In search of (more) interesting articles

Ed Yong with another good article, about a dancing parrot and what is needed for an animal to be able to dance.

www.theatlantic.com

Not a Human, but a Dancer

What Snowball the parrot’s spontaneous moves teach us about ourselves
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com

There's video, too.
 
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I'm trying to work my way through this article - so important, but so hard to read.

www.theatlantic.com

An Epidemic of Disbelief

What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
Since anyone who spends time on FSU has read about eating disorders and body dysmorphia, read this wonderful long article by a normal older woman. It’s sad and hilarious at the same time:

longreads.com

Whole 60 - Longreads

The Laura Lippman plan requires that you eat whatever you want whenever you want to eat it, and declare yourself beautiful. We're not going to lie — it's really hard.
longreads.com longreads.com
 
ESPN.com Outside the Lines has a long and interesting article about an Olympic athlete turned coach who molested boys and young men for decades, and the difficulty of bringing him to justice because of the statute of limitations and the legal nature of sexual battery:

The report arrived just six months before expiration of California's three-year statute of limitations on sexual battery by fraud -- touching the genitals under false pretenses. With Benjamin, the detectives had a shot at bringing a case to the district attorney. It wouldn't be easy. Because the allegation did not include a claim of penetration, the sexual battery was what is referred to as a "wobbler," meaning it might not be charged by prosecutors as a felony.

In an effort to increase their chances of getting a felony filed, the detectives sought to show prosecutors that the alleged offense was part of a pattern -- in this case dating back to the 1970s. So Johnson and Menifee continued chasing down men whose accounts bolstered their case.

"A lot of these men didn't even know they were victims of crimes until more recent things started coming out in the news about women, the #MeToo movement and what was happening to them," Johnson says. "... I think a lot of that has to do with ... society being more open to what is and is not a crime when it comes to all spectrums of sexual assault."
 
The Atlantic's latest cover story, by Vann Newkirk, is excellent - and can be seen as something of a companion piece to Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Case for Reparations.

www.theatlantic.com

The Great Land Robbery

The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
This article is certainly interesting but also extremely sad. Someone decided that it would be a good idea to steal from his wealthy Saudi employer. He stole an estimated $20m in valuables in 1989. But was soon caught after returning home to Thailand. However, that is where the story begins! As many as six people may have been murdered because of the theft.

www.bbc.com

Blue Diamond Affair: The mystery of the stolen Saudi jewels

The man behind a theft that led to a trail of killings and a diplomatic rift tells his story.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
From the New York Times:

www.nytimes.com

Hope and High Drama: A Year With Two New Democratic Congresswomen (Published 2019)

We followed Ayanna Pressley and Abigail Spanberger as they figured out Washington, forged alliances on the Hill — and clashed with their own party.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

www.nytimes.com

114,000 Students in N.Y.C. Are Homeless. These Two Let Us Into Their Lives. (Published 2019)

The number of homeless students has swelled by 70 percent over the past decade. For Darnell and Sandy, school is the only stable place they know.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Sarah Zhang's latest for the Atlantic:
www.theatlantic.com

What It Means to Name a Forgotten Murder Victim

Thirteen years ago, a young woman was found dead in small-town Texas. She was nicknamed “Lavender Doe” for the purple shirt she was wearing. Her real identity would remain a mystery until amateur genealogists took up her case.
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
Zemgirl said:
William Langewiesche on what likely happened to the mysteriously lost Malaysian 370. I like the magazine title better than the online one, so I'm going to use that: Good Night. Malaysian Three-Seven-Zero.

Langewiesche also wrote the excellent The Devil At 37,000 Feet, about a midair collision in Brazil - I think I posted that one in the previous interesting articles thread.
Click to expand...

I stopped reading Langewiesche's articles, not because he's a bad writer - he's not - but all his articles seem to be about large numbers of people dying in horrible ways :scream: I guess he's got a good line of work going there, but personally that's not a subject I would want to specialize in.
 
This week, the Washington Post and the New York Times both published articles about the issues around desegregating American schools. Kind of interesting to read the 2 articles side by side.

www.nytimes.com

Where Civility Is a Motto, a School Integration Fight Turns Bitter (Published 2019)

A plan to desegregate schools in a liberal Maryland suburb founded on values of tolerance has met with stiff resistance.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

 
A beautiful story:
www.texasmonthly.com

Miss Girard’s Christmas Gift

When her former student was found wandering the streets a decade after she’d last seen him, Michell Girard immediately agreed to take him in. Then she decided to do far more, including give him the Christmas he’d never had.
www.texasmonthly.com www.texasmonthly.com
Merry Christmas to Chris and Miss Girard.
 

Interesting story this week that is playing out in Canada’s most eastern province.

Interesting personal tidbit....my dad’s family resettled in 1953 (before you were paid to do so!) when he was just 4 years old and my grandfather floated their house across the bay just like you see in these photos.
 
I was reading about that this morning. I think it's an interesting approach to dealing with hard to service areas. But I was surprised that people felt compelled to vote to leave when they didn't really want to.
 
Sharing an article from SpaceX regarding one of their latest missions.

JCSAT-18/KACIFIC1 Mission.

More detailed information from the press kit. A link is provided for the pdf file from the article:

https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/jcsat18kacific1_mission_press_kit.pdf

The JCSAT-18 satellite was built for SKY Perfect JSAT, one of the largest providers of multichannel pay TV broadcast services in Japan, which operates the largest satellite communications business in Asia. The JCSAT-18 satellite will provide Ku-band coverage and improve mobile and broadband services for SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation customers in the Asia-Pacific region, including the far eastern part of Russia. The satellite features technologies in the power subsystem to achieve highest efficiencies, and it also features command and data handling technologies to provide a more secure spacecraft. Boeing has built 13 satellites, including two high-throughput satellites, for SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation and its predecessors since the 1980s.
Click to expand...
 
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