Radio Shack, Cricket, Firestone In Liberia, Waterloo, Edelweiss, Gazprom
A Eulogy For RadioShack
Jon Bois | SB Nation | 26th November 2014
"RadioShack is a rotten place to work, generally not a very good place to shop, and an untenable business to run. Everyone involved loses. These are stories from my three and a half years as a RadioShack employee ... The majority of my RadioShack experience felt like guard duty. Depending on the store and the time of year, I could go four or five hours without seeing a single person walk in the door?" (4,450 words)
Death Of A Cricketer
Jay Elwes | Prospect | 27th November 2014
Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes was felled by a fast ball in the neck. "There is a vast, unspoken violence to the game of cricket. It is not immediately obvious, but is recognised and felt by anyone who has ever played it. A new cricket ball is about the size of an adult fist, as hard as a rock and is bowled by one person at another from a distance of 22 yards. The ball that hit Hughes was travelling at around 90 mph" (920 words)
Firestone And The General
Christian Miller & Jonathan Jones | Frontline / ProPublica | 25th November 2014
Magnificent piece of extended reporting. Charles Taylor maimed and massacred his way to power in Liberia with help from the Firestone rubber company. Firestone gave Taylor money and a safe haven for his militia on its Liberian plantation. Taylor allowed the plantation to continue working. Taylor is now serving 50 years in gaol for crimes against humanity. Firestone is unrepentant. "Does Firestone believe it did the right thing? Yes" (20,000 words)
The Unfinished Battles Of Waterloo
Simon Heffer | New Statesman | 26th November 2014
Discussion of recent books about the Battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815, where 150,000 soldiers fought and 12,000 died. The battle turned against Napoleon when 400 Germans fighting for Britain held off the French long enough for Blücher's Prussians to arrive and reinforce Wellington. "The dividing line between victory and defeat is precariously fine: and on those 400 men would hinge the development of a whole continent" (1,580 words)
Edelweiss
Mark Steyn | Steyn Online | 26th November 2014
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II added Edelweiss to the score of their stage musical The Sound Of Music after a try-out in Boston. They felt that Captain von Trapp's love for the land of Austria needed to be communicated more clearly to the audience, and that a solo song would do the job. It was Hammerstein's last lyric. He was dying of stomach cancer, unknown to himself, but known to Rodgers (1,840 words)
The Kremlin’s Kiev Connection
Stephen Grey et al | Reuters | 26th November 2014
Impressive investigation shedding much light on the Putin régime, Gazprom and Ukraine. In brief: the Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom sold gas cheaply to a Ukrainian straw man called Dmitry Firtash, who sold the gas on to Ukraine at a $3bn profit. Russian banks lent Firtash a further $11bn to buy up Ukrainian petrochemical plants. Firtash then bankrolled the rise of a pro-Russian president for Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich (3,700 words)
Video of the day: The Best Way To Board A Plane
What to expect: Explainer. Quickest method is random-order boarding with unassigned seats (2'35")
Thought for the day
We spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth
Douglas Coupland (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1886.Douglas_Coupland?page=2)