Headlines from February 16, 2012
- Frantic gestures by top Iranian officials arrive at tense time, and are read by some as provocations.
- Fake news of Putin’s arrest goes viral.
- Italy’s financial reforms can be praised, but political reform must follow.
- Sarkozy joins Twitter.
- “Isn’t Xi Lovely?” (Or “Xi Will Be Loved.”) Headlines editors shouldn’t use to discuss Xi Jinping’s visit to America.
- Sports reporter gets away with saying Jeremy Lin has a small penis.
- Gawker explains Jeremy Lin’s rise and why you should care.
- The NBA’s style of scouting talent could be just as lucky relying on a coin flip.
- Chomsky: American decline can perhaps be stemmed if we abandon hope for decent survival.
- Free copies offered (limited time) for book billed as In Cold Blood meets contemporary Tokyo.
- Chart shows how many Americans over 50 can perform division (very few).
- Chart: Dickens’s sales figures in his lifetime.
- People are less grudging of entrepreneurs’, artists’, and athletes’ wealth, whereas bankers’ bonuses seem ludicrous.
- Notes on how to scare a tree into giving you fruit.
- Conversation in MMS on the merits of Las Vegas, New York, and having sex with sharks.
- Do they eat each other’s faces? No! Sophia Loren says young actors should kiss like Bergman and Grant in Notorious.
- Pew finds electronic registration would trim two million deceased voters from U.S. rolls.
- Groups hope to recycle the 25 million pounds of beads thrown at Mardi Gras every year.
- Trustees may revive a 40-year-old “urban laboratory” in the Arizona desert as a retirement resort.
- With vast natural resources and a leadership that may be open to new ideas, businesses hunger for North Korea.
- Pre-revolutionary Iran: jet-setters’ destination of choice, rife with inequality. #photography
- Tracing the history of library sex, from dirty 1526 manuscripts to today’s paperbacks.
- MRIs and willing participants show it’s possible to prove that you love someone more.
- The 1982 video-game guide—with a foreword by Spielberg—that Martin Amis disowns.
- Outtakes from The Beatles’ Abbey Road cover shoot.
- Researchers find a connection between slow walking and developing dementia later in life.
- We don’t know the exact etymology of “balderdash,” but we know it probably meant something bad.