Afflictor: Thinking Rick Santorum made the most tasteless comment in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s death, equating Apartheid with Obamacare.

Mr. Santorum, I will now lower my trousers and let you taste my breakfast burrito.

Thanks, Bashir. I’m peckish.

Wait, what was the first part of what he said?

• Christmas is officially cancelled this year.

• Old Print Articles: French “Jack the Ripper” gets guillotined (1899) + Man has 12 wives, 66 children (1900) + The “Living Skeleton” visits a medical school (1883).

• Featured Videos: Maria Callas interviewed by Mike Wallace (1973) and Barbara Walters (1974) + Sharon Tate’s mother appears on To Tell the Truth (1991) + Robot walks outdoors at the University of Michigan + A Specials tribute to Nelson Mandela.
  

• Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Epic fail for Google + I got some really, really good weed + Can’t we just agree that we’re all fat? + It seemed impossible, but now New York City smells even worse.
  

• In 1975, the New York Times tried to become wired and paperless.

• The RNC is stubbornly sticking to a losing playbook.

• In 1995, Clifford Stoll made some terrible predictions about the Internet.

• Boxing might be completely banned in America eventually.

• Vaclav Smil believes the decline of American manufacturing is a death knell.

• In the 1880s, Nikola Tesla was enabling the creation of remote-control war.

• Was the washing machine more transformational than the Internet?

• Smartphones are aiding the development of drones and robots.

• Can love be replaced by a robotic simulation of love?

• It’s best if cities become smart from the bottom up.

• Russell Brand demolishes Rupert Murdoch.

• Female-driven films are big box-office business in 2013.

• DARPA is working to wirelessly repair brains and restore memories.

• Two new uses for the domestic drone.

• The Amazon delivery drone may have just been Cyber Monday hoopla.

• Carl Bernstein addresses Parliament’s interrogation of the Guardian.

• E.L. Doctorow and David Simon speak to the possibility of an Orwellian state.

• Authors can still make money but probably not from book sales.

• Even Applebee’s is getting roboticized.

• 100 driverless Volvos will soon hit the road in Sweden.

• In a world of driverless cars, there will be winners and losers.

• In 2014, the Internet of Things might finally arrive.

• Todd Gitlin tackles the scary topic of climate change.

• Searching for the existence of the first modern human home.

• In the 16th century, the childbirth-easing forceps was a mysterious device.

• Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen was a flop.

• In 1975, Garry Wills wrote about government surveillance.

• Economics and business my be the last bastions of modernism.

• Aldous Huxley’s Los Angeles experience made a mark on the world.

• The lack of regulation is space might hinder interstellar projects.

• A brief note from 1901 about an exploding frog.

• A brief note from 1909 about a mini guillotine.

• Afflictor Nation: Great Britain rules in November.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.

Piers Morgan: Like Assad, he’s yet to be deposed.

The Top 5 foreign countries sending traffic to Afflictor during November:

1. Great Britain
2. Canada
3. France
4. Germany
5. China

10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

1. confessions of a superhero 2007 documentary
2. boxing in old brooklyn
3. what are kevin kelly’s views about workplace automation?
4. can humans outrun animals?
5. henry wirz civil war atrocities
6. richard brautigan attitude toward technology
7. can lepers exercise?
8. kleinberg on why more people are living alone
9. casting choices for fifty shades of grey
10. mark fainaru-wada on nfl violence

Afflictor: Thinking Black Friday was a scary day when shoppers fought over expensive cameras and such.

Happy holidays, you toxic queens.

• Pardoned turkeys murdered gangland style.

• How Sarah Palin spent Thanksgiving Day.

• Mike Tyson was fighting long before he became a boxer.

• Lee Harvey Oswald likely acted alone when assassinating JFK.

• Old Print Articles:Cemeteries plundered, corpses kidnapped (1888).

• Featured Videos: Dr. Jonas Salk interviewed by James Day (1974) + Author Katherine Anne Porter speaks to James Day (1974) + Tiny jellyfish-shaped robots can drift in the air.
  

• Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Let’s face it, the sex is going to be unprotected + If you eat our mud, you’ll have twins.

• Marc Andreessen discusses our epoch of creative destruction.

• Economist Joel Mokyr believes we’re mismeasuring innovation.

• Computer superiority hasn’t ended chess but improved it.

• Richard Dawkins did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit.

• Tesla Motors batteries are aiding solar-energy systems for homes.

• The billionaire Lerner family should stop asking for corporate welfare.

• Jony Ive designs seamless products, is a tough biographical subject.

• Françoise Mouly recalls bringing R. Crumb into the New Yorker fold.

• Jonathan Franzen and others reveal their favorite 2013 books.

• Parents are starting to keep their children from playing youth football.

• Bowie-covering astronaut Chris Hadfield worries about Spaceship Earth.

• Japan wants to build a solar farm on the moon.

• Television has never been so celebrated or reviled.

• For 35 years, a librarian obsessively recorded news on VHS tapes.

• In the 1930s, international air travel was very different.

• Freeports allow the wealthy a tax-free haven for luxury purposes.

• A brief note from 1895 about a friendly grocer.

• A brief note from 1914 about a wooden leg.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.

10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

1. we live in public documentary about josh harris
2. jug band musician who became a cult leader
3. the jockey who married fred astaire
4. 1800s scalping survivor
5. eddie murphy interviewed by dick cavett
6. instant newspapers printed by electromagnetic waves
7. charlie smith former slave who attended the moon launch
8. footage of the aga khan when he was young
9. akio morita being interviewed by tom snyder
10. divine healer francis schlatter

Afflictor: Believing that CNN’s crackerjack news desk learned exclusively this week that JFK has been shot.

• Old Print Articles: Daredevil parachutes from the Statue of Liberty (1912) + Hypnotist accused of cuckoldry and unprofessionalism (1903) + Rotund men enjoy a stout job market (1920).

• Featured Videos: Weeks before his death, fractal father Benoit Mandlelbrot was interviewed by Errol Morris (2010) + An amazing ad for Golden Blox toys + Tom Brokaw visits Joan Didion in Los Angeles (1970s) + Michel Gondry meets Noam Chomsky.

• Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Strictly speaking, it’s not actually my car + They won’t let me dig up old graves at the cemetery anymore.
  

• Cliodynamics founder Peter Turchin sees America stability seriously fraying.

• A girl born in America in 2013 has an even-money chance to reach 100.

• Security expert Bruce Schneier discusses post 9/11 airport safety measures.

• In 1963, Jimmy Breslin profiles JFK’s gravedigger.

• The free market has failed to produce new antibiotics.

• Tech titans may be vilified the way bankers are–or perhaps not.

• Autonomous vehicles are gaining traction the way smart roads never did.

• Some think that we’ve reached “peak traffic.”

• Robots will soon be making your greasy hamburgers.

• Feminism and humor are not mutually exclusive.

• Transcript of a surreal news brief road to astronauts on the moon.

• Disaster forecasting is a booming field.

• Howard Stern realizes that technology has stumped the record business.

• William T. Vollmann may have the most unique career of any living writer.

• Jerry Givens, Virginia’s executioner for 17 years, did an Ask Me Anything.

• Periodic World Fairs were replaced by the immediacy of Silicon Valley.

• Practical Ethics analyzes James Burke’s predictions for 2100.

• It’s impossible to say how living on Mars would effect humans.

• Elon Musk pushes back at the idea that Teslas are firetraps.

• In 1864, a Civil War officer read the Atlantic at a cockfight. 

• Much time and money is being invested into anticipatory computing.

• How to discuss Brazil as it’s visited by the World Cup and the mass media.

• More and smaller cameras will keep being produced.

• One spoken word is recognized all around the world.

• Google invests $80 million in six solar farms.

• Apple is the driving force in North Carolina’s solar growth.

• A brief note from 1879 about a female husband.

• A brief note from 1894 about a masked man.

• A brief note from 1886 about a pitchfork accident.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.

10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

1. how is bob & carol & ted & alice relevant in 2013?
2. what is gene shalit like off-screen?
3. what is a fumble party?
4. why are jamaican runners so fast?
5. why are there so many vampire movies and tv shows?
6. rachel maddow with a rifle
7. jack dempsey boxing harry houdini
8. klaus kinski as jesus christ
9. william f buckley interviewing william shockley
10. are mannequins spying on me?

Afflictor: Thinking the running of the bulls in Pamplona has competition as a tourist attraction.

It’s the running of the Baldwin.

Holy shit, that means I’m the sanest Baldwin now.

• Old Print Articles: “Lightning Calculator” Jacques Inaudi awes audiences (1901) + Female hermit dies (supposedly) at 111 years old (1880).

• Featured Videos: AMF introduces the DataMagic Bowling Data Computer (1970s) + Steve Martin, near the apex of his fame, visits Merv Griffin (1979) + Robert Evans looks back at his singular Hollywood career.

• Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Obamacare is off to a rocky start + “Bottomless” and “Face Swap” are just two options + I also offer Cesar Romero’s nail clippings.

• In one of his best articles, Tyler Cowen anticipates our technological future.

• Many journalists are leaving the NYT. Will the Times eventually “leave” the Times?

• Alex Gibney discusses Lance Armstrong with the Economist and Bill Simmons.

• Izabella Kaminska of the FT considers the challenges of the next three decades.

• George Clooney was one of the first cats to own a Tesla.

• Elon Musk believes he can build an electric supersonic jet.

• A new video game focuses on 1979’s Iranian Revolution.

• Jerry Saltz names the art book he most recommends for non-experts.

• Robert Altman’s Short Cuts is remembered as it turns 20.

• Evolutionary biologist Bjørn Østman did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit.

• A formerly Amish man, who quit his community at 17, did an AMA.

• Google is planning on putting a tattoo on your throat.

• An Urbee will try to drive cross country on 10 gallons of gasoline.

• Swedish statistician Hans Rosling thinks population is leveling off.

• Looking for the source of America’s pain-pill epidemic.

• Charlie Hunnam didn’t leave behind a huge Fifty Shades of Grey paycheck.

• In 1957, Walter H. Stern coined the term “fiscal cliff.”

• An Argentine car mechanic created an invention that eases difficult births.

• Perhaps college athletes will be paid for their wealth-creating work.

• A Russian company aims to open a floating, boutique space hotel.

• A NYT op-ed makes strange arguments against Obamacare.

• Will the digital disaster of Obamacare doom the policy?

• Expired and overstock foods still have tremendous value.

• In 1979, actor Melvyn Douglas knew the future of technology would be personal.

• Game theory can be very helpful to a Price Is Right contestant.

• President Obama tries to ensure digital privacy with a security tent.

• The Paleofuture blog recalls an unrealized “centralized street-vacuum system.”

• A 1898 list of Top 100 Novels hasn’t aged particularly well.

• A brief note from 1898 about a wife swap.

• A brief note from 1892 about a good joke.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.

10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

1. fast, cheap and out of control dvd
2. est founder werner erhard driving race cars
3. what is it like to work as a paparazzi?
4. wernher von braun contributions to nasa
5. joan didion how can i tell them there’s nothing left
6. sell my extra nuvigil on campus street price
7. who did walter cronkite call an idiot?
8. terry southern story about larry flynt
9. studs terkel interview with stewardess terry mason
10. I went to the window and sure enough, there they were hanging in the trees

Afflictor: Thinking 60 Minutes has done stellar work linking…

…Hillary Clinton…

…to the Bengay murders.

• Old Print Articles: Western millionaire buys ear of German immigrant (1903) + Bronx Zoo monkeys undergo ridiculous testing (1909).

• Featured Videos: A robot that absorbs crashes like an insect + Johnny Carson’s final TV appearance (1994) + A secretarial pool in a computerized UK office (1970s) + Kurt Vonnegut discusses mass extinction with Jon Stewart (2005).

• Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist:John Mayer, Keith Urban, David Gray, etc. + It’s been fun. 

• Celebrity is the detritus of capitalism and one of the costs of democracy.

• Biotech implanters are the latest wave of pioneers.

• Poverty is an impediment, not a springboard, to athletic prowess.

• Why don’t big tech companies build their own solar farms?

• Tyler Cowen believes automation will lead to greater economic inequality.

• In 1970, Norman Mailer knew we’d soon have tiny, hand-held computers.

• Rolling Stone has published a long version of its 1978 Susan Sontag interview.

• Margaret Atwood on the malignant undercurrent of technotopia.

• Luc Sante has written 35 short descriptions of his heroes.

• Be at the world premiere of Revenge of the Mekons.

• Perhaps we’ll soon be able to print out paper computers.

• A revisionist account of America’s transition from horses to automobiles.

• Clive Thompson points out that people write more than ever now.

• 100 driverless pods are coming to Milton Keynes.

• A justification from the Economist for India’s space program.

• The transition to driverless cars isn’t without obstacles.

• Privacy as we knew it isn’t, of course, returning.

• The rest of Blockbuster’s stores are closing. Of course they are!

• Henry Ford’s assembly line was his enduring gift to manufacturing.

• Raymond Loewy designed an awful lot of America.

• The biggest chess match in a decade is upon us.

• The potential for recycling in a world of 3D and 4D printing.

• IMAX’s chairman discusses the emerging international film markets.

• E-books are driving British publishers out of business.

• The polymath doesn’t rely too much on tools.

• A brief note from 1905 about a thirsty snake.

• A brief note from 1907 about an aftershock.

• Afflictor Nation: Great Britain rules In October.

• This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.