May 2012
64 posts
1 tag
Climbing the Redwoods →
by Richard Preston
The main trunk of a coast redwood can be up to twenty-five feet in diameter near its base, and in some cases it can extend upward from the ground for more than two hundred and fifty feet before the first strong branches emerge and the crown of the tree begins to flare. The crown of a tall coast redwood is typically an irregular spire that can look like the plume of a rocket...
4 tags
Insomnia →
by Elizabeth Gumport
For an insomniac, there is no such thing as a good night. Every evening – even if it eventually, mercifully comes to an end – is shredded by anxiety. To reach sleep the insomniac must first pass through terror.
1 tag
Power Trip →
by Emily Maloney
Grab your 3-D glasses, pin that name tag to your jacket and get on the bus for a class excursion to a nuclear power plant.
1 tag
We Blew It →
by P. J. O’Rourke
The sludge and dreck of political muck-funds flowing to prosperous businesses and individuals got deeper and more slippery and stank worse than ever with conservatives minding the sewage works of legislation.
4 tags
Boomtown Girl →
by Peter Hessler
Over the past twenty years, Shenzhen has become home to a social experiment that is as impressive as its economic adventure. Its population has exploded from three hundred thousand to more than four million.
4 tags
Empire of Ice →
by Jeanne Marie Laskas
On a $500 million man-made island in the frozen Arctic Ocean, in temperatures that hover around forty-five degrees below zero, in perpetual darkness, a tight-knit band of roughnecks spends twelve hours a day, seven days a week, drilling down, down into the earth and pulling up precious crude. If you want to know how badly we need oil, here is your answer.
1 tag
The Curse of Lono →
by Hunter S. Thompson
We were about 40 minutes out of San Francisco when the crew finally decided to take action on the problem in lavatory 1B. The door had been locked since take-off, and now the chief stewardess had summoned the copilot down from the flight deck. He appeared in the aisle right beside me, carrying a strange-looking black tool, like a flashlight with blades or some kind of...
4 tags
The Science of the Sleeper →
by Malcolm Gladwell
How the Information Age could blow away the blockbuster.
1 tag
You Can't Kill the Rooster →
by David Sedaris
Use the word y’all and, before you knew it, you’d find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of “you all” is a dangerous step on the path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.
2 tags
Growing Up →
A Tetw reading list
The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being by Devin Friedman - Sixteen years after he graduated from high school, a journalist returns to his alma mater.
Tennis, Trigonometry, Tornadoes by David Foster Wallace - On childhood in the Midwest.
The Terrible Boy by Tom Junod - A brilliant reflection on what happens when bullying gets out of hand.
My Mom Couldn’t Cook by Tom...
5 tags
Can Europe Be Saved? →
by Paul Krugman
The advantages of a single European currency were obvious. No need to change money when you arrived in another country, and the shared currency would strengthen the sense of European unity. What could go wrong?
1 tag
Ticket to the Fair →
by David Foster Wallace
Wherein our reporter gorges himself on corn dogs, gapes at terrifying rides, savors the odor of pigs, trades unpleasantries with tattooed carnies, and admires the loveliness of cows.
3 tags
The Louse is in the House →
by P. J. O’Rourke
“How could my daughter get lice?” I shouted (out of daughter’s earshot, of course, for propriety’s sake). “It’s a private school!”
1 tag
Israel: The Alternative →
by Tony Judt
The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die: it was killed. On the corpse-strewn landscape of the Fertile Crescent, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and a handful of terrorists can all claim victory, and they do. Have we reached the end of the road? What is to be done?
3 tags
Here, There and Everywhere →
by Walter Kirn
I am an American consumer, and the battle to catch the corner of my eye is growing more desperate by the hour. Desperate and counterproductive, it now seems clear….
1 tag
The Million Dollar Nose →
by William Langewiesche
The most influential critic in the world today is not a snob or an obvious aesthete, as one might imagine, but an ordinary American, a burly, awkward, hardworking guy from the backcountry of northern Maryland. His name is Robert Parker Jr., Bob for short, and he has no formal training in wine.
5 tags
The Secret Life of Bees →
by Carl Zimmer
When you consider a swarm one bee at a time this way, it starts to look like a heap of chaos. Each insect wanders around, using its tiny brain to perceive nothing more than its immediate surroundings. Yet, somehow, thousands of honeybees can pool their knowledge and make a collective decision about where they will make a new home, even if that home may be miles away.
1 tag
The Last Ace →
by Mark Bowden
Over Cesar Rodriguez’s desk hangs a macabre souvenir of his decades as a fighter pilot. It is a large framed picture, a panoramic cockpit view of open sky and desert. A small F‑15 Eagle is visible in the distance, but larger and more immediate, filling the center of the shot, staring right at the viewer, is an incoming missile.
3 tags
The Creativity Crisis →
by Po Bronson
For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong — and how we can fix it.
1 tag
Hail the Returning Dragon, Clothed in New Fire →
by David Foster Wallace
You know this love story. A gallant knight espies a fair maiden in the distant window of a forbidding-type castle. Their eyes meet - smokily - across the withered heath. Instant chemistry. And so good Sir Knight comes tear-assing toward the castle, brandishing his lance. Can he just gallop up and carry the fair maiden off? Not quite. First he’s got to get past the...
