New Yorker magazine alert thread

just like the story they ran on energy efficiency recently (which suggested that there's no point to pursuing efficiency measures because lol Jevon's paradox, uuuuuuuuunnnnggghhhhh). <3 new yorker but their energy stories blow. elizabeth kolbert rulez, however.

^thus concludes my new yorker minute

whole travel issue was pretty enjoyable imo. the astana and chinese people touring europe articles in particular

Kazakhstan article indeed very entertaining, and all without making a single Borat joke.

wasn't the chinese people touring europe article done recently in another magazine? i feel like harper's ran an article on the same topic maybe 3 months ago.

yeah the atlantic did one too a few months ago...but the new yorker guy went UNDERCOVER, embedding himself with an actual chinese bus tour! he spoke chinese and everything!

i was really bracing myself for a borat reference the whole article too lol. The last sentence does describe men in small swimming trunks, but i guess that doesn't quite count

"We spoke in Chinese, but when he was surprised he’d say, “Oh, my Lady Gaga!,” an English expression he’d picked up at school."

There's a remote possibility that the harpers guy ended up interviewing the new yorker guy as part of his story without even realizing it! Journalists interviewing undercover journalists, the Journalistic Centipede, pt. II

yeah texas arson thing was awesome, looking forward to re-reading it when my copy of the book comes.

learning this was a little bit of a let-down tho: http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2009/10/willinghams-last-words.html

― gr8080, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 4:22 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just started working my way through the book and read this piece for the 2nd time since it first got published.

interesting to note that the passage that appears/appeared in the New Yorker:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

appears in the book with an extended sentence:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching; whatever calm he had obtained was lost, and with his last breaths he cursed her. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

also the context being that though she divorced him she always defended him until towards the end when, having not seen the new evidence she suddenly changed it up and declared him a murderer.

well yeah i dunno after 14 years in prison for a crime i didn't commit i'd maybe lose my cool if i saw her on the other side of the glass too i guess.

the closing paragraph remains the same though.

Yeah and it is problematic, but I don't think it changes the strength of the piece which isn't really "look Willingham is really a great dude and therefore totally innocent" and more "the evidence that convicted Willingham is a joke and the state of Texas killed an innocent person because the safeguards that should exist to prevent that from occurring are also a joke."

What really drove me crazy about the Chinese tourists was that they didn't try the local cuisine and went out of their way to find Chinese restaurants/McDonald's (having also experienced the exact same thing when I went on a canned tour).

Has anyone tried commenting on the website before? Do comments get quarantined until a moderator approves them first?

Been reading the Eagleman brain timing article. Gets very ilx friendly when Brian Eno shows up. Also had to enjoy the reed krakoff article since I work for him.

yeah the part with the drummers is pretty fun

I had a hard time visualizing what that amusement park ride of near death was supposed to entail?

that article was pretty cool but eagleman seemed kind of annoying as a person

otm

like he had cool ideas but wnkiw

*unless brian eno came

actually brian eno is probably really annoying too

first clue is his radical occupation of the 99th percentile of the "food as fuel" spectrum

actually all the clues are clues

For years, Eagleman was a confirmed bachelor and “serial dater,” as one of his friends put it, with a tidy bungalow that he liked to call the Eagle’s Nest.

“I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,” he says. “But I didn’t know where my tires would catch purchase.”

Liked the Chinese tourism article a lot, although I thought there was an irony in that the article exposes all these ways in which the Chinese tourists have their views about Chinese superiority subtly reconfirmed by the tour guide's framing of everything, and yet in the end the writer seems to be pushing a view that, actually, America will remain superior because of CREATIVITY or something.

that's the same spin some of the anti-tiger mom articles take--"Maybe our kids will write some music that your robots will perform"

Finished the Guatemalan murder mystery; holy shit

It doesn't seem completely surprising to me that the Chinese tourists only eat Chinese food, btw -- sounds very typical of group tours aimed at people inexperienced with travel. It's a common complaint about American tourists that they always look for the McDonalds.

I knew Italians who travelled w/ their own pasta and can confirm that my ex-wife's French family weren't the most culinarily adventurous ppl either. Still, Chinese food in Italy, for example, is mostly food that I would avoid.

Man, either these guys or my postal service needs to get their shit together. I've gotten the past three issues all within the last five days.

the tour guide didn't allow them local cuisine because European meals take up to 5 hours.

That was one of his excuses at least

Europeans--they eat so slowly! How can they expect their economy to grow?

Finished the Guatemalan murder mystery; holy shit

― forks (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, April 27, 2011 10:01 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

holy shit is right.

i was late to work after i got hooked on the first four pages.
Was that story international news while it was happening? First i had heard of it.

I feel like I remember hearing about it after the tape came out.

I haven't read the article but how are chinese tour groups different from any other tour groups

Well, one of the highlights of their tour is Karl Marx's birthplace.

I just reached that part of the article and it sounds like they were pretty enthused to be there

I think the message to take from that article is "tour groups are awful"

i feel like they prob have a much higher ratio of bus lecturing to actually being at places than other tour groups? but maybe not.

article about kazakhstan in that ish was good too.

if you're gonna spend half a day on a tour bus what else are you gonna do

been reading through the grann book while on holiday

so good

One of dirty Roger Ebert's other caption contest entries:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/upright-position.jpg

^^^ The only one that I liked.

I had a hard time visualizing what that amusement park ride of near death was supposed to entail?

― iatee, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 6:39 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think basically you're free-falling BACKWARDS, which, like, no thanks.

Didn't really care for the Eagleman article because it was sort of a bait-and-switch: we're talking about time and perception thereof, no wait it's really ("really") about ("about") Deistic agnosticism and hanging out with Brian Eno.

One I did like was one on poverty as a cause of poor health:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_tough

Definitely read as Gawande-like (if Gawande-lite) to me.

Haven't read the cover story ("Middle East of the West?") but I can tell from the subhead that it's going to be one of those UuuuuuNnnnnnngggggghhhh stories to read.

Hated this article, couldn't finish it. So dull.

but answering the poll, prob wyoming

oh i liked that article! i mean it was depressing i guess but i didnt find it dull.

speaking of depressing articles that FBI informant one from this week was pretty alarming.

but answering the poll, prob wyoming

― iatee, Saturday, April 30, 2011 1:58 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

haha I suck at zing, meant to post this to the island-state thread

I think basically you're free-falling BACKWARDS, which, like, no thanks.

― NoShoutsNoCalls (Leee), Saturday, April 30, 2011 12:48 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

that's what it seemed like, but that doesn't even seem like a ride, it just seems like....falling into a net