Newsletter 997
Best of the Moment
Why I Froze My Eggs (And You Should, Too)
Sarah Elizabeth Richards | Wall Street Journal | 3rd May 2013
"I decided to freeze on the afternoon of my 36th birthday, when I did a fresh round of baby math on the back of a business card at Starbucks. Even if the man I was dating at the time agreed to start a family in the near future, I was cutting it close to have one baby, let alone a second. As soon as I woke up in the recovery room, I no longer felt as though I were watching my window to have a baby close by the month"
The Biggest Week In Bourbontown
Michael Lindenberger | Roads & Kingdoms | 1st May 2013
On Louisville, the bourbon trade, slavery, racial tensions, Southern culture — and, above all, the Kentucky Derby, the horse race beloved of William Faulkner and Hunter S. Thompson. "This is a town, after all, that keeps its bars open till 4 am every day of the year, except Friday and Saturday of Derby Week, when they are open till 6 so everyone can have their fill of whiskey without feeling rushed by the coming dawn"
Last Of Breed: Postal Workers Who Decipher Bad Addresses
Ron Nixon | New York Times | 3rd May 2013
Downside of improved optical character recognition: US Postal Service closes the last of its centres for deciphering illegible addresses. In used to have 55 of them. Now the machines can read 98% of hand-addressed mail and 99.5% of machine-addressed mail, which is good enough. "The best letters are those addressed to Santa Claus. They come in without an address and are sent to a processing center in Alaska"
The Hunt For Steve Cohen
Bethany McLean | Vanity Fair | 4th May 2013
Splashy, gossipy weekend read. "With arrest after arrest in a massive, seven-year insider-trading investigation, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is getting closer to the biggest fish of them all: Steve Cohen, founder of SAC Capital, the $14 billion hedge fund, who some regard as the most successful stock picker of his time ... Their looming showdown draws on themes of money, privilege, and class that define the era"
Video of the day: Good Deeds On Russian Roads
Thought for the day:
"Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology"— Gregory Bateson