Headlines from June 18, 2012
- Hillary: I [understand] what people’s political problems are, even in authoritarian regimes, because everybody’s got politics.
- Not only is food aid ineffective in helping nations in conflict, it can prolong the violence.
- NYPL lunch exhibit to feature working Automat—though it will dispense recipes, not food.
- Researchers find a high-cholesterol diet helps those with a fatal disease that destroys nerve endings in the brain.
- He was probably trying to show me what a powerful man he was, and wasn’t he wonderful. The women who helped uncover Watergate.
- One day left to complete our 2012 Reader Survey for your chance to win a TMN Prize Pack.
- Woody Allen has an iPhone, but only knows how to use it to check the weather and the Huffington Post.
- Ronan Farrow tweets biting Father’s Day message.
- For the sake of American tennis, Nic Brown hopes Sam Querry avoids glass tables. #tmn
- Unmanned U.S. “space plane” lands in California after a 469-day secret mission. #space
- From 1939, a look at American patriotism and its purportedly xenophobic roots.
- Follow: For the next six years, live tweets of WWII as the news happened, to the date and time.
- The popsicle was invented by an 11-year-old who left his sugar water concoction outside. #summer
- A visit to the Museum of Failed Products, where A Touch of Shampoo yogurt and Pepsi Breakfast Cola now reside.
- Bot inventors compete in a Turing test to see whose creation can fool a judging panel into believing it’s human.
- Two Twitterbots are playing out Zork I in its entirety.
- Dennis Mahoney chats with a chatterbot. #tmn
- How a jump rope sees the world. #video
- It is perhaps the most obscene book ever written, but it is not a lascivious one; it is, almost dismally indeed, the opposite of that.
- First relief, then skepticism as Greece votes for the pro-austerity New Democracy party.
- Sunday elections give Socialists comfortable power seat for reshaping France.
- There are some things money can’t buy. Especially if you abolish all private property. Taglines sought for new Karl Marx Mastercard.
- Explainer on why until recently Berlin rents have been so cheap.
- Adam Gopnik on Americans’ Olympic fervor.
- Interviews with Americans who live in the same towns as Olympic athletes. #tmn
- Alex Honnold becomes first to solo climb Yosemite’s three biggest rock faces in less than a day.
- Chinese political dissident explains that no one big in China resigns over corruption because everyone is corrupt.
- Pittsburgh restaurant only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict.
- New Jersey wines narrowly lose to fine French versions in blind contest; basically, all wine tastes the same.
- Profile of Ira Aldridge, “the first black actor of note.”
- Fantastic Jonathan Littel report on life in Ciudad Juárez (subscription required).
- Conan writes Chicago blues songs with schoolchildren. #video
- New term “newddhists” covers those who seek Buddhism to escape their Blackberries.
- Turns out there is a real word that rhymes with orange: “sporange.” via