Afflictor: Thinking that Kim Jong-Il's owl seems lonely. (Image by Saarbrücken Schwallex.)
- An idea for baseball’s new playoff system.
- About the backlash to Jodi Kantor’s book.
- Old Print Articles: Millionaire hates wife, kills self (1893) + Lumberjacks eating buckets of ants (1889).
- Classic Photographs: Henry Ward Beecher At Slavery’s End (1865) + Dorothea Lange, Seated Atop A Ford (1936).
- Featured Videos: William F. Buckley talks to Eudora Welty and Walker Percy (1972), William Shockley (1974) + Audio adaptation of The Medium Is the Message (1960s) + Schaefer Beer ad featuring Moog synthesizer (1970s) + TV introduction to the Moog synthesizer (1969) + Short movie about the Houston Astrodome (1960s) + Footage of Buffalo Bill Cody (1917) + Consumer electronics begin shrinking in earnest (1985) + Photographer William Eggleston in a Cat Power video + Crawling Japanese salaryman robot + Playing Maze War on the Xerox Alto (1970s) + HAL and Siri refuse to open the pod bay doors + What’s My Line? featuring Brian Epstein (1964), Charles Laughton.
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Good news for dogs and cats + Would you like to have a child with poor grammar? + It is likely not pubic hair + It is in the Lotus position that I most consider murder + Ever been drunk?
- Stephen Hawking’s personal technician shares trade secrets.
- Jonah Lehrer examines football’s concussion problem.
- Laurie Anderson used to wrestle Andy Kaufman.
- Max Chafkin provides a smart oral history of the OWS movement.
- The clearest sign yet that Obama is done playinjg nice.
- A Civil War Colonel created the gossip page blind item in 1893.
- Have all our fears about technology already been realized?
- Yet another victim of the recession–street lamps.
- Mike Daisey visits the controversial Foxconn factories.
- U.K. thieves don’t bother stealing CDs and DVDs.
- Vinod Khosla thinks algorithms can supplant institutions.
- How literary agent John Brockman created his heady website Edge.
- Leftist radical Judith Clark has become a model prisoner.
- The Catholic Church’s reaction to Salman Rushdie’s death sentence.
- Cat Stevens was a conflicted rock star in 1973.
- An explanation of how brains recignize faces.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.