “Life.” “If Keith weren’t such a brilliant character, the reader might weary of his hypocrisy. But the truth is, he’s hilarious. I got tired of jotting ‘hahahaha’ and ‘LOL’ in the margins. James Fox, Keith’s co- author, deserves a lot of credit for editing, organizing and elegantly stepping out of the way of Keith’s remembrances. Reading ‘Life’ is like getting to corner Keith Richards in a room and ask him every thing you ever wanted to know about the Rolling Stones, and have him be completely honest with you.”
Life in Shadows for Mentally Ill in China
“Professional psychiatrists in China are like pandas,” said Zhang Yalin, assistant director of the mental health research institute at Central South University’s medical school. “There are only a few thousand of us.”
The Great Cyberheist
Over the course of several years, during much of which he worked for the government, Albert Gonzalez and his crew of hackers and other affiliates gained access to roughly 180 million payment-card accounts from the customer databases of some of the most well known corporations in America: OfficeMax, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Dave & Buster’s restaurants, the T. J. Maxx and Marshalls clothing chains. They hacked into Target, Barnes & Noble, JCPenney, Sports Authority, Boston Market and 7-Eleven’s bank-machine network. In the words of the chief prosecutor in Gonzalez’s case, “The sheer extent of the human victimization caused by Gonzalez and his organization is unparalleled.”
Application Inflation: When Is Enough Enough?
UCLA said its accepted students had “demonstrated excellence in all aspects of their lives.” Citing its record 57,670 applications, the university proclaimed itself “the most popular campus in the nation.” Such announcements tell a story in which colleges get better — and students get more amazing — every year. In reality, the narrative is far more complex, and the implications far less sunny for students as well as colleges caught up in the cruel cycle of selectivity.
The Other Oil Cleanup
After the Valdez disaster, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, which greatly expanded eligibility for damage claims from offshore spills like the Valdez or the Deepwater Horizon. It also required that the party deemed responsible by the government compensate victims. Given the fact that the law has been on the books for 20 years, you might assume that setting up a compensation fund for victims of the BP spill would be a straightforward matter. It has not been.
Why Twitter’s CEO Demoted Himself
As Evan Williams talked with the interviewer about building a 21st-century business, keeping to Twitter’s foundational principle (the Google-like “be a force for good”) and fostering corporate experimentation, members of his audience started groaning — and leaving, one by one. “They wanted Ev Williams; they got Ev Williams,” a Twitter staff member said later.
Mikhail Prokhorov, the Playboy and His Power Games
You might think that Mikhail Prokhorov would have had a not-so-soft case of buyer’s remorse this past spring. A month before the start of the National Basketball Association season, the 45-year-old Russian billionaire struck a deal to buy the New Jersey Nets from the real estate developer Bruce C. Ratner. When the league owners finally ratified the sale eight months later, the Nets record stood at 12 wins and 70 losses, and Prokhorov’s shiny new team was the laughingstock of the NBA
The D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution
It’s not only presidents and United Nations officials who chip away at global challenges. Passionate individuals with great ideas can do the same, especially in the age of the Internet and social media.
The Elusive Small-House Utopia
Will Americans re-evaluate cultural assumptions that equate ever-larger houses with success and stability?