February 2012 Archives
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Portraits by Other Means
Pity the Progeny
Alina Fernandez Both [Fidel] Castro and Fernandez’ mother, a socialite, were married to other people when they fell in love through their exchange of letters while Castro was in...
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Birnbaum V.
Ben Katchor
Our man in Boston talks to author and artist Ben Katchor about the history of picture-stories—from the days when literature included drawings to our current world of (sadly) more purified genres.
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The Sky Is Falling
Apocalypse How
Big-budget films tell us earthquakes are bad, volcanic eruptions can be catastrophic, and meteorite strikes—barring the presence of Bruce Willis—may kill us all. Seeking expert advice on how scared we should be.
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Husband, Father, Writer, War
Good Knives
“That's poop!” Loretta squeals. “On the sidewalk!” I tell her someone will clean it up. But I’m not sure, really—not sure...
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Gallery
Car Poolers
Imagine the people you see on your morning commute—sleepy, bored, stoic. Now picture them jammed together in the bed of a truck, speeding down the highway to work. Photographs of Mexico’s hidden (literally) class of workers.
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This Week
Too Big to Play Fair
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important.This week some nation states...
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Portraits by Other Means
Don’t Look at Me (Look at Me)
Marcel Proust By 1919, Proust rarely left his soundproofed Paris apartment, complete with a bedroom encased in walls of cork to keep out noise. He worked in a sunless writing studio...
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LA Confidentials
Burn All the Liars
An unfinished autobiography and a 1980s biopic turned Frances Farmer, one of the great golden-era stars, into a lobotomized zombie. The main trouble: Frances Farmer wasn’t lobotomized. An investigation to set one of Hollywood’s most convoluted stories straight.
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Husband, Father, Writer, War
Since the Last War
A grizzled tribe of Middle East correspondents has gathered at the Mayflower Hotel’s wood-paneled bar in Beirut. Wine is poured, mugs of beers are guzzled, and cigarette smoke...
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Gallery
North American Scum
Blazing, husky paintings that deal with class in America—where everyone has an equal opportunity to be a mess.
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This Week
Why We Fought
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week fighting raged and...
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
Diary of a Post-Adrenaline Junkie
Some decisions are best made heedlessly, based on the chance for an epic story—and some people think like that all the time. A report on what it’s like to slide down a volcano on a piece of sheet metal at 55 mph.
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Portraits by Other Means
Comeback Kings and Queens
Sinead O’Connor Outside Sinead O’Connor’s whitewashed home here, on a windswept beachfront overlooking the misty Irish Sea, there are two talismans. One, a knee-high...
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Personal Essays
Call and Response
Sometimes a book appears in your life and starts to pester you. The characters act like your friends. Events occur in the plot that reappear inside your home. It’s enough to drive a man to wonder which world is more real, until danger appears.
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Husband, Father, Writer, War
Right Into the Fire
My daughter is bawling, red faced, legs held ram-rod straight. Loretta was born in Saudi Arabia, turned two in Turkey, and we’ve just moved to Lebanon. In a...
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Gallery
Paper Mountains
In Laura Plageman’s “Response” photographs, nature pictures are ripped, folded, and turned into sculptures, then re-photographed to become unusual new landscapes.
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This Week
Don’t Talk About It, Do It
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, despite the apathy...
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Wyckoff Farmhouse and Queens County Farm Museums
When I was in the fifth grade my class took a trip to a historical farm museum in Tifton, Ga., called Agrirama, a fully functioning re-creation of a Reconstruction-era sugar...
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Letters From London
The City Is Wilder and Kinder Than You Think
Situationist invades Hoxton… Street poems arouse Londoners… Public discourse colored by disfigured Futura… Robert Montgomery’s street poems have something to say to you.
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China Welcomes You
How to Officially Forget
More than two decades later, a return visit to Tiananmen Square finds it scrubbed clean—just as it was immediately following the Incident. Except now there is thick smog, and ghosts. In contemporary Beijing, the past is like Kentucky Fried Chicken: unavoidable.
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The News From America
People Here Actually Show Their Livestock
The United States is an enormous country, much too big for the nightly news. We asked one of our editors to randomly call people in towns around America and find out what’s really going on.
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Gallery
Cartographies of Time
Selections from Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s captivating history of timelines, now in paperback—from time circles to time dragons, to a history of civilization drawn on a single piece of paper.
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From the Editors
The Morning News Seeks an Intern
This is an unpaid internship. Geographic location is not important, but please have a sturdy internet connection. To apply, email a cover letter, including any résumé...
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End Zone
Super Bowl, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bill Belichick
That I am going to support the Patriots was never really in question. The Giants have eliminated the Packers from the playoffs twice in the past four years, and there...
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TMN vs. Explodingdog
Have Faith in Duck
Read the individual entries in this series, and find out more about Sam, in the archives.