February 2011

by Jason Dittmer The other day I was emailed by a friend: “Did you know that Gabrielle Giffords may be the Antichrist?” My eyes widened in surprise. Despite all the media attention in the wake of the Congresswoman’s January shooting, both connected to her remarkable recovery and to the...

Ben Heine by Biagio Bossone In the years leading up to the global crisis, the IMF routinely failed to detect the vulnerabilities that brought the global economy to its knees – even once the turmoil had begun. How could the organisation mandated to oversee international finance stability have been...

  by Heather J. Sharkey Civil wars ravaged Sudan in the mid-to-late twentieth century.  Most fighting occurred between government armies and southern “rebel” forces during two stretches of conflict, often called the “first civil war”, waged between 1955 and 1971, and the “second civil war”, waged after 1983.   Southern...

From The New York Review of Books: For hours, I wandered the downtown streets with friends, watched young men and women dance on boats moored on the banks of the Nile, chatting with strangers, taking pictures of soldiers and officers who were speaking to crowds around them about how...

From Words Without Borders: “The Story of Serafima Andreyevna”, by Igort (translated by Jamie Richards), Words Without Borders

HD 209458b From Nature: Until Kepler, the leading detection method used to discover exoplanets — planets outside the Solar System — was much more likely to find giant planets, resulting in a sampling bias. Known as radial velocity or Doppler spectroscopy, the method depends on identifying the shift in...

by Bryant Simon Starbucks invented the four-dollar cup of coffee.  But now it faces challenges on all sides, from McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts on the lower end and eco-friendly and fair trade coffeehouses on the higher end.  While trying to reclaim its seat at the top of the caffeine...

Pimp My Poem | by Kathleen Rooney

Poetry

You will enter a dim room appointed with fireplaces, silk tapestries, velvet banquettes, and damask wall hangings flecked with tiny mirrors and sequins. Every available surface will be either carved hardwood or plated with...

Vladimir Potanin in Кандидат or Kandidat by Peter Pomerantsev In 2006 I was invited to take part in one of the great adventures of modern broadcasting – conquering the booming Russian television market. The company I was hired by, Potemkin Productions, had been founded by Tim, a British executive...