Writing Worth Reading
Cyclists behave, get treated, as though they were pedestrians. They don't feel bound by traffic rules. Drivers don't respect them. They need to jump species barrier, behave as motorists
Date of publication online: 3 September 2010Former prisoner in Arizona tells of gang violence, overflowing toilets, food green with mould. And a horrendous anecdote about an asthmatic cellmate and a cockroach
Date of publication online: 1 September 2010"Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, visited periodically. Now cyberspace has turned itself inside out, colonised the physical, making Google a central structural unit of the world"
Date of publication online: 31 August 2010Beautiful, sad, photo-essay about near-deserted Japanese island, once home of country's last working coalmines. Twelve children in school built for 1,500. One restaurant. Lots, and lots, of rust
Date of publication online: 31 August 2010Eton and Oxford. Bought Caribbean island of Mustique. Walker for Princess Margaret. Child by Lucian Freud's mistress. Lost most of his money. Limbo-danced at Edinburgh festival
Date of publication online: 29 August 2010Glenn Beck channels anxiety among many white Americans that non-whites will soon outnumber them. Claims that Obama is Muslim, and foreign-born, are coded expressions of racial fear
Date of publication online: 30 August 2010What would happen if, instead of spare change, you handed a homeless person the means to shop for what they wanted? Toronto reporter buys pre-paid cards and finds out
Date of publication online: 28 August 2010Quite a review. Biography of Samuel Steward, drug addict, masochist, philanderer, whose conquests included Rudolph Valentino, Lord Alfred Douglas, Thornton Wilder. Later, apparently, a Hell's Angel
Date of publication online: 26 August 2010Economist correspondent paints affectionate portrait of daily life in Indian capital, "full of pastoral enclaves and bucolic interstices, where children play cricket, vagrants slumber, and cows mooch"
Date of publication online: 2 August 2010How scientific are the social sciences? They're getting more so, thanks to the advance of randomised testing, which works well in business, quite well in criminology. That said, they're still mostly informed guesswork
Date of publication online: 2 August 2010Why doesn't fashion industry offer more clothes for fat women, given America's obesity epidemic? Answer is partly technical. Thin people are pretty similar, fat body-types diverge
Date of publication online: 28 July 2010Discussion about nature of political philosophy, and the central place occupied within it by ideas of equality and freedom. Useful introduction to "luck egalitarianism". Interesting throughout
Date of publication online: 28 July 2010
Model of writing and reporting. Life among hard-working, self-respecting, low-skilled Americans. Houses filled with consumer goods, but two pay-checks—or one serious illness—away from poverty
Date of publication online: 30 July 2010Affectionate profile of diverse London district. "Buzzers these days show names like Aramid, Omela and Lavish, which, one realises with a tinge of sadness, are new media firms not exotic prostitutes"
Date of publication online: 31 July 2010Long-time resident traces city's Moorish past. Historically, it's as Moorish as Granada or Cordoba, but few Valencians mention this or know that much of their food, music and language is Arab in origin
Date of publication online: 31 July 2010Superb, chilling report on American sentencing policy. Far too many petty criminals go to gaol, sometimes for life. Problem lies with political populism, mandatory sentences, badly drafted laws
Date of publication online: 22 July 2010Ulster's second city is still segregated, even its name remains contentious. But writer struck by good nature of "the largest place I have ever been where a stranger has nodded a good morning to me in the city centre"
Date of publication online: 3 July 2010Nail-biting true story of married couple who escaped slavery in 19th century Georgia by fleeing north to Philadelphia—Ellen disguised as a male invalid, husband William as her slave
Date of publication online: 17 June 2010American cities confront Supreme Court's ruling on Monday that gun ownership is a "fundamental right", as much so as freedom of speech. Meanwhile, in Chicago, 23 are shot and three killed over a weekend
Date of publication online: 28 June 2010Notes on high-school reunion, class of 1960. "Within our bodies of 67 or 68 years lived all the people we had ever been or seemed to be. All the success, all the defeat, all the love and fear"
Date of publication online: 27 June 2010What would happen if we stopped lying, for fear of hurting others' feelings, and just told the truth? Virginia-based psychotherapist says do just that. Magazine reporter gives it a try
Date of publication online: 24 June 2010Studious black pupils mocked by peers for "acting white". Drags down performance, widens black-white scholastic gap. Originates in 1960s desegregation, needs to be corrected
Date of publication online: 24 June 2010Essay on political Islam and West, centred on Tariq Ramadan and his pragmatic challenge to fundamentalism. Long piece, slow to build, quite hard work, but well worth effort
Date of publication online: 25 June 2010Economist on rationale for having children. They make you less happy—but most parents would still do it all over again. And don't sweat it: bad parents don't make bad kids
Date of publication online: 19 June 2010
The man and the memoirs: a collection of essays, diaries and polemics portraying Britain's former...
Exactly the piece you'd expect from Maureen Dowd in Saudi Arabia. Shrewd, sarcastic, superficial, full of odd factoids and jibes against Islamist misogyny. And very funny
Unpromising looking article that explodes into life when author begins telling how she revived her sex life through Craigslist Casual Encounters. Thoughtful, astonishingly candid and definitely not for prudes
Harvard professor's talk on balancing work and life. Energetic people over-invest in careerism because it gives quick results: products, wages. Family life, social life, take decades to mature
What would happen if we stopped lying, for fear of hurting others' feelings, and just told the truth? Virginia-based psychotherapist says do just that. Magazine reporter gives it a try