Mary Buek, “Blunders”
via:

In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.

Lo, in the twilight days of the second year of the second decade of the third millenium did a great darkness descend over the wireless internet connectivity of the people of 276 Ferndale Street in the North-Central lands of Iowa. For many years, the gentlefolk of these lands basked in a wireless network overflowing with speed and ample internet, flowing like a river into their Compaq Presario. Many happy days did the people spend checking Hotmail and reading USAToday.com.

But then one gray morning did Internet Explorer 6 no longer load The Google. Refresh was clicked, again and again, but still did Internet Explorer 6 not load The Google. Perhaps The Google was broken, the people thought, but then The Yahoo too did not load. Nor did Hotmail. Nor USAToday.com. The land was thrown into panic. Internet Explorer 6 was minimized then maximized. The Compaq Presario was unplugged then plugged back in. The old mouse was brought out and plugged in beside the new mouse. Still, The Google did not load.

Some in the kingdom thought the cause of the darkness must be the Router. Little was known of the Router, legend told it had been installed behind the recliner long ago by a shadowy organization known as Comcast. Others in the kingdom believed it was brought by a distant cousin many feasts ago. Concluding the trouble must lie deep within the microchips, the people of 276 Fernadale Street did despair and resign themselves to defeat.

But with the dawn of the feast of Christmas did a beacon of hope manifest itself upon the inky horizon. Riding in upon a teal Ford Focus came a great warrior, a suitor of the gentlefolks’ granddaughter. Word had spread through the kingdom that this warrior worked with computers and perhaps even knew the true nature of the Router.

The people did beseech the warrior to aid them. They were a simple people, capable only of rewarding him with gratitude and a larger-than-normal serving of Jell-O salad. The warrior considered the possible battles before him. While others may have shirked the duties, forcing the good people of Ferndale Street to prostrate themselves before the tyrants of Comcast, Linksys, and Geek Squad, the warrior could not chill his heart to these depths. He accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.

Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of National Geographic magazines and deep chasms of TV Guides. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone VGA cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.

And at last the warrior arrived at the Router. It was a dusty black box with an array of shimmering green lights, blinking on and off, as if to taunt him to come any further. The warrior swiftly maneuvered to the rear of the router and verified what he had feared, what he had heard whispered in his ear from spirits beyond: all the cords were securely in place.

The warrior closed his eyes, summoning the power of his ancestors, long departed but watchful still. And then with the echoing beep of his digital watch, he moved with deadly speed, wrapping his battle-hardened hands around the power cord at the back of the Router.

Gripping it tightly, he pulled with all his force, dislodging the cord from the Router. The heavens roared. The earth wailed. The green lights turned off. Silently the warrior counted. One. Two. Three. And just as swiftly, the warrior plugged the cord back into the router. Great crashes of blood-red lightning boomed overhead. Murders of crows blackened the skies. The Power light came on solid green. The seas rolled. The WLAN light blinked on. The forests ignited. A dark fog rolled over the land and suddenly all was silent. The warrior stared at the Internet light, waiting, waiting. And then, as the world around him seemed all but dead, the Internet light began to blink.

The warrior darted out back over the mountains of National Geographic magazines and made haste to the Compaq Presario. He woke up Windows XP from sleep mode and deftly defeated twelve notifications to update Norton AntiVirus. With a resounding click he opened Internet Explorer 6 and gazed deep into its depths, past the Yahoo toolbar, the MSN toolbar, the Ask.com toolbar, and the AOL toolbar. And then did he see, at long last, that The Google did load.

And so the good people of the kingdom were delighted and did heap laurels and Jell-O salad at the warrior’s feet, for now again they could have their Hotmail as the wireless internet did flow freely to their Compaq Presario. The warrior ate his Jell-O salad, thanked the gentlefolk, and then went to the basement because the TiVo was doing something weird with the VCR.

by Mike Lacher, McSweeny's
Photo via: About.com

More Etta

[ed. Still can't believe she's gone. Keith Richards in his biography Life talks about "marrying" Etta in a show business ceremony. They had such a strong connection. Here's a link with many more great videos (including Something's Got a Hold on Me, which I was surprised formed the basis for Pretty Lights', Finally Moving.]

[ed. For someone that was once very special to me.]

Also, this tribute by Hilton Als in the New Yorker.

More Etta James videos (via The Awl)

Tunnel to the Other Side of the Earth

Have you ever wondered which part of the other side of the earth is directly below you? Find out using this map tunnelling tool.

Photo via: Howstuffworks

The Orchid Olympics

Orchids are seducers. They trick animals into pollinating them and usually give nothing in exchange. Some orchid species mimic nectar-producing flowers to lure bees; others emit the fetid smell of rotting meat to attract carrion flies. In China, Dendrobium sinense orchids release a chemical normally broadcast by bees in distress; the scent attracts bee-eating hornets expecting an easy meal. The scent of Cymbidium serratum entices a wild mountain mouse, which spreads pollen from flower to flower with its snout. And around the world, orchid species have evolved to look or smell like female insects; males try to mate with the flowers but gather and deposit pollen, which they carry on their flight from deception to deception.

But perhaps the most spectacular evidence of the plant’s powers of attraction could be seen several weeks ago in Singapore, at the 20th World Orchid Conference, a triennial affair that drew about 1,000 participants from 55 countries and more than 300,000 spectators. It was one of the largest orchid competitions in history, a colorful, heavily scented affair that showcased the growing popularity and cutting-edge science of orchid breeding.  (...)

Orchids may be the most diverse flower family in the world, with more than 25,000 species. (Their only competition comes from daisies.) The orchid family maintains such diversity in the wild in part because individual orchid species summon only specific pollinators; the flowers thus avoid mingling their genes with those of other nearby orchids that are visited by their own pollinators. But most of the 50,000 orchids from 5,000 varieties on display at the conference do not occur in the wild; they are hybrids, created by people who have cross-fertilized orchid species, often from far-flung lands.

“The joy of breeding orchids is to see if you can combine two species in order to create something even more beautiful than either of the parents,” Martin Motes, a commercial grower from Florida and conference judge, said as visitors poured into the hall and crowded around the displays. He has been breeding orchids for 40 years, and many varieties of his 500 hybrids are named after his wife, Mary. “My wife thinks I am playing God! Well, man is given dominion over the beasts of the fields and orchids of the greenhouse, I guess,” he said.

by Somali Roy, Smithsonian |  Read more:
Photographs by JG Bryce

Joanna Carrington  Rabbits Escape
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Sir Kyffin Williams:  Snow at Gwastadnant (1969)
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The Man Who Bought North Dakota

Harold G. Hamm is lost. The 66-year-old founder, chairman, and chief executive of Continental Resources (CLR) is steering a Chevy Tahoe past sunflower fields and grazing cows in western North Dakota. He’s found millions of barrels of oil in these low prairie hills, but on this bright fall day, he’s having trouble locating one of his own drilling rigs.

In the back seat, Hamm’s public-relations handler uses her smartphone to get their bearings. “So, we go three miles east, five north,” Hamm says in his Oklahoma drawl. “Got it.” Meandering past an idle John Deere combine and clutches of mobile homes where oil workers live, he points out wells his company has already drilled as if showing a guest around his home. He misses a turn, shrugs, stops, doubles back. “It’s a great day in North Dakota,” he says. “We’ll find it.”

Finally, he pulls into a dusty yard surrounding a 140-foot-tall rig. Workers hustle around in hard hats and black fire-retardant coveralls. From this single location, Hamm explains, four drills will corkscrew down nearly two miles, then turn and pierce the rock horizontally, two wells to the north, two to the south. He pulls on his own hard hat and coveralls, jams his hands in his pockets, and beams at the rig. Shouting over the whine of a drill bit, he says, “Without a doubt, this is going to be like the one up the road. It came in close to 2,000 barrels a day.” That translates into about $150,000 in revenue per day to Continental Resources.

Hamm is the man who bought the Bakken, the shale formation that’s the biggest U.S. oil find since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 1968. The Bakken stretches from central North Dakota into the northeastern corner of Montana and up into southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He leased his first acres and drilled his first wells in North Dakota nearly 20 years ago, and stayed with it when others gave up. Today, Continental, with a stock market value of $13.5 billion, vies with oil giants such as Hess (HES) for the most Bakken acres under lease (more than 900,000), the most drilling rigs (24), and the most wells (more than 350). Continental’s revenue has nearly tripled from two years ago to an expected $1.76 billion in 2011, while profits have grown sevenfold to an estimated $538 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Hamm and his family control 78 percent of the company’s shares, a stake valued at more than $10 billion.

Hamm, a stocky man of medium height with a leprechaun’s playful grin and a diamond-studded Continental ring on his right hand, has revived a character who had faded from the American oil patch. He’s a wildcatter, the sort of oil hunter unafraid to lease land and put a drill bit in the ground where there might or might not be crude. “I find oil,” he says as he drives to the company jet that will take him back to Continental headquarters in his native Oklahoma. “In America, people lost the will to drill for oil. But I’m a little more hardheaded than other people.”

by Bryan Gruley, Bloomberg Businessweek |  Read more:
Photograph by Mark Mahaney

Bill Clinton: Esquire Interview

Twenty years ago this month, on the early afternoon of February 18, 1992, in a lousy room with two double beds at the Days Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire — primary day — Bill Clinton's senior campaign staff frantically worked on two speeches, one of which the candidate would deliver that night after the day's results were known. Two weeks before, amid a firestorm of rumor and scandal, Clinton, who had the best organization and had been the front-runner, had seen his numbers collapse. Now he was mired down with the rest of the pack — Tom Harkin and Bob Kerrey and Jerry Brown — while native-son Paul Tsongas, from neighboring Massachusetts, held a commanding lead. Not giving up, Clinton had scratched and clawed and campaigned around the clock, in bowling alleys and bait shops and dive bars, declaring to the people of New Hampshire that he would be with them until "the last dog dies." And so on the afternoon of primary day, the governor's staff holed up and wrote one set of remarks for a strong second-place finish, which would mean not only that Clinton had survived but that he'd effectively won. The second speech was to be delivered if Clinton faded to a distant second, or worse. This speech would likely have marked the end of Clinton's campaign that year, and maybe the end of his political career. The room was extraordinarily tense. Senior advisor Paul Begala manned the keyboard and did the writing. George Stephanopoulos hovered over him, looking at the screen. Mandy Grunwald sat on the double bed across the room. Bob Boorstin stood at the window. Every few minutes, James Carville, too restless to be contained by any room, would burst through the door, speak in tongues for exactly one minute, and slam the door on his way out.

Just then, the first exit-poll numbers began to come in, and it became clear that Clinton's desperate bid to survive had worked. Suddenly energized, Begala began to type furiously. "The guy's been shit on and shot at more than anybody in American presidential politics, and he's survived!" he said. "He's the Comeback Kid!"

This, of course, all happened before a single moment of the Clinton presidency transpired, one of the most rancorous and partisan periods in American history, culminating in a presidential impeachment that was seen as so political as to be illegitimate, and that has all but been forgotten.

And so twenty years after Bill Clinton walked onto the world stage, during this new period of astoundingly rancorous partisanship, it might amuse him that he himself has become one of the few things that Americans can agree on. Comeback Kid indeed.

ESQUIRE: Mr. President, as we're going into an election year that will likely scorch the earth, we want to talk with you about the notion of American consensus for the common good and why that is in so much trouble right now, and we want to find consensus on some things. As impossible as it might have seemed twenty years ago, there is now no figure of greater consensus in America than you. How did that happen? What is different between now and then? Why does the politics seem so much more caustic now than even then?

CLINTON: Well, it is more caustic now, but don't forget, when I was there, there were radio talk shows accusing me of murder, killing guys on train tracks in Arkansas, and of running drugs in western Arkansas, that kind of stuff.

First of all, I think the obvious answer is that I'm not running for anything anymore, and when you get out of the conflict, there is no particular advantage to somebody continuing to tear you down. And I think the second thing is the work I have done since I left office. It is seen as both conventionally progressive — the kind of stuff a Democrat would do in America and around the world — but it focuses on what works, and I've been able to generate support from liberals and conservatives across the board. One of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that what works in politics is organization and conflict. That is, drawing the sharp distinctions. But in real life, what works is networks and cooperation. And we need victories in real life, so we've got to get back to networks and cooperation, not just conflict. But politics has always been about conflict, and in the coverage of politics, information dissemination tends to be organized around conflict as well. It is extremely personal now, and you see in these primaries that the more people agree with each other on the issues, the more desperate they are to make the clear distinctions necessary to win, so the deeper the knife goes in.

by Charles P. Pierce and Mark Warren, Esquire |  Read more:
Photo: Peter Yang

Raspberries and Goldfish, 1981 by Janet Fish (born 1938)
(source: http://www.metmuseum.org)
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The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century

The rise of sexual freedom … detail from The Bed, etching, engraving and drypoint by Rembrandt (1646). Photograph: © Trustees of the British Museum

We believe in sexual freedom. We take it for granted that consenting men and women have the right to do what they like with their bodies. Sex is everywhere in our culture. We love to think and talk about it; we devour news about celebrities' affairs; we produce and consume pornography on an unprecedented scale. We think it wrong that in other cultures its discussion is censured, people suffer for their sexual orientation, women are treated as second-class citizens, or adulterers are put to death.

Yet a few centuries ago, our own society was like this too. In the 1600s people were still being executed for adultery in England, Scotland and north America, and across Europe. Everywhere in the west, sex outside marriage was illegal, and the church, the state and ordinary people devoted huge efforts to hunting it down and punishing it. This was a central feature of Christian society, one that had grown steadily in importance since late antiquity. So how and when did our culture change so strikingly? Where does our current outlook come from? The answers lie in one of the great untold stories about the creation of our modern condition.

When I stumbled on the subject, more than a decade ago, I could not believe that such a huge transformation had not been properly understood. But the more I pursued it, the more amazing material I uncovered: the first sexual revolution can be traced in some of the greatest works of literature, art and philosophy ever produced – the novels of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, the pictures of Reynolds and Hogarth, the writings of Adam Smith, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. And it was played out in the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary men and women, otherwise unnoticed by history, whose trials and punishments for illicit sex are preserved in unpublished judicial records. Most startling of all were my discoveries of private writings, such as the diary of the randy Dutch embassy clerk Lodewijk van der Saan, posted to London in the 1690s; the emotional letters sent to newspapers by countless hopeful and disappointed lovers; and the piles of manuscripts about sexual freedom composed by the great philosopher Jeremy Bentham but left unpublished, to this day, by his literary executors. Once noticed, the effects of this revolution in attitudes and behaviour can be seen everywhere when looking at the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It was one of the key shifts from the pre-modern to the modern world.

by Faramerz Dabhoiwala, Guardian |  Read more:

Opihi Day

[ed. The fish weren't biting so I went opihi picking today. Got bashed up a bit but still managed to snag a few "grandpas"- about three inches across and covered in seaweed (also called "ashtrays"). The thing about opihi, which you can read in the following article, is they're found mainly in the active surf zone. They like big waves. So you always have to keep your eyes open and time your attack between sets (and watch out for slippery rocks).]

Of all the gastropods in the sea, Hawaii loves the humble opihi best of all. With shells shaped like miniature Mount Fujis, the tenacious way they cling to rocks and a sharp saltiness that complements the mildness of poi so well, opihi are both cultural treasure and coveted pupu.

You will find them in the wild along remote shorelines from the Big Island all the way to Gardner Pinnacle, the last barren outcrop in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. You will find them rattling around in bags tied to the waists of opihi pickers, who risk their necks to get them. You will find them next to the poke in Honolulu fish markets, selling for up to $18 per pound in the shell. But as a rule, you won’t find them along any stretch of coast where you can also find a place to park, because where people go, the opihi disappear—often right down the gullet of whoever sees them first.

When it comes to fresh Hawaiian seafood, nothing spends less time in transit than the opihi plucked off the rocks and slurped right out of the shell, wriggling tentacles and all. They are typically eaten raw, either plain or poke style, with limu and a dash of sea salt. They also go well on the grill, seasoned with shoyu and ginger perhaps, or a splash of Tabasco or, in a pinch, a spare packet of Taco Bell hot sauce.

At the haute end of the spectrum, there’s a New Wave Opihi Shooter on the appetizer menu at Alan Wong’s—a single raw opihi in a narrow cordial glass filled with spicy tomato water, fennel, basil and ume shiso essence, all meant to be downed in one gulp. Chef George Mavrothalassitis, of Chef Mavro restaurant, once substituted opihi for abalone in a ceviche. It turned out great, he says, but he admits that he prefers his opihi live and unadorned. “The best way is to go to the rocks, grab some opihi, a baguette, a bottle of white wine, and it’s enough,” he says. He is, of course, French. Most opihi lovers would take a cold Heineken over a glass of wine.

On the palate, opihi are rubbery yet crunchy. They taste like the ocean, only richer, but are an acquired taste. Tourists don’t come to Waikiki with opihi on their must-try list, and that’s just as well, since opihi are already too popular among locals for their own good.

Low tide, calm seas and yellowfoot aplenty — even under these ideal conditions, opihi picking carries risks.

While the Neighbor Islands still have some healthy opihi habitat, Oahu’s ‘pihi grounds have been hammered so hard for so long by so many  pickers that you’re more likely to find a pair of opihi-shell hoop earrings in a hotel gift shop than you are to find a legally pickable opihi on a rock in Honolulu County. There are efforts afoot to better manage the fishery, but, in the meantime, opihi on Oahu are essentially a shellfish that’s been loved to death.

The intense opihi-rock connection is also equated with the bond between mother and child, which sheds light on why opihi are in such demand at baby luau, the celebration of a child’s first birthday. Babies and clingy keiki in Hawaii are sometimes called “little opihi,” as in “Mommy’s little opihi needs to let go now so mommy can have her arms back.” Opihi also tend to cluster together with other opihi, which reminds people of tightly knit families, and enhances opihi’s cuteness a lot.

This cuteness, however, belies a dark side. Opihi are deadly. The Hawaiian saying, He ia make ka opihi, the opihi is the fish of death, sums it up well. It’s not because of anything opihi do, it’s because of where they live, along dangerous shores. A state Department of Health review of drowning deaths from 1993 through 1997 found nine people drowned while picking opihi. Between 1999 and 2009, on the Big Island alone, at least 13 opihi pickers died in drownings, falls from cliffs or, in one case, after getting stuffed into a blowhole by waves, according to news stories in the Hilo Tribune-Herald. With grim numbers like these, opihi are deadlier than sharks, box jellyfish or any other creature living in Hawaiian waters.

by David Thompson, Honolulu Magazine |  Read more:
Image: via:

Etta James (January, 1938 - January, 2012)

Etta James' performance of the enduring classic "At Last" was the embodiment of refined soul: Angelic-sounding strings harkened the arrival of her passionate yet measured vocals as she sang tenderly about a love finally realized after a long and patient wait.

In real life, little about James was as genteel as that song. The platinum blonde's first hit was a saucy R&B number about sex, and she was known as a hell-raiser who had tempestuous relationships with her family, her men and the music industry. Then she spent years battling a drug addiction that she admitted sapped away at her great talents.

The 73-year-old died on Friday at Riverside Community Hospital from complications of leukemia, with her husband and sons at her side, her manager, Lupe De Leon said.

"It's a tremendous loss for her fans around the world," he said. "She'll be missed. A great American singer. Her music defied category."

James' spirit could not be contained — perhaps that's what made her so magnetic in music; it is surely what made her so dynamic as one of R&B, blues and rock 'n' roll's underrated legends.

"The bad girls ... had the look that I liked," she wrote in her 1995 autobiography, "Rage to Survive." ''I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be."

"Etta James was a pioneer. Her ever-changing sound has influenced rock and roll, rhythm and blues, pop, soul and jazz artists, marking her place as one of the most important female artists of our time," said Rock and Roll Hall of Fame President and CEO Terry Stewart. "From Janis Joplin to Joss Stone, an incredible number of performers owe their debts to her. There is no mistaking the voice of Etta James, and it will live forever."

by Nakesa Mumbi Moody and Robert Jablon, AP |  Read more:

Pianissimo by MT
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Alex Couwenberg, Powerflex
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Soccer's Heavy Boredom

Soccer is boring. One of the misconceptions non-soccer fans have about soccer fans is that we don't know this. The classic Simpsons parody of a soccer match — "Fast kickin'! Low scorin'! And ties? You bet!" — hangs on the joke that the game puts Americans to sleep while somehow, bafflingly, driving foreigners wild with excitement. Calling the game for Springfield TV, Kent Brockman practically grinds his teeth with frustration: "Halfback passes to the center … back to the wing … back to the center. Center holds it. Holds it. [Huge sigh.] Holds it." One booth over, the Spanish commentator is going nuts: "Halfback passes to the center! Back to the wing! Back to the center! Center holds it! Holds it!! HOLDS IT!!!"¹

It's a great comedy bit, but it's not really accurate as a depiction of soccer culture. Soccer fans know soccer is boring. Soccer fans have seen more soccer than anyone. We're aware that it can be a chore. Fire up Twitter during the average Stoke City-Wigan match and you'll find us making jokes about gouging out our own eyes with wire hangers, about the players forgetting where the goals are, about what would happen if we released a pride of lions onto the pitch. (Answer: The game would still finish 0-0.) When Ricky Gervais recorded his "David Brent on Football Management" clip for the BBC during the first run of The Office, he snuck in a similar dig at the tedium of some of Liverpool's greatest teams:

Do you think that Alan Hansen or Mark Lawrenson would have had the careers they had if they'd had the skills but not the discipline? If they didn't have the concentration?
It's not easy passing the ball back to the goalkeeper every single time you get it. For ninety minutes.

Translation: Those guys were good. Now please, God, someone release the lions.

So why do soccer fans do this? Assuming we follow sports for something like entertainment, what do we get out of a game for which the potential for tedium is so high that some of its most famous inspirational quotes are simply about not being dull?

I keep thinking about this question lately, maybe because I've been finding myself drawn to more and more boring games. This past weekend, I sat through the slow cudgeling death of Liverpool-Stoke. The final score was 0-0, but the final emotional score was -5. During Swansea's deliriously fun 3-2 upset of Arsenal on Sunday, I kept switching over to Athletic Bilbao's mundane 3-0 win over Levante. Why am I doing this? I thought, as Fernando Amorebieta whuffed in a gloomy header and Levante pinned themselves into their own half. But I kept checking back.

There are two reasons, basically, why soccer lends itself to spectatorial boredom. One is that the game is mercilessly hard to play at a high level. (You know, what with the whole "maneuver a small ball via precisely coordinated spontaneous group movement with 10 other people on a huge field while 11 guys try to knock it away from you, and oh, by the way, you can't use your arms and hands" element.) The other is that the gameplay almost never stops — it's a near-continuous flow for 45-plus minutes at a stretch, with only very occasional resets. Combine those two factors and you have a game that's uniquely adapted for long periods of play where, say, the first team's winger goes airborne to bring down a goal kick, but he jumps a little too soon, so the ball kind of kachunks off one side of his face, then the second team's fullback gets control of it, and he sees his attacking midfielder lurking unmarked in the center of the pitch, so he kludges the ball 20 yards upfield, but by the time it gets there the first team's holding midfielder has already closed him down and gone in for a rough tackle, and while the first team's attacking midfielder is rolling around on the ground the second team's right back runs onto the loose ball, only he's being harassed by two defenders, so he tries to knock it ahead and slip through them, but one of them gets a foot to it, so the ball sproings up in the air … etc., etc., etc. Both teams have carefully worked-out tactical plans that influence everything they're trying to do. But the gameplay is so relentless that it can't help but go through these periodic bouts of semi-decomposition.

But — and here's the obvious answer to the "Why are we doing this?" question — those same two qualities, difficulty and fluidity, also mean that soccer is uniquely adapted to produce moments of awesome visual beauty. Variables converge. Players discover solutions to problems it would be impossible to summarize without math. The ball sproings up in the air … and comes down in just such a way that Dennis Bergkamp can pull off a reverse-pirouette flick that spins the ball around the defender and back into his own path … or Thierry Henry can three-touch a 40-yard pass in the air before lining it up and scoring a weak-foot roundhouse … or Zlatan Ibrahimovic can stutter-fake his way through an entire defense. In sports, pure chaos is boring. Soccer gives players more chaos to contend with than any other major sport. So there's something uniquely thrilling about the moments when they manage to impose their own order on it.

by Brian Phillips, Grantland |  Read more:
Photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images

How to Build a Dog

It's an unusually balmy mid-February afternoon in New York City, but the lobby of the Hotel Pennsylvania is teeming with fur coats.

The wearers are attendees of what is undoubtedly the world's elite canine mixer, one that takes place each year on the eve of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Tomorrow the nation's top dogs from 173 breeds will compete for glory across the street at Madison Square Garden. But today is more akin to a four-legged meet-and-greet, as owners shuffle through the check-in line at the competition's official lodgings. A basset hound aims a droopy eye across a luggage cart at a wired-up terrier. A pair of muscled Rhodesian ridgebacks, with matching leather leashes, pause for a brief hello with a fluffy Pyrenean shepherd. Outside the gift shop a Tibetan mastiff with paws the size of human hands goes nose to nose with a snuffling pug.

The variety on display in the hotel lobby—a dizzying array of body sizes, ear shapes, nose lengths, and barking habits—is what makes dog lovers such obstinate partisans. For reasons both practical and whimsical, man's best friend has been artificially evolved into the most diverse animal on the planet—a staggering achievement, given that most of the 350 to 400 dog breeds in existence have been around for only a couple hundred years. The breeders fast-forwarded the normal pace of evolution by combining traits from disparate dogs and accentuating them by breeding those offspring with the largest hints of the desired attributes. To create a dog well suited for cornering badgers, for instance, it is thought that German hunters in the 18th and 19th centuries brought together some combination of hounds—the basset, a native of France, being the likely suspect—and terriers, producing a new variation on the theme of dog with stubby legs and a rounded body that enabled it to chase its prey into the mouth of a burrow: hence the dachshund, or "badger dog" in German. (A rival, flimsier history of the breed has it dating back, in some form, to ancient Egypt.) Pliable skin served as a defense mechanism, allowing the dog to endure sharp-toothed bites without significant damage. A long and sturdy tail helped hunters to retrieve it from an animal's lair, badger in its mouth.

The breeders gave no thought, of course, to the fact that while coaxing such weird new dogs into existence, they were also tinkering with the genes that determine canine anatomy in the first place­. Scientists since have assumed that underneath the morphological diversity of dogs lay an equivalent amount of genetic diversity. A recent explosion in canine genomic research, however, has led to a surprising, and opposite, conclusion: The vast mosaic of dog shapes, colors, and sizes is decided largely by changes in a mere handful of gene regions. The difference between the dachshund's diminutive body and the Rottweiler's massive one hangs on the sequence of a single gene. The disparity between the dachshund's stumpy legs—known officially as disproportionate dwarfism, or chondrodysplasia—and a greyhound's sleek ones is determined by another one.

by Evan Ratliff, National Geographic |  Read more:

The Secrets Apple Keeps

Apple employees know something big is afoot when the carpenters appear in their office building. New walls are quickly erected. Doors are added and new security protocols put into place. Windows that once were transparent are now frosted. Other rooms have no windows at all. They are called lockdown rooms: No information goes in or out without a reason.

The hubbub is disconcerting for employees. Quite likely you have no idea what is going on, and it's not like you're going to ask. If it hasn't been disclosed to you, then it's literally none of your business. What's more, your badge, which got you into particular areas before the new construction, no longer works in those places. All you can surmise is that a new, highly secretive project is under way, and you are not in the know. End of story.

Secrecy takes two basic forms at Apple -- external and internal. There is the obvious kind, the secrecy that Apple uses as a way of keeping its products and practices hidden from competitors and the rest of the outside world. This cloaking device is the easier of the two types for the rank and file to understand because many companies try to keep their innovations under wraps. Internal secrecy, as evidenced by those mysterious walls and off-limits areas, is tougher to stomach. Yet the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue.

All companies have secrets, of course. The difference is that at Apple everything is a secret. The company understands, by the way, that it takes things a little far; there is a hint of a sense of humor about its loose-lips-sink-ships mentality: A T‑shirt for sale in the company store, which is open to the public at 1 Infinite Loop, reads: I VISITED THE APPLE CAMPUS. BUT THAT'S ALL I'M ALLOWED TO SAY.

Apple's airy physical surroundings belie its secretive core. From above, it appears that an oval football stadium could be plopped down inside Infinite Loop. Through the doors of the buildings, in the core of the loop, is a sunny, green courtyard with volleyball courts, grassy lawns, and outdoor seating for lunch. The splendid central cafeteria, Caffe Macs, features separate stations for fresh sushi, salad, and desserts and teems with Apple employees. They pay for their meals, by the way, unlike at Google, but the food is quite good and reasonably priced. The appearance is collegiate, but good luck auditing a class. Unlike Google's famously and ridiculously named "Googleplex," where a visitor can roam the inner courtyards and slip into an open door as employees come and go, Apple's buildings are airtight. Employees can be spotted on the volleyball courts from time to time. More typically, visitors gaping into the courtyard will see a campus in constant motion. Apple employees scurry from building to building for meetings that start and end on time.

For new recruits, keeping secrets begins even before they learn which building they'll be working in. Many employees are hired into so‑called dummy positions, roles that aren't explained in detail until after they join the company. "They wouldn't tell me what it was," remembered a former engineer who had been a graduate student before joining Apple. "I knew it was related to the iPod, but not what the job was." Others do know but won't say, a realization that hits the newbies on their first day of work at new-employee orientation.

"You sit down, and you start with the usual roundtable of who is doing what," recalled Bob Borchers, a product marketing executive in the early days of the iPhone. "And half the folks can't tell you what they're doing, because it's a secret project that they've gotten hired for."

by Adam Lashinsky, Forture |  Read more:
Illustration: Tavis Coburn

In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old

When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America and, of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.

Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.

As a result, the legislative battle over two once-obscure bills to combat the piracy of American movies, music, books and writing on the World Wide Web may prove to be a turning point for the way business is done in Washington. It represented a moment when the new economy rose up against the old.

“I think it is an important moment in the Capitol,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the legislation. “Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.”

It appeared by Wednesday evening that Congress would follow Bank of America, Netflix and Verizon as the latest institution to change course in the face of a netizen revolt.

by Jonathan Weisman, NY Times |  Read more:

Stop SOPA (House) and the Protect IP Act (Senate)

FAQ via: Washington Post
Electronic Frontiers Foundation action center.