Search Results for: poison

CIA Divorces: The Secrecy When Spies Split

Longreads Pick

When your wedding doubles as a covert operation. A look at the complications of CIA marriages, and how secrets often lead to separation:

“The Fredericksburg woman divorcing her husband laid out all the messy details, including the most secret of them all. Her husband, she wrote in now-sealed court documents, is a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. His CIA job, she said, poisoned their five-year-old marriage.

“‘[He] used me and our daughter . . . to run cover for his undercover operations . . . I never felt safe, never knew who people were or why they were interested in us or why they were photographing us,’ wrote the woman, who is in her 30s, in December. ‘As a result of [his] different assignments I never had a good support network of people I could trust or rely on to help out.’ And, she claimed, her spy-husband had little interest in household chores. ‘[He] never so much as washed or folded a load of laundry, swept or mopped one floor, or changed one dirty diaper.'”

Source: Washington Post
Published: Mar 13, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,163 words)

Mental Floss Editors: Our Top Longreads of 2011

The editors of mental_floss magazine: Mangesh Hattikudur, Ethan Trex, Stephanie Meyers, and Jessanne Collins. They’re also on Twitter and Tumblr.

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“Deep Intellect,” Sy Montgomery (Orion Magazine)

Is it weird to say we enjoyed this trek “inside the mind of an octopus” because it was so sensual? Who knew the octopus can taste with all of its skin, run amok out of water like a spooked cat, and solve puzzles? Montgomery’s exploration into the psyche of the spooky-smart mollusk and the researchers who study them is surprisingly … touching.

“Doubling in the Middle,” Gregory Kornbluh (The Believer)

The reversible prose talents of “master palindromist” Barry Duncan are something of a very, very local legend in Cambridge, Mass. This long overdue profile introduces his technique to the rest of us, on the occasion of the completion of an epic 400-word palindrome earlier this year.

“How to Mend a Broken Heart,” Shannon Service (Brink Magazine)

A broken heart can literally kill you (the diagnosis is “myocardial stunning due to exaggerated sympathetic stimulation”), and heartbreak can be harder to get over than a heroin habit. This candid essay weaves together a look at the latest in the science of lost love with a trip inside the Croatia’s brand-new Museum of Broken Hearts.

“Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code,” Jonah Lehrer (Wired)

We’ve been downright willy-nilly in our scratch-off lottery ticket technique all these years, which is the only possible explanation for why we’re still not millionaires. Jonah Lehrer introduces us to the Canadian geological statistician who unearthed the mathematical algorithm buried under that gummy silver stuff.

“Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone,” Amanda Ripley (Time)

Private after-hours tutoring is so rampant in South Korea the government has had to enact a curfew to curtail it. It’s like an action movie where police are trying to break up kids’ late night study groups! 

“Inside the Russian Short Wave Radio Enigma,” Peter Savodnik (Wired)

Since sometime in the early ’80s, a mysterious shortwave radio station, UVB-76, based north of Moscow, transmitted beeps and buzzes around the clock. In 2010, it began to act strangely—first stopping entirely, then broadcasting random series of numbers and other, stranger noises…

“Broken Kingdom,” Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Phantom Tollbooth, Adam Gopnik talks to the two creators about synesthesia, the GI Bill, radio, and why everyone thought the book would end up on the remainder table. 

“The Greatest Paper that Ever Died,” Alex French and Howie Kahn (Grantland)

French and Kahn’s riveting oral history of short-lived sports daily The National’s epic collapse has a little bit of everything for sports-media junkies, including quotes from greats like Frank Deford and Charles P. Pierce and, of course, a $52,000 brass eagle. 

“The Joy Lock Club,” Pagan Kennedy (Boston Magazine)

Getting to know Schuyler Towne, renowned recreational lock-picker (recreational lock-picking is a thing!) and publisher of the magazine NDE (Non-Destructive Entry) aka “the Us Weekly of hardware security.”

“Death in the Pot,” Deborah Blum (Lapham’s Quarterly)

Any article tagged “cooking, food, government, medicine, poison, war” is auto-must-read in our book. An overview of food adulteration through history, from the Greek army’s “mad-honey poisoning” of 401 BC to today.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. 

The following morning all four awake feeling not quite right. By lunchtime they are seriously ill. They consult a book in the kitchen – a guide to wild mushrooms – and leaf through until they find a photograph. Anxiously they scan the text, and see the chilling words: deadly poisonous.

The local GP is called urgently. The four are rushed into the local Highland hospital in Elgin. Ambulances race them down to the renal unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. On the journey the man begins to convulse, his body shuddering and shaking uncontrollably. He fears he is about to die.

“Nicholas Evans: ‘Guilt is My Subject. I’ve Taken Research to an Extreme Degree’.” — Decca Aitkenhead, The Guardian

See more #longreads from The Guardian

Nicholas Evans: ‘Guilt is My Subject. I’ve Taken Research to an Extreme Degree’

Longreads Pick

The following morning all four awake feeling not quite right. By lunchtime they are seriously ill. They consult a book in the kitchen – a guide to wild mushrooms – and leaf through until they find a photograph. Anxiously they scan the text, and see the chilling words: deadly poisonous.

The local GP is called urgently. The four are rushed into the local Highland hospital in Elgin. Ambulances race them down to the renal unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. On the journey the man begins to convulse, his body shuddering and shaking uncontrollably. He fears he is about to die.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Nov 13, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,467 words)

The Life and Times of Harvey Updyke

Longreads Pick

“The weekend after the Iron Bowl, I went to Auburn, Ala., because I lived 30 miles away, and I poisoned the two Toomer’s trees. I put Spike 80DF in ’em.” … Harvey Updyke hung up the phone. He had just ruined his entire life in 62 words. Soon, the police would connect him with Al from Dadeville and nothing would ever be the same. “I’ll [be] honest with you,” he says. “I realized it was a bad idea when I was doing it. You know, I’m not stupid … “

Source: ESPN
Published: May 23, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,021 words)

The Assassin in the Vineyard

Longreads Pick

Who would poison the vines of La Romanée-Conti, the tiny, centuries-old vineyard that produces what most agree is Burgundy’s ?nest, rarest, and most expensive wine? When Aubert de Villaine received an anonymous note, in January 2010, threatening the destruction of his priceless heritage unless he paid a one-million-euro ransom, he thought it was a sick joke. But, as Maximillian Potter reveals, the attack on Romanée-Conti was only too real: an unprecedented and decidedly un-French crime.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Apr 1, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,052 words)

Jared Keller: Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Jared Keller, in addition to being in charge of the whole internet, is also social media editor for The Atlantic.

michellelegro:

Trust in what Jared says. He’s in charge of, like, the whole internet. Or at least the portion of it housed in the Watergate building. 

jbkeller:

Dan Baum, “Happiness Is A Worn Gun” (Harpers, August 2010)
 
Many knee-jerk opponents of gun rights have never handled a gun before, so what happens when one liberal wears a concealed weapon? The Harpers articles is subscription only, but it’s worth subscribing just to read about Baum’s psychological transformation as a concealed gun owner.
 
Rebecca Mead, “Rage Machine” (The New Yorker, May 24, 2010)

I despise most everything about Andrew Breitbart – his personality, his politics, his smear tactics – but I loved this profile. Mead made him almost loveable.

Graeme Wood, “Prison Without Walls” (The Atlantic, September 2010)

This story has been done before, but I have an odd fascination with surveillance and surveillance states.

Robin Marantz Henig, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” (New York Times Magazine, August 18th, 2010)

Caught between economic recession and a poisonous political environment, why do young people take so long to grow up? For maximum impact, read “The Recessions Long Shadow” which appeared in the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic, immediately beforehand.

Wayne Curtis, “Gunpowder On The Rocks” (The Atlantic, November 2010)

A New Zealand bartender learns what pirates and sailors knew long ago: explosives and liquor mix just fine.

All the Young Girls

Longreads Pick

“Being a new girl [in New York] is a lot to process. Your dopamine receptors are haywire from so much of what feels like the right kind of attention and you preen out of paranoia. Sometimes you tap-dance about books, music, movies, food and politics for complete strangers. For hours. You mind-meld with people you hope to never see again because they scare you a little. You get sick from the options and the sleep deprivation and the vodka. Your friends from home tell you you’ve changed and you’re convinced that envy’s poisoned their flabby, docile minds. If you’re lucky, you snap out of it.”

Published: Nov 17, 2010
Length: 5 minutes (1,473 words)

Street Farmer

Longreads Pick

Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Will Allen asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.

Published: Jul 1, 2009
Length: 11 minutes (2,907 words)