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Conspicuous Combustion

From the abstract of “Small Penises and Fast Cars,” a study conducted by researchers at University College London. In this experiment, we manipulated what men believed about their own penis…

Letters

A Shock to the System “Can a brain implant treat drug addiction?” This is the question Zachary Siegel poses in his recent article, featuring four individuals addicted to opioids [“A…

Letters

That’s Baseball, Suzyn Will Bardenwerper’s portrait of baseball’s fading farm system [“Minor Threat,” Letter from Pulaski, October] brought me back to summer evenings in the Fifties, watching minor-league games in…

Letters

Have You Heard? I felt torn reading Joseph Bernstein’s essay [“Bad News,” Report, September]. Bernstein is correct to note that the anti-disinformation industry is largely composed of elites alarmed by…

Letters

A Modest Proposal In Andrew Cockburn’s recent essay [“Hard Times,” Letter from Washington, February], I was quoted as calling for a New Deal 2.0. I would like to elaborate here…

Letters

A History of the Future Rana Dasgupta’s absorbing essay [“The Silenced Majority,” December] leaves an important issue unresolved: What will the Western working classes do when they realize they’ve lost?…

Mammary Lapse

Letters

Breaking the News It was gratifying to see Greg Jackson revive the ideas of Neil Postman in his meditation on the media [“Vicious Cycles,” Essay, January], for Postman highlighted the…

Moby Sick

From items found in the stomachs of dead whales since 2010, as described in news reports. Fishing nets Bundles of rope Corrugated tubing Duct tape Shopping bags Banana bags Rice…

Mr. Me Too

From lyrics referring to Donald Trump in rap songs catalogued by Genius.com. Rich Well-known Over-tan Orange Pink All-American High drama Living large On the links On the news Making big…

As You Wish

From actions since 2006 taken by American companies and institutions to appease China. Censored music that refers to the Tiananmen Square massacreCanceled a lecture on women’s rightsRemoved an app that…

Baby Boomers

From actions of hosts and attendees at gender-­reveal parties since 2017. Struck a grandfather in the face with a baseball filled with blue powderBroke an ankle kicking a football filled…

Invisible Man

From a deposition given last year by Dominic Ryan, the general manager of Founders Brewing Company, to Jack Schulz, a lawyer for Tracy Evans. In 2018, Evans, an employee at…

Smote Like a Butterfly

From names of military drones used by countries around the world, as compiled in The Drone Databook, by Dan Gettinger, published last year by the Center for the Study of…

Fear Factors

From the 2018 Chapman University Survey of American Fears. The list is included in Fear Itself, by Christopher D. Bader, Joseph O. Baker, L. Edward Day, and Ann Gordon, published this…

Powers for Algernon

From news reports of tasks that various types of rodents have been trained to perform. Distinguish healthy patients from tuberculosis patientsDistinguish Japanese speech from Dutch speechFear cherry blossomsFear terrorists

Kindergarten Cops

From records of alleged behavior by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, as reported by unaccompanied minors, dating from 2009 to 2014. The A.C.L.U. Foundation of San Diego and Imperial…

Clear History

Past behaviors, described and reported online, that individuals successfully lobbied Google to remove from its search results under the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” law. Publishing a poem on…

Faulty Towers

From reports of conditions in the New York City Housing Authority’s public-housing units since 2017. Unidentified children likely poisoned by lead paintMold in the apartments of asthmaticsBroken air conditioners in…

Harper’s Index

Portion of Americans who wouldn’t be “at all surprised” if the genocide of a religious group occurred in the United States : 1/3 Who believe that society should be “burned…

The High Court

From descriptions of behaviors of magistrates at the Virginia Beach Magistrate Office. The accusations were included in a complaint filed this year by a female magistrate against the Office of…

Inside the November Issue

Barrett Swanson seeks a cure for toxic masculinity; Doug Henwood on the WASPs; Nell Zink goes birding in Peru; Patrick Symmes on the future of salmon in the Pacific Northwest

Letters

In Memoriam We at Harper’s Magazine are deeply saddened by the untimely death of our former contributing editor Edwin Dobb. He wrote many essays for the magazine, including “Pennies from…

Face Lift

From modifications made to photographs of suspects by N.Y.P.D. officers before entering them into facial-­recognition software, as referenced in “Garbage In, Garbage Out: Face Recognition on Flawed Data,” a report…

Meow Mixer

From user reviews on Amazon of Pinot Meow, a non-alcoholic beet-based drink for cats that is marketed as “cat wine.” My cat loved itMy cats didn’t seem to like itMy…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of U.S. album sales represented by classical music : 2.5 Of U.S. music streams : 0.7 Amount spent globally on virtual goods within video games last year : $93,000,000,000…

Letters

Socialism and Barbarism According to Aaron Lake Smith, who discusses the works of Vasily Grossman alongside my biography of the writer [“The Trials of Vasily Grossman,” Reviews, July], my book…

Harper’s Index

Rank of Canada among countries resettling the most refugees in 2018 : 1 Minimum number of years for which the United States previously held that distinction : 59 Percentage of…

Straight Talk Express

From an interview given to talkRADIO on June 25 by Boris Johnson, a former mayor of London and current British M.P. who, at the time of publication, was considered a…

Letters

Visible Hands Marilynne Robinson’s essay [“Is Poverty Necessary?” June] describes the quest for understanding that drove her to study the great political economists, culminating in her discovery of the contributions…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of Indian M.P.s elected in 2019 who are facing criminal charges : 43 Percentage of those M.P.s who are being charged with murder or attempted murder : 18 Amount…

Moon Shots

From research topics funded by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency between 2007 and 2012. The list was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists. BiomaterialsMetamaterialsFusion propulsion

Flight Log

From the cockpit transcript of a Navy training flight near Seattle, in 2017. The exchange was released in May, following an investigation. Excerpts from the transcript were first published by…

Letters

Back to the Future I found Kevin Baker’s piece on the historical antecedents of the Green New Deal [“Where Our New World Begins,” Essay, May] perhaps the best essay I’ve…

Alms for the Führer

From a list of gifts given to President Trump by foreign officials in 2017, which was published by the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol in March. The…

Letters

Brexit Wounds On the matter of Britain’s membership in the European Union, which Lionel Shriver discussed in her fascinating recent column [“No Exit,” Easy Chair, April], I am a reluctant…

Harper’s Index

Number of tickets issued by the New York Police Department for sex in public parks in 2007 : 432 Number it issued last year : 6 Percentage by which membership…

You Get Served

From descriptions of products and services provided by businesses that have launched using the Uber model. A list of the on-demand companies was published by The Atlantic in March. Local…

Remote Control

From a radio interview, by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, of the Israeli-British psychic Uri Geller, who published an open letter informing the British prime minister, Theresa May, that he would…

Dangerous Minds

From titles of books and periodicals that are banned, or of which issues are banned, in Louisiana state prisons. Pinterest for BusinessSmart Moves Beyond Mutual FundsO, The Oprah MagazineThe Prada…

Letters

Sport for Joe Andrew Cockburn’s portrayal of Joe Biden’s legislative career was seriously distorted [“No Joe!,” Letter from Washington, March]. As Biden’s European policy adviser on the Senate Foreign Relations…

Harper’s Index

Factor by which the North Korean government’s hackers work more quickly than the Chinese government’s : 2 By which the Russian government’s work more quickly than the North Korean government’s…

Sorry State

From behaviors for which local, state, and federal politicians in the United States have, in the past year, publicly apologized. Posing with a Confederate flagDressing up as a Confederate soldierClaiming…

Vox Clamantis in Deserto

From descriptions of actions perpetrated by professors Todd Heatherton, William Kelley, and Paul Whalen in Dartmouth’s department of psychology and brain sciences, as alleged in a lawsuit filed against the…

Letters

Crimes and Misdemeanors I agree with Lionel Shriver’s assertion that the complete cultural banishment to which perceived sexual offenders are sometimes subjected is harsh, and mindlessly so [“Cruel and Unusual…

Harpers’ Index

Percentage change since 1975 in the portion of Americans who hold hunting licenses : –38 Number of states that allow roadkill to be salvaged for food : 31 Number of…

Come as You Are

From accounts of nonsexual orgasms documented in “Orgasm Range and Variability in Humans: A Content Analysis.” The study was published in the International Journal of Sexual Health in November of…

Turndown Service

From reviews, published on TripAdvisor, of the Henn-na Hotel, a robot-run resort in Japan that laid off more than half its automated workforce in January. Henn-na bills itself as a…

Letters

A View from Afar Michel Houellebecq’s praise of Trump is a timely send-up of decades of American triumphalism, which seems to be imploding under its own weight [“Donald Trump Is…

Paradigm Grift

From claims made to an audience of children by speakers at the 106th Indian Science Congress, held in Phagwara in January. The statements were subsequently condemned by thirty-seven of the…

Letters

A Question of Identity Mychal Denzel Smith’s essay about black public intellectuals is a nuanced examination of a complex dilemma [“The Gatekeepers,” Essay, December]. At one point, Smith expresses guilt…

A Thousand Times Yeses

From headlines that have appeared in the New York Times since 2016. Compiled by Henry Freedland. Yes, the Truth Still MattersYes, the News Can Survive the NewspaperYes, There Have Been…

Red Tape

From explanations given by the Chinese government for why certain artists and celebrities are banned from entering or performing in the country. Behaving badly in social lifeAssociating with countercultureUsing profanity…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of pending cases at the European Court of Human Rights that were filed against the Russian government : 19 That were filed against the UK government : 0.5 Portion…

Letters

State of Mind As a solution to conservatives’ stranglehold on federal politics, Jonathan Taplin posits a progressive federalism, under which environmental, economic, civil rights, and other reforms are undertaken by…

Harper’s Index

Factor by which the number of Americans who identify as “former Catholics” has increased since 1975 : 4 Percentage of US Christians who say they have had fewer than ten…

Swamp Things

From reported behaviors of Republican legislators who were elected or reelected in November. Posted erotic drawings of bigfootVoted to make it legal to kill hibernating wolves and bearsBragged about shooting…

Visits from the Goon Squad

From behaviors of Little Rock, Arkansas, police, cited by the department since 2007. The internal reports were made public in October, following an investigation of the killing of Bobby Moore,…

Office of Misinformation

From a list of accounts purged by Facebook for spam and “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” released by the company in October. Wake The Fuck UpNation in DistressViral Alternative NewsRight-Wing NewsAnti-MediaExposing the…

Letters

Give Love a Bad Name? John Hockenberry asserts early in his essay that millions of women have reexamined their sexual lives “looking for evidence of victimization” [“Exile,” Memoir, October]. This…

Harper’s Index

Estimated number of Nigerians killed in clashes between herders and farmers over the first six months of 2018 : 1,300 In fighting with Boko Haram : 217 Factor by which…

Box-Seat Drivers

From complaint letters addressed to the New York Philharmonic and subsequent responses, stored in the orchestra’s archive. The letters are dated from 1952–1953. Dimitri Mitropoulos was the music director of…

Bad Faith Arguments

From explanations given by priests as to why sexual abuse was acceptable, as described in Pennsylvania’s “Fortieth Statewide Investigating Grand Jury Report.” The report, which was released in August, examines…

Bad Boys

From behaviors alleged at trial to have been committed by a unit of Baltimore police officers in the line of duty. The officers were convicted this year of robbery and…

Ow That’s What I Call Music

From songs selected by US interrogators to be played repeatedly at maximum volume for inmates at detention centers around the world, including at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Mosul.…

21 Grahams

From descriptions of Donald Trump, stated between 2015 and 2018, by Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina. A race-baiting, xenophobic bigotThe Islamic State’s “man of the year”The death…

Letters

Get Up, Stand Up It was heartening to read Garret Keizer condemn the fact that labor leaders “turned their backs” on Bernie Sanders’s candidacy in 2016 and willfully scorned their…

Harper’s Index

Percentage increase from 2016 to 2017 in incidents of piracy in the Caribbean : 163 Chance that a migrant crossing the Mediterranean this year would be killed in transit :…

Remains of the Day

From descriptions of findings at Abel Beth Maacah, a site in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. The reports were published between 1986 and 2018 by the biblical archaeologists Nava…

Think Stank

From statements included in How to Debate Your Teacher (and WIN!), a booklet first published in 2015 by the conservative policy group Turning Points USA. Capitalism is under attackTeachers and…

Letters

Basket of Implausibles The assertions in Walter Kirn’s “Illiberal Values,” especially his critique of liberals’ sudden confidence in this country’s intelligence agencies, are eminently reasonable [Easy Chair, August]. But my…

Harper’s Index

Chance that an American aged 18 to 24 has never kissed anyone : 1 in 5 Percentage of UK adults who think socializing with Christians is more fun than socializing…

Hanging by a Thread

From descriptions generated by two AIs of ten Rorschach inkblots. The AIs were part of an MIT project released in April, to examine the influence of biased data on machine…

Cruel Detentions

From complaints filed with the Department of Homeland Security between 2010 and 2017 by detainees in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [Redacted] alleged he is discriminated against…

Party Whips

From incidents of violence among state and national legislators in the United States, compiled by Joanne B. Freeman in The Field of Blood. Freeman is a professor of history and…

National Portrait Gallery

From the titles of North Korean artworks held in the private collection of Pier Luigi Cecioni, in Pontassieve, Italy. Cecioni is one of the principal dealers of North Korean art…

Letters

Death and Taxes Kevin Baker’s essay about New York is a comprehensive catalogue of the symptoms of overdevelopment affecting the city today [“The Death of a Once Great City,” Report,…

Rules of the Stain

From activities that women in various parts of the world are forbidden to perform while menstruating, as compiled by Anna Dahlqvist in It’s Only Blood. The book was published in…

No Biggie

From behaviors described in media reports since 2014 that prompted police officers to question, detain, or arrest black people in the United States. Sitting in a parked carSitting in a…

Playing Hard to Wed

From descriptions listed on cards included in Arranged!, a board game developed by Nashra Balagamwala, a Pakistani designer, and released in May in the United States. Game play consists of…

In Memoriam

All of us at Harper’s Magazine deeply mourn the death of our longtime friend and contributing editor Tom Wolfe (1930–2018). Some of his most influential writings were published in this…

Letters

Great Pains Elizabeth Royte’s report about a water crisis in rural Kansas reflects the reality that federal regulations place a disproportionate burden on small businesses and towns [“Drinking Problems,” Letter…

Learning Curves

From analogies created by an algorithm that analyzed nearly 30,000 words in stories aggregated by Google News. Researchers at Boston University and Microsoft used the algorithm to reveal gender biases…

Harper’s Index

Estimated combined square footage of all the self-storage units in the United States : 1,670,000,000 Factor by which this area is larger than the borough of Manhattan : 2.6 Number…

Letters

Fool Me Once Thomas Frank is right: the Trump reelection nightmare could happen [“Four More Years,” Essay, April]. But I believe it is crucial that we not ignore fundamental truths.…

Harper’s Index

Median number of views a YouTube video had in 2006 : 10,262 In 2016 : 89  Average amount Microsoft spends each month assisting people who need to change their passwords…

Woke Place

From a database listing the names of LGBTQ employee resource groups at more than 800 companies. The database is maintained by the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights advocacy organization.…

Schoolhouse Rocks

From testimony given in March by David Helsel, the superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District, in Pennsylvania, at a meeting of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives education committee. Hal…

It Follows

From titles of horror films released since 2002 whose plotlines involve social media. #Horror Smiley Catfish Cry_Wolf FeardotCom Death Tube iMurders Selfie From Hell Uwantme2killhim? Antisocial Unfriended Disconnect…

Photographic Proof

From criteria used to catalogue photographs taken by “Caesar,” an anonymous photographer for the Syrian military. Between 2011 and 2013, Caesar photographed 28,707 men tortured and killed by the regime…

Letters

Things We Can Do Without Katie Roiphe ignores the fact that gender inequality is a psychological condition, not just a material one [“The Other Whisper Network,” Essay, March]. She dismisses…

Harper’s Index

Number of US states in which fluorescent pink is a legal color for hunting apparel : 6 Percentage of US gun owners who report storing all their guns safely :…

Letters

The Braindead Megaphone “The Other Whisper Network” [Essay, March] is a rehash of Katie Roiphe’s decades-old argument that women are prone to hysterical overreactions to male sexual behavior. In the…

Harper’s Index

Minutes for which food-storage containers must resist mauling to be designated “bear resistant” : 60 Portion of containers tested by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee that bears are able to…

The Devil Wears Nada

From descriptions of professional tasks performed by Sandeep Rehal for Harvey Weinstein while she was employed as his personal assistant. She held the position from 2013 to 2015. In January,…

Bearer of Bad News

From the style guide of the Daily Stormer, a white supremacist news website. The guide, which was reportedly written by Andrew Anglin, the site’s founder and editor, was acquired in…

Gruel and Unusual

From complaints filed since 2015 by inmates at the Morgan County jail, in Alabama. The complaints were included in a lawsuit filed last year against Ana Franklin, the county sheriff,…

Fact Minders

From a list of Wikipedia editors that the site has flagged because of long-term abuse.

Letters

Where to from Here? My husband and I recognize that we owe a great debt to the LGBT generations of the past, but with social acceptance and the freedom to…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of Belgium’s army that is actively deployed domestically : 13 Pages of shredded files that the Stasi Records Agency in Germany has reconstructed by hand since 1990 : 1,500,000…

Unconscious Couplings

From descriptions of products sold by InfoWars, a far-right radio show hosted by Alex Jones, and by Goop, a website created by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Regarding the Pain of Others

From “Cultural Differences in Response to Pain,” a section included in the textbook Nursing: A Concept-Based Approach to Learning, published by Pearson. In October, the company announced that it would…

Letters

A Seat at the Table Theodore Postol suggests that a swarm of defensive drones hovering over the Sea of Japan might force Kim Jong-un to the bargaining table [“Destroyer of…

Harper’s Index

Estimated average number of arthropod species living in a US home : 100 Estimated portion of pet reptiles that die within a year of being brought home : 3/4 Length, in months, of the…

Fifty Worst Dates

From a lawsuit filed in a Pennsylvania district court last August by Darlene Daggett against Kelleher International, an elite matchmaking company based in California. Daggett hired Kelleher for dating services…

Public Displays of Affection

From descriptions of objects held by the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is located in Zagreb, Croatia, and exhibits mementos submitted anonymously by people around the world. A catalogue of…

Letters

Cut Too Deep In “Monumental Error” [Essay, November], J. C. Hallman unfairly skewers J. Marion Sims, the “Father of Gynecology.” He attributes to Sims a huge ego and the desire for…

Harper’s Index

Percentage by which a marijuana user is likelier than others to eat fast food five or more times in a given week : 75 Amount the US pharmaceutical industry spent…

Class Menagerie

From a list of seventy-one types of US households, as classified by Experian Marketing Services, the world’s largest credit data company. Golf Carts and GourmetsColleges and CafésModest Metro MeansStatus-Seeking SinglesFootloose…

Don’t Be Evil

From Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks, which was published last month by OR Books. The conversation from which this is excerpted took place in 2016 and was moderated by Joseph Farrell, a…

Can’t Touch This

From testimony given by the singer Taylor Swift in a Colorado district court in August. Swift alleges that David Mueller, a host at KYGO radio in Denver, groped her when…

Security Question

From Ask Zelda, an advice column that ran in SIDtoday, an internal newsletter for National Security Agency employees. This column appeared in July 2014, a year after Edward Snowden leaked…

Character Studies

From a memo sent in October by Unicode typographers to the organization’s technical committee, which oversees the creation and modification of emoji. The memo concerns emoji that are proposed for…

Letters

Kingdom Come Andrew Cockburn [“Crime and Punishment,” Letter from Washington, October] draws much-needed attention to Saudi Arabia’s deceitful lobbying campaign to derail the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA),…

Harper’s Index

Minimum number of times since September 2015 that Donald Trump has referred to Christmas in speeches : 23 Number of those references that suggested the holiday was under attack : 19 Median age of voters…

Thought Police

From a ruling handed down in September by a Louisiana district court in Officer John Doe v. DeRay Mckesson et al. The anonymous Baton Rouge police officer filed suit last…

Chronicle of Dire Education

From news reports of homework given to students in US public schools since 2011.

Letters

Book Collective Jonathan Dee’s reflections on the status of the social novel are a welcome critique of contemporary writing, but his argument is compromised by an elision in his survey…

Harper’s Index

Number of U.S. states in which legislation has been proposed this year to protect drivers who strike protesters : 6 Percentage of Americans who say they support “white nationalism” :…

Sex Machina

From a study presented last year at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, in New Zealand. Participants were asked their opinion of various capabilities a sex robot might have. They…

Not Safe For Work

From a complaint filed by Elizabeth Scott against UploadVR in a California Superior Court in May. UploadVR is a virtual reality company based in San Francisco. Scott, who was hired…

How?

From a folktale collected in Virginia in 1974 that is included in The Annotated African American Folktales, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar. The anthology was published…

Shaking with Fear

From a verbal report given by Harold Howard to Kurt Castaldo, a deputy in the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, Florida, in December 2015. Howard alleged that Yousef Muslet…

Total Eclipse of the Heart

From a Craigslist ad posted in the San Francisco area in August, preceding a total solar eclipse that passed over Oregon and other parts of the United States.

Letters

Green the Vote Richard Manning profiles the Democratic officeholders in Western states who are leading the fight for progressive environmental policies [“Political Climbers,” Report, August]. Manning believes that a pro-conservation…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of income and wealth taxes in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark that are evaded each year : 3 That are evaded among those nations’ top 0.01 percent of earners :…

A Sport and a Passport

From an interview conducted by Swiss authorities with Fulden Funda Yilmaz, a woman who was born to Turkish parents in Switzerland. Yilmaz applied for citizenship earlier this year, passed the…

Embarrassment of ‘Wiches

From a correction that was published by the Louisville Courier-Journal in July.

Here Comes Everybody

From a complaint filed in March in a New York district court against Grindr, a dating app. The plaintiff, Matthew Herrick, alleges that vulnerabilities in Grindr’s geolocation feature allowed his…

All Over this Land

Local politics in the age of Trump

Letters

Black Like Me Zadie Smith writes that Americans “live in a mixed society” and that “there is no getting out of our intertwined history” [“Getting In and Out,” Review, July].…

Harper’s Index

Factor by which women’s Tinder messages are longer than men’s : 10 Chances that an African-American mother is the breadwinner of her family : 4 in 5 Percentage change since 2011 in advertising spending…

Face the Nation

From news reports in the past year of facial-recognition technologies that have been implemented in China.

Public Enemy

From the jury selection process that took place over three days in June for the trial of Martin Shkreli, an investor and hedge fund founder who is facing eight counts…

Letters

Secret Wars Michael Glennon fears that there is potential for a war between the Trump Administration and the national security bureaucracy [“Security Breach,” Revision, June]. He makes sweeping accusations about…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change since last year in the arrests of U.S. immigrants with criminal convictions : +18 Of immigrants without criminal convictions : +156 Portion of children with New York Public…

Teachable Moment

From a conversation that took place in March in a high school classroom in Bryansk, Russia. Earlier that day, Maxim, a student, was arrested for spreading information about an unsanctioned…

Wheel and Deal

From a series of podcasts that Uber, the ride-hailing platform, created last year for its drivers in Seattle. In 2015, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance granting Uber drivers…

Off the Beaten App

From a list of experiences on Airbnb that are offered by the platform’s hosts to their guests. The feature was introduced in November.

Hard Drugs

From a list of over-the-counter sexual-enhancement products sold since 2007 that have been identified as harmful by the Food and Drug Administration.

Letters

In Name Only As Robert O. Paxton notes, it’s tempting to label President Trump a fascist [“American Duce,” Revision, May]. Just look at Trump’s far-right entourage—Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller…

Harper’s Index

Estimated payload, in pounds of military-grade explosives, of fireworks purchased annually in the United States :  5,900,000 Of the MOAB, the U.S. military’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb :  18,000 Amount…

Game of Thoreaus

From tasks performed in Walden, a computer game in which players simulate the life of Henry David Thoreau. The game was developed by Tracy Fullerton at the University of Southern…

Innocents Abroad

From a guide to “common principles of behavior” recommended to Russian tourists visiting foreign countries. The guide was released by the Russian Foreign Ministry in March. Translated from the Russian…

Noisy by Nature

From minutes at a county council meeting in Kauai, Hawaii, in 2015. Residents gave public testimony regarding the repeal of an ordinance that imposed fines on the owners of barking…

Sex Marks the Spot

From a list of features advertised for I Just Made Love! The cell phone app consists of a user-generated map and social network.  Use your built-in GPS to mark the…

Letters

Building Consensus Alan Feuer would have us believe that the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is doing everything he can to stop gentrification in New York City [“Defender of the Community,”…

Harper’s Index

Days after high school journalists in Kansas revealed inconsistencies in their principal’s résumé that she resigned : 4 Average acceptance rate at New York City public high schools with test-based admission : 2.7 At…

Agent Provocateur

From an FBI manual suggesting conversational techniques to recruit informants. The document was published by The Intercept in January.

Confirmation B.S.

From a quiz drafted by the police department of Long Beach, California, and used as part of a training presentation. The quiz was cited in a report by the A.C.L.U.…

Out With a Bang

From the website of Holy Smoke, a memorial-services company based in Alabama.

The Missing

From advertisements taken out in African-American newspapers by former slaves searching for relatives. The earliest ads appeared in 1863. Villanova University and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Philadelphia,…

My Name is Mud

From names that parents around the world have attempted to bestow on their children. They are cited in a lawsuit that was filed in a Georgia superior court in March.…

Letters

Turning Blue Andrew Cockburn argues that the current crop of elected officials in Texas are right-wing extremists and that the state’s citizens — minorities and the poor in particular — are under…

Harper’s Index

Number of U.S. states that include cursive writing in their educational standards : 24 Portion of U.S. college freshmen who are required to write papers longer than 11 pages : 1/4 Who spend an…

¯\_(”/)_/¯

From a test given to applicants for the position of emoji translator at Today Translations, a language company based in London. The job description, which was posted in December, asks…

Queer Theory

From a CIA memorandum entitled “Homosexual Investigations” that was written in 1980 for the purpose of investigating colleagues. The document was published in March by Muckrock.

Baby Boomers

From a transcript of radio transmissions and cockpit conversations that took place during a drone strike in Afghanistan in 2010. The strike killed twenty-three civilians. At Nevada headquarters, Pilot is…

It Ain’t Me, Babe

From actions committed by women that were cited as constituting “mental cruelty” against their husbands in divorce cases in India since 2014. Mental cruelty is grounds for divorce under the…

Letters

Rules for Radicals “Resistance” derives from the Latin verb resistere, literally “to stand against.” A call to action — to stand up — is embedded in the very etymology of the word.…

Harper’s Index

Minimum number of college students who have raised money for expenses on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding site : 140,000 Number of Americans aged 60 and older who have outstanding student loans : 2,800,000 Portion of…

Pro-Life Coaching

From misinformation that was communicated in promotional materials or in person to women at crisis pregnancy centers, nonprofit organizations established to counsel women against having abortions. The incidents were documented…

The Untouchables

From incidents since 2011 in which the use of force by Chicago police officers was deemed reasonable or justifiable by supervisors or the city’s Independent Police Review Authority. The incidents…

Animal House

From a city-council meeting in White Settlement, Texas, in July 2016. The previous month, the council had voted to evict Browser, a cat who had lived in the local library…

Near-Death and Taxes

From reasons submitted to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the United Kingdom’s tax-collection agency, for missing or tardy returns.

Travel Clearances

From descriptions of incidents in which U.S. and U.K. airlines removed Muslims or passengers who were perceived to be Muslim from their flights.

Letters

Threat Watch Jeremy Miller criticizes the McKittrick Policy as a threat to wolves, claiming that “it’s not clear” why the policy exists [“Bounty Hunters,” Letter from Utah, January]. On the…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of U.S. apartments under construction that are unaffordable for those making less than $75,000 a year : 83 Percentage change since 2006 in the number of U.S. cities that have banned…

From Russia, With Lies

From 1,649 factually untrue reports published by pro-Kremlin media outlets over the past eighteen months. The reports were compiled by the Disinformation Review, a European Union project set up to…

Highly Ineffective People

From the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, published in 1944 by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. The manual, which was declassified in 2008, was intended for distribution to citizens of enemy…

Letters

Red Herring Andrew Cockburn’s article was entertaining in a creaky, retro kind of way [“The New Red Scare,” Letter from Washington, December]. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that…

Harper’s Index

Cost of a baby-stroller cleaning, with wheel detailing, at Tot Squad in New York City : $119.99 Percentage of Americans worth $25,000,000 or more who make at least $10,000 in charitable contributions…

Crash-Test Dummy

From exercises presented by the Moral Machine, a website developed by MIT. The exercises ask users to decide which outcome a self-driving car should choose in the event of sudden…

No Child Left Behind

Methods women have used to induce abortion at times throughout history when clinical procedures were illegal or unavailable.

Public Display

From a conversation between Eileen Myles and Jill Soloway that was held in October at the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles. Myles is the author of nineteen works of poetry,…

Locker-Room Talk

From accounts of incidents in which women allege that they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Donald Trump. The accusations were told to journalists and lawyers over the past four…

To Have and to Hold

From the website of Finland’s World Wife-Carrying Championships. The competition has been held annually since 1995.

On First Thought

From a list of clichés that authors have used in more than half their works. The list was compiled by Ben Blatt and appears in Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve,…

Soul Check

From The Daily Show (The Book), which was published in November by Grand Central Publishing. Elliott Kalan was a writer on the show, and Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, and Stephen…

Trump: A Resister’s Guide

We have a new president who is also a new kind of president. Our previous chief executives — at least those of the post–World War II era — were not…

Left Out I want to thank Thomas Frank for his insightful article on the media’s treatment of Bernie Sanders [“Swat Team,” Essay, November]. Like many Americans, I initially dismissed Bernie’s…

Harper’s Index

Percentage by which the number of international borders with barriers has increased since 2014: 48 Year in which the U.S. Census Bureau may add a category for people from the…

S.O.B. Story

From a complaint filed in an Illinois circuit court last year by Robert Rialmo, a Chicago police officer, against the family of Quintonio LeGrier, a nineteen-year-old black man who was…

Ground Control

From affidavits written by people across the United States that were included in a lawsuit brought against the Department of Homeland Security by the Immigration Reform Law Institute. The lawsuit,…

Loaded Questions

From scenarios presented in Fighter Not Killer, an app that is used by militant groups, including the Islamic State, to test combatants’ knowledge of international humanitarian law. The app was…

The Lottery

From letters mailed last year to Gettysburg National Military Park by visitors who had taken rocks from the site as souvenirs.

Letters

Feuding Fathers Robert Sullivan mentions my reservations about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton merely to say that criticizing the musical makes you “feel like a churl,” given its upbeat message and immense…

Harper’s Index

Portion of TSA funding that is spent on surface transportation : 1/50 Percentage by which U.S. railway fatalities outnumbered aviation fatalities last year : 78 Percentage change since 2014 in the number of U.S.…

Trigger Warning

From a list of objects that were mistaken for guns during shootings of civilians by police in the United States since 2001.

Grammar Yahtzee

From a post on Object Dreams, a Tumblr blog. The post is a rewriting of The Elements of Style using predictive text, a program that assists typing by anticipating which…

Edible Arrangement

From a list of nontraditional tableware at restaurants. The list was compiled by We Want Plates, a food blog.

Letters

Acts of Faith There are a great many things those of us who call ourselves Christian need to talk over. One very important one is secularism. Interpreting my career in…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of American renters who spend more than half their salary on housing : 28 Percentage change since 1996 in the price of U.S. higher education : +197 Of televisions : –96 Factor by which the…

Eat Me

From translations into English of dishes served at 274 restaurants in Seoul, South Korea. The list was compiled by the Korea Tourism Organization and included in a report that suggests…

Elf Governance

From revisions made to the design of the online simulation game Dwarf Fortress since its inception in 2006.

The Real Deal

From trades proposed on Super Anti-Bachaqueo Truekes, a Venezuelan Facebook group that facilitates barters for household goods.

Letters

War of Words Tom Wolfe paints a florid and darkly conspiratorial picture of a decade-old discussion in linguistics, in which my colleagues and I are assigned the role of bad…

Harper’s Index

Number of countries that offer citizenship in return for an investment commitment : 23 Factor by which the average fee charged by migrant smugglers has increased since January : 3 Percentage of global refugees…

Faux Paws

From mistaken reports of animals in distress, compiled over the past year by an animal-rescue shelter in Guernsey.

Town Criers

From a village board meeting held in June in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Tykables, a company that serves adult-baby diaper lovers, opened a storefront in the village two months earlier. Arlene…

Glasnost Half Full

From the transcript of a staff meeting at RBC, a media company based in Moscow, in July. An audio recording of the meeting was leaked to Meduza, a Russian-language news…

Ispy

From a list of 4,432 scenes and objects that Apple's Photos app is able to recognize and classify.

Letters

Blame Game Joy Gordon perpetuates a number of untruths regarding the United States’ policy toward Cuba [“El Bloqueo,” Report, July]. Gordon writes that the U.S. embargo has affected Cubans’ access…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of Americans who have used ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft : 15 Who have never heard of them : 33 Amount the Saudi government has announced it will invest in Uber : $3,500,000,000…

Career High

From testimony given at a grand-jury hearing last year by Sonja Farak, a former chemist at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory, in Amherst. In 2014, Farak pleaded guilty to tampering…

Aspirational Brand

From a patient guide to the AspireAssist, a weight-loss device that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June.

This is Not a Painter

From a conversation between André Gomez and René Magritte, a Surrealist painter. The interview was conducted in Paris in 1948 for the Radio Suisse Romande and collected in René Magritte:…

Letters

Viral Content Considering requests for compassionate use of experimental drugs remains one of the hardest, most complex tasks that any health-care company faces, as Helen Ouyang writes [“Hashtag Prescription,” Essay,…

Harper’s Index

Estimated number of U.S. children responsible for the caretaking of a family member : 1,400,000 Estimated portion of antibiotics prescribed in the United States that are unnecessary : 3/10 Portion of Americans who favor…

Test Perp

From a questionnaire created by Northpointe, a company that develops software to determine the likelihood that a defendant in a criminal trial will break the law in the future. The…

Graveyard Shift

From work-related fatalities reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 2014.

Letters

Trumped Up Elisabeth Zerofsky attributes Marine Le Pen’s recent successes [“Front Runner,” Letter from France, May] to the current political vacuum in France — and rightly so. A populist demagogue such…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of young Iraqis who regard the United States as their enemy : 93 Rank of the United States among countries that Arabs aged 18 to 24 regard as the best in…

Om Economics

From a memorandum sent in February to the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District, in Massachusetts, by the National Center for Law and Policy, a legal-defense organization. The letter, written on behalf…

Little Terrors

From summaries of incidents reported in U.K. schools since the initiation of Prevent, a government counterterrorism program. Schoolteachers and staff are required to monitor their students for signs of extremist…

It Takes a Villa

From testimony given in January at a Senate subcommittee hearing to examine spending within the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, a division of the Department of Defense that…

Set Phrases to Stun

From an amicus brief filed in April by the Language Creation Society, a nonprofit organization, in support of the producers of a crowd-funded Star Trek fan film. Last year, the…

Letters

Adverse Effects Andrew Cockburn’s analysis of the “election-industrial complex” [“Down the Tube,” Letter from Washington, April] argues, correctly, that the rise of super PACs has created a class of consultants…

Harper’s Index

Minimum number of Beijing residents living in underground bomb shelters : 150,000 Percentage increase since 2014 in the annual number of reported labor strikes in China : 65 Minimum number…

Auto Traitor

From a complaint filed in Texas in December by Mark Oberholtzer, the owner of Mark-1 Plumbing, against Charlie Thomas Ford, a car dealer.

Love Machine

From tweets by @wikisext, a Twitter bot that creates sexual messages from random combinations of text found on wikiHow.

Letters

Overhead Costs Jay Kirk’s “Killer Bunny in the Sky” [Letter from Massachusetts, March] was amusing, but the impact that hunters have on wildlife isn’t. Hunters use high-powered weaponry, tree blinds,…

Harper‘s Index

Number of people executed for sorcery in Saudi Arabia since 2011 : 4 Age of an Afghan “war hero” assassinated by the Taliban earlier this year : 11 Number of refugee children who entered…

Rallying Tries

From posters painted by North Korean artists and sold internationally by an Italian company.

Letters

Corn Bred Richard Manning’s critiques of Iowa politics [“The Trouble with Iowa,” Report, February] are all too familiar to those of us who live in the state, and many of…

Harper’s Index

Portion of calls to the IRS help line that went unanswered during last year’s tax-filing season : 3/5 Percentage of middle-aged, college-educated white Americans who are millionaires : 22 Of middle-aged, college-educated black Americans : 6…

The Spy Who Came

From oral evidence given in 2013 by Mark Kennedy, a former undercover British police officer, to the British Home Affairs Committee. Between 2003 and 2010, Kennedy used a fake identity,…

Letters

Editor’s Note This month we are introducing three changes to the regular format of Harper’s Magazine. In the Readings section, the usual found documents and fine art are accompanied by…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of refugees resettled in 2014 who were taken in by developing countries : 86 Amount in excess of which the cash assets of refugees will be seized under a proposed Danish…

Introduction

Last fall, young people gathered in protest at dozens of universities across the country. Students of color spoke about feeling unwelcome or invisible, of being stereotyped, slighted, excluded, harassed. One…

Letters

Suspicious Activity It is a physician’s responsibility to give patients information about strategies that will help prevent adverse outcomes. As a doctor who focuses on high-risk pregnancies, I often ask…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of likely Republican-primary voters who support shutting down U.S. mosques : 27 Number of days before the Iowa caucuses that Ted Cruz officially entered the presidential race : 314 Length in days of…

Recipe for Success

From complaints, some of which have been dismissed or settled, detailing the alleged theft or misappropriation of trade secrets since 2009.

Djamel Beghal (detail)

Letters

The Secret History Randall Kennedy’s claim that respectability politics has “improved the racial situation dramatically” [“Lifting as We Climb,” Essay, October], overstates the centrality of that phenomenon to black freedom…

Harper’s Index

Factor by which a U.S. drone strike is more likely than a conventional U.S. air strike to kill civilians : 10 Estimated percentage of people killed in U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan…

If Looks Could Kill

From posts by residents of Oakland, California, to NextDoor and Glenfriends, two online social networks for neighbors.

Foot Patrol

From a complaint filed in October 2014 on behalf of a woman who was harassed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Harris County, Texas. In October 2015,…

Divide and Conquer

From a mathematics textbook for children between six and twelve years old, published by the Islamic State’s ministry of education. The Islamic State distributed copies of the textbook to schools…

Search History

From queries submitted by telephone and in person to the New York Public Library’s Reference and Research Services between 1940 and 1989.

Letters

Harper’s v. Harper It is a tradition among Canadian pundits to travel abroad bearing tales — possibly because it is easier to convince a foreign audience that the current government, regardless…

Harper’s Index

Average age, in years, of the thirty most frequently played holiday songs : 61 Year when the youngest of these songs, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” was released : 1994…

Thanks, Obama

From entries made since 2009 to the U.S. Protocol Gift Unit Federal Register Report, which records items given by foreign dignitaries to federal employees.

Pain Quotidien

From a list of approximately 70,000 diagnostic codes included in the International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification, which was adopted by U.S. health-care providers in October.

Shit Talkers

From an audio recording entered as evidence in a 2014 lawsuit filed by a man identified as D.B., who claims that he inadvertently recorded his colonoscopy on his cell phone.…

Naked Ambition

From a contract prepared by a casting agency for extras in the television show Westworld, which is scheduled to air on HBO next year.

Letters

Poison Pen As a toxicologist and someone who cares deeply about the environment, I was disappointed to read Andrew Cockburn’s “Weed Whackers” [Letter from Washington, September]. At Monsanto, we know…

Harper’s Index

Portion of physicians entering U.S. medical internships who suffer from depression : 1/30 Portion who suffer from depression at some point during their internship : 1/2 Factor by which the rate of retraction of…

PETA Peeve

From a complaint filed in June against the State of North Carolina by PETA and other plaintiffs, including Beth A. Sparks, an adviser to the National Opossum Society who “has…

Perversion Therapy

From testimony given by Benjamin Unger, a plaintiff in Ferguson v. JONAH and one of five former clients of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) who filed a lawsuit…

Jaded Lady

From headlines that appeared between 1992 and 2014 in the New York Times.  

Selfie Styx

From news reports of injuries and deaths since 2014 that occurred during attempts to take selfies.

Letters

Taking the City by Storm In her article about reform in New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Rebecca Solnit could have mentioned that Barack Obama’s policies have only…

Harper’s Index

Amount an Arizona group donated to a police charity for the chance to tase Glendale’s mayor in June : $10,000 Minimum number of people killed with tasers by U.S. police so far…

Shop Tools

From testimony given last November by Randy Cosby, a district manager of AutoZone, in a gender-discrimination case brought against the company by Rosario Juarez, a former employee at a California…

Irish Goodbye

From the 5,782 statutes passed in Ireland between 1385 and 1821 that were revoked in July under the country’s Statute Law Revision Act 2015.

Letters

The Caring Economy Trudy Lieberman [“Wrong Prescription?” Report, July] leads readers on a winding tour of what is wrong with the Affordable Care Act before acknowledging that the legislation has…

Harper’s Index

Estimated percentage change since 2010 in household food consumption in Greece : –15 Amount won by a Czech family in June for completing a reality show that re-created rural life under Nazi…

Questionable Ball

From an investigative report commissioned by the National Football League and released in May. The league hired Exponent, an engineering-consulting company, to determine whether footballs used by the New England…

Letters

Maybe We Can’t The query in the title of David Bromwich’s meditation on Barack Obama’s presidency [“What Went Wrong?,” Essay, June] cannot be satisfactorily explored without reckoning with the many…

Harper’s Index

Factor by which the average salary in the securities industry exceeded that of other U.S. workers between 1929 and 2008 : 2.3 By which it does today : 3.6 Portion of financial-services workers who…

Square Space

From a May posting to a classifieds website for Stanford University students. The post sought roommates for Startup Castle, a 17,000-square-foot Tudor mansion in Woodside, California. Welcome, friends! We’re building…

Lab Rats

From recent posts made to STEMfeminist.com, a forum that collects accounts of discrimination and harassment against women studying or working in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. I am a postdoc…

Out of the Mouths of Babes

by a School-Teacher

Letters

Solitary Confinement While reading Fenton Johnson’s essay [“Going It Alone,” Folio, April], I found myself thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer, a notorious misanthrope who, in solitude, developed one of the most…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change since 2009 in the number of Americans who play football : –17 Who play rugby : +77 Factor by which female college soccer players are more likely than male players to suffer…

When in Chrome

From an experiment conducted by Fixr.com, a cost-estimating website. The experiment collected the top search queries suggested by Google for the phrase “How much does * cost in [country].”

Travel Day

Photographs of airports by twenty photographers, with an essay by Geoff Dyer

Product Placement

From the description of the Vajankle, a silicone foot produced by Sinthetics, an intimate-doll manufacturer. A single Vajankle, without a shoe, costs $175.

Bot for Teacher

From the titles of computer-science papers published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and retracted after it was discovered that they were written by software that generates fake…

While You Were Sleeping

From a debate in February in the Utah State Legislature about House Bill 74, which specifies that consent for sexual contact cannot be given in circumstances in which a person…

Friends Like These

From emails about an antigay protest organized by the Westboro Baptist Church in 2002. The emails were included in the FBI’s file on Fred Phelps, who founded the church in…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change in the rate of global carbon emissions in 2014 : 0 Number of previous years on record in which the global economy grew and the carbon-emission rate did not : 0 Percentage…

Letters

A Tale of Two Citis Despite several requests from Citi’s public-affairs department, Andrew Cockburn and the editors of Harper’s refused to discuss Mr. Cockburn’s article [“Saving the Whale, Again,” Letter…

My App Runneth Over

From posts to Instapray, an app that allows users to post and request prayers. God, please help me overcome my Internet addiction. It is ruining my life. Who wants to…

Family Tradition

From Lynching in America, a report published in February by the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that litigates on behalf of indigent and marginalized defendants.

First Responders

From tweets by companies alluding to current events between 2011 and 2014. @KennethCole Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available…

Municipal Bonds

From a class-action lawsuit filed in February against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, for excessively fining and imprisoning residents for minor infractions. In March, the Department of Justice concluded that…

Harper’s Index

Number of years in the past decade in which the violent-crime rate in the United States has fallen : 8 In which the majority of Americans have believed that crime is on…

Letters

Port Authority Annie Murphy’s “The Day of the Sea” [Letter from La Paz, February] neglects to mention the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed by Bolivia and Chile in 1904.…

Letters

Thieves of Grass Christopher Ketcham’s “The Great Republican Land Heist” [Letter from Nevada, February] exposes a side of the West that few people ever see: the ecological devastation caused by…

Harper’s Index

Number of workers paid to imitate langur cries to clear New Delhi of rhesus monkeys during President Obama’s January visit : 40 Estimated number of Indian surveillance agents assigned to the wife…

Off Site

From online messages found on Ross Ulbricht’s laptop in 2013 by FBI agents. Ulbricht, then twenty-nine, was arrested while working on his computer in a San Francisco public library. In…

Genre Friction

From a February order by a U.S. magistrate judge denying summary judgment in Latele Television, C.A. v. Telemundo Communications Group, LLC. The suit argues that El Rostro de AnalÍa, a telenovela produced by Telemundo, infringes on…

Watched Words

From Internet search terms blocked by the Chinese government since 2011. The terms were compiled and translated by the China Digital Times, a bilingual Chinese-media-tracking site based in California.

Dire Straights

From questions asked by deputies of the L.A. County Men’s Jail to determine whether an inmate should be placed in a unit created to house and protect gay and transgender…

Homeroom Security

From “Prevent Duty Guidance: A Consultation,” a paper issued last December by the U.K. Home Office. The U.K.’s counterterrorism strategy, CONTEST, comprises four branches: Prevent, Pursue, Protect, and Prepare. Channel…

The Times, Behind

From descriptions of BuzzFeed in the New York Times between 2007 and 2014. BuzzFeed was founded in 2006.

Swat Team

From an incident report written by a deputy in the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office, in Okeechobee, Florida. The office occasionally responds to requests from parents seeking oversight from law enforcement…

Letters

Eastbound and Down The world is far more complicated than Andrew Cockburn would lead us to believe. In “Game On” [Letter from Washington, January], Cockburn tells us about NATO’s irresponsible…

[Untitled]

Harper’s Index

Percentage of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2014 primary-campaign contributions that came from the United States : 90 That came from three U.S. families : 30 Year in which the first female U.S. senator took office : 1922 In…

Harpers Index

Portion of the hundred best-paid U.S. CEOs who earn more annually than their companies pay in federal taxes : 1/3 Percentage of Americans and Chinese, respectively, who believe their government is “on…

Letters

Discipline and Publish Kenneth E. Hartman’s memoir about serving life without the possibility of parole [“Christmas in Pris­on,” December] is the most cogent and accurate depiction of life in the…

Shirking 9 to 5

From a list of reasons given for missing work, collected by CareerBuilder in a survey completed by 2,303 hiring managers and human-resources professionals.

This Land is My Land

From accounts of threats made against employees of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management since 2010, featured last October in High Country News. (See “The Great…

Site-Specific

From domain names of online dating networks. Amish-Online-Dating DarwinDating

Tools Rush In

From comments appended to a post made last November on OathKeepers.org, a “non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders.” The post sought volunteers to guard…

Unequally Yolked

From a complaint filed last October by Unilever, the manufacturer of the Best Foods and Hellmann’s brands of mayonnaise, against Hampton Creek, which produces a vegan condiment called Just Mayo.

Letters

It’s the Dynasty, Stupid Doug Henwood nailed the rightward political drift and military hawkishness that define Hillary Clinton [“Stop Hillary!” Essay, November], but I cannot resist adding something Clinton said…

Harper’s Index

Number of U.S. states that observe a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and a Robert E. Lee holiday on the same day : 3 Estimated portion of black U.S. men who are…

Fuzzfeed

From posts to Five-O, an app created by three African-American teenage siblings that allows users to comment on interactions with police officers.

Manual of Trickery and Self-Deception

From a recently declassified article, written by an author whose name was redacted, published in the winter 1986 issue of Studies in Intelligence, the in-house journal of the CIA.

Tort Fishing in America

From the November 2014 Supreme Court oral argument in Yates v. United States. In 2007, a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer found seventy-two undersize red grouper on John L. Yates’s…

Letters

A Bird Too Big to Fail The PBS described by Eugenia Williamson (“PBS Self-Destructs,” Essay, October) bears little resemblance to the enterprise I am proud to serve as chief programming…

Harper’s Index

Number of New York City police officers wearing body cameras as part of a pilot program started this fall : 36 Percentage of the city’s public-housing units deemed “deficient” by the New…

Tenure Road

Titles of articles included in the first issue of BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies, published this August.

Vacay-47

From blog posts on Paladin of Jihad offering advice for Western Muslims preparing to migrate (or “make hijra”) to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State.

A Selection of Employee Badges

Letters

Then It’s Settled As someone who has been to Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank eight times as a human rights observer and peace activist, I was struck by Khalil…

Harper’s Index

Chance that a Republican voter has thought about the midterm elections “only a little” : 1 in 3 That a Democratic voter has : 1 in 2 Percentage of midterm campaign advertisements that have…

When Pigs Buy

From a list of items available for purchase by local police departments through Department of Homeland Security grants.

Safety in Knickers

From the Indiegogo funding-campaign profile for AR Wear, described as “wearable protection for when things go wrong.” The company surpassed its $50,000 funding goal last year and is currently at…

Letters

Harper’s Index

Percentage of U.S. Republicans who say they could not live on the minimum wage : 69 Who support raising it : 37 Minimum number of times since 2011 that members of Congress have accidentally…

The Social Nyetwork

From a 2014 internal report by the Internet Research Agency, a company based in St. Petersburg, Russia, that generates anti-American propaganda. The agency hired dozens of people to leave comments…

The Operative’s Words

From the CIA’s 2011 style guide, recently acquired by the National Security Counselors, a legal nonprofit, following a Freedom of Information Act request.

Marching Orders

From a report by the Ohio State University’s Office of Compliance and Integrity on sexual hazing within the university’s marching band. Junior band members performed various “tricks,” “either on command…

Good Guy With a Gun

From a complaint filed in July against Heritage Park Care Center, a nursing home in Carbondale, Colorado, by Michelle Meeker, a former nurse at the facility. The case is ongoing.

Harper’s Index

Percentage of U.S. children under the age of fifteen who expect their parents to pay for most or all of college : 53 Percentage of U.S. parents who plan to do so : 29…

Freedom Isn’t Free

From items listed as of this May in the online store of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Several items have since been removed from the site.

Tramp Stamp

From the more than one hundred terms incorporating “slut” that have been filed for trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Letters

Disputation Car Kevin Baker’s article on American rail travel [“21st Century Limited,” Folio, July] covered much of the same territory I did in my recent book, Train. But Baker came…

Letters

The Curiosity Gene As Maud Newton vividly describes [“America’s Ancestry Craze,” Criticism, June], the search for one’s genealogical roots can become so consuming that it feels like a sickness. My…

Harper’s Index

Minimum number of Muslims living in Norilsk, Russia, the site of the world’s northernmost mosque : 30,000 Average daily number of daylight hours Norilsk has during Ramadan this year : 23.8 Portion of people…

Beretta Homes and Gardens

From a handgun-storage guide published on Guns.com in May. The firearms manufacturer Beretta, originally cited as a collaborator, retracted its affiliation with the guide soon after it appeared.

Slick Fix

From a May 20, 2014, public-oversight hearing by the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affairs, regarding updated regulations proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Noah…

Advertisement for the New York Central System (detail)

Letters

Coach Thyself I found it funny and appropriate that many life-coaching programs discussed by Genevieve Smith were founded by salesmen and accountants [“50,000 Life Coaches Can’t Be Wrong,” Report, May].…

Harper’s Index

Portion of Americans who live in areas with harmful levels of air pollution : 1/2 Number of the top five most polluted cities in the country that are in California : 5 Estimated number…

AUTOMOBILE. Field sobriety test. Photographer unknown. 07-06-1958

Letters

Empath Report As a medical educator, I appreciated the considerable insights in Heidi Julavits’s essay on empathy and doctors [“Diagnose This,” April]. Columbia University’s Program in Narrative Medicine and other…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change in the past year in the number of Mexicans requesting U.S. asylum : +160 In the number of anti-Hispanic hate crimes in United States : +233 Number of people fatally shot near…

Feeding Frenzy

From emails to the U.S. distributors of Breast Milk Baby, a doll made by the Spanish toy company Berjuan. The doll comes with a special halter top for children, featuring…

Spelling Plea

From a letter sent last November to the Campus Planning Board of the University of Colorado Boulder. Houusoo and Nowoo3 were nineteenth-century leaders of the Southern Arapaho in what is…

By Any Other Name

From terms of address in The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, edited by Katherine Bucknell, published last month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Isherwood met Bachardy,…

Letters

In Memoriam We are deeply saddened by the death of Matthew Power, our friend and a contributing editor. Sixteen years ago, Matt was an intern at the magazine, and since…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of all litter on U.S. roadways accounted for by cigarette butts : 36 Estimated additional hours Americans would spend stoned annually if marijuana were legal in most states : 30,000,000,000 Ounces of marijuana…

Ag Gag

From approximately 150 interviews with current and former employees of the Food and Drug Administration collected as part of an oral-history project begun in the 1970s. Recordings of the interviews…

Poisoner’s Dilemma

From transcripts of conversations on September 17, 2011, recorded by FBI informant Joe Sims, among members of a Georgia militia arrested the following month on various charges. Dan Roberts was sentenced…

Operation Paper Clip

From a report by the Inspector General of the Air Force on allegations against Major General Stephen D. Schmidt, who retired in January after his behavior toward subordinates was found to…

Backsides and Apologies

Harper’s Index

Percentage of black Americans in the South who are prevented from voting because they have been convicted of a felony : 13 Percentage of all criminal defendants in the United States who…

Letters

Deutschland Unter Alles The February cover image that accompanied the forum on the future of the euro [“How Germany Reconquered Europe”] is offensive and thoughtless. By riffing on the Nazi…

Artful Dodger

From a note sent in 1917 to the Appeal Tribunal in Middlesex, England, which reviewed requests for exemption from military service during World War I. The note is included in…

Buzzkill

From the 500 least popular lectures out of the more than 1,600 available on the website of TED, a nonprofit organization that aims to “bring together the world’s most fascinating…

Road to Wigan Ear

From a November 25, 1848, article published in the Norfolk News, Eastern Counties Journal and Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn Commercial Gazette and included in Purring: Sport of the People, an…

Harper’s Index

Estimated value of goods and services distributed for free on the Internet in 2011 : $376,000,000,000 Portion of the content streamed on Pornhub, the world’s largest pornography website, that is viewed on…

Letters

Serve and Volley John P. Davidson did indeed train to be a household manager at Starkey International for his article on private service [“You Rang?,” Folio, January], but what he…

Good Cop, Sad Cop

From remarks by Joseph Esposito, a retired New York City police officer, during a wiretapped phone conversation with another former city employee. Esposito was accused in January of helping some…

Greek Tragedy

From stories submitted anonymously to the website hazedandconfused.com, describing the tasks reportedly carried out by undergraduates in pledging prospective fraternities or sororities. Visitors to the site are encouraged to vote…

Nuclear Meltdown

From a report by the inspector general of the Air Force concerning allegations against Major General Michael J. Carey of professional misconduct during a trip to Russia last July. In…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of uninsured Democrats who say they will pay a fine rather than buy health insurance under Obamacare : 15 Percentage of uninsured independents who do : 31 Of uninsured Republicans : 45 Amount Georgia senator…

Letters

Chicago Style Thomas Frank’s “Chicago Is the Future” [Easy Chair, December] articulated the increasing sense of alienation I’ve felt each time I’ve returned to my hometown since my departure in…

Archie Enemy

From a complaint filed last September as part of a $32.5 million gender discrimination lawsuit against Archie Comics co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit. Six employees allege that for more than a decade…

Delhi Cuts

From a list of edits made by the Central Board of Film Certification, a statutory censorship body tasked with regulating publicly screened films in India, taken from the CBFC’s website.…

Foster Scare

From messages posted over the past five years to the Yahoo group Adopting-from-Disruption, where parents of adopted children offered them for “re-homing,” also known as adoption disruption. The group was…

Saving Private Ryan’s Sweatpants

From a list of more than 100,000 items in storage at the U.S. Army Historical Clearinghouse facility in Anniston, Alabama, released in September by the Army’s Center of Military History…

The Get Set

From an October 10, 2013, complaint against ten Jewish men, including two rabbis, in New York and New Jersey, accused of running an organization that kidnaps and tortures husbands who…

Letters

Have It Their Way In Thomas Frank’s Easy Chair column on low wages for employees of the fast-food industry [“Home of the Whopper,” November], a reference to the plantation owned…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change since 2007 in the number of cells in the New York City prison system devoted to solitary confinement : +63 Portion of the adolescent prisoners in solitary on Rikers Island…

Where Edit Is Due

From additions to Wikipedia entries on women with significant achievements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, made by volunteers during an event hosted by Brown University last October. An estimated…

Janes Bond

From “Divine Secrets of the RYBAT Sisterhood: Four Senior Women of the Directorate of Operations Discuss Their Careers,” the transcript of a recently declassified 2004 conversation among five high-ranking female…

No Man Is an Island

From a decision by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal of New Zealand in the case of Ioane Teitiota, who because of rising sea levels fled his home country of Kiribati,…

Letters

It’s the Dynasty, Stupid Doug Henwood nailed the rightward political drift and military hawkishness that define Hillary Clinton [“Stop Hillary!” Essay, November], but I cannot resist adding something Clinton said…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change in the S&P 500 since its pre-crisis peak : +8 In the price of financial stocks : –44 Portion of wages paid in Manhattan that come from the financial-services industry : 1/3 Percentage by…

Letters

Crimes Against Humanities Thomas Frank’s insightful lamentation about the demise of the humanities in higher education [“Course Corrections,” Easy Chair, October] notes the mammoth cost of attending college in the…

Freeze!

From 2012 and 2013 blotters of the police department in Unalaska, Alaska, a town of 4,400 in the Aleutian Islands.

Define Mysteries

From explanatory subtitles to entries in the U.S. edition of the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, an eleven-volume, 7,216-page work compiled by more than 1,000 scholars over the past twenty-five years and…

Thy Kingdom Plumb

From “Holy Springs and Holy Water: Underestimated Sources of Illness?” published last year in the Journal of Water and Health.

Letters

Divide and Conquer I was troubled by Nicholson Baker’s essay calling for the elimination of Algebra II from high school curricula [“Wrong Answer,” September], which fails to acknowledge the great…

Open Season

From a transcript of a meeting held on August 6 by the town council of Deer Trail, Colorado. On July 2, Phillip Steel, a local resident, proposed an ordinance to…

Harper’s Index

Date on which John Kerry called the crisis in Syria “our Munich moment” : 9/7/2013 On which Lyndon Johnson said that what “we learned . . . at Munich” committed us to intervention in Vietnam : 7/28/1965…

Enteral Damnation

From standard operating procedures for force-feeding prisoners at the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantánamo Bay. Al Jazeera released a recently updated version of the document in May, as 103…

Love’s Labors List

From titles to 160 romance novels by Barbara Cartland. Unpublished at the time of her death, in 2000, they are currently being released on BarbaraCartland.com as the The Pink Collection.…

Letters

Buy the Book Mark Kingwell’s essay on the future of reading [“Beyond the Book,” Readings, August] reminds us that for hundreds of years books were the only tool that made…

Harper’s Index

Rank of “Jesus” and “Mohammed,” respectively, among the Wikipedia articles with the most editorial changes : 8,3 Rank of “George W. Bush” : 1 Projected height, in feet, of a Saudi skyscraper, financed by…

Unloaded Magazines

From a list of 891 periodicals removed in July from the U.S. Army & Air Force Exchange Service’s on-base stores. Magazine sales at military exchanges declined by 18.3 percent between…

Is Paris Bathing?

From 112 Gripes About the French, a 1945 handbook for American soldiers in occupied France, edited and republished this month by the Bodleian Library.

Happiness is a Warm Biscuit

From a glossary of terms used by three rival East Harlem street gangs, compiled by prosecutors for the April indictments of sixty-three gang members. Between October 2009 and March 2013,…

Stubble Trouble

From a court memo filed by attorneys for Samuel Mullet Sr., an Amish bishop from Bergholz, Ohio. Mullet was sentenced in February to fifteen years in prison for having coordinated…

Tooth in Advertising

From a video targeting prospective investors in TheRealToothFairies.com, transcribed by the advocacy group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood before the video was removed from YouTube.

You Looking at Me?

From recent mental-health evaluations of John Hinckley Jr., included in court documents submitted in April in support of a request by his attorneys to increase the amount of time Hinckley…

Letters

Poetic Justice Attacks on contemporary poetry in general as too obscure, too private, and in thrall to specialists — attacks such as Mark Edmundson’s essay in the July issue [“Poetry Slam”] —…

Harper’s Index

Number of refugees and internally displaced people in the world last year : 45,200,000 Last year in which there were as many : 1994 Number of hours Chinese workers held the head of a…

The Marriage Plot

From an April 30 police report and subsequent affidavit on the arrest of Jacob Forster, a graduate student in chemistry at Washington State University, who is charged with the attempted…

Henry’s Farm

From documents submitted by Sue Grant, an expert witness, in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Henry’s Turkey Service, the operator of a turkey-processing plant…

Last Request

From emails exchanged by employees of the U.S. State Department, an anonymous Iraqi man known here by the pseudonym Omar, and Omar’s brother. In 2011, Omar, who had worked as…

Hump Day

A story created as part of TimeSlips, a dementia-treatment program in which groups of patients are shown photographs and prompted to narrate them, in order to replace “the pressure to…

Letters

Exchanging Fire Dan Baum misses the mark for the best way to control gun violence [“How to Make Your Own AR-15,” Report, June]. The truth is that guns don’t kill…

Harper’s Index

Estimated number of Americans who have top-secret security clearance : 1,400,000 Average annual cost of detaining an inmate at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay : $900,000 At a supermax prison in the United…

Stop the Presses

From comments included in a petition addressed to the artist Kenneth Goldsmith, the website UbuWeb, and LABOR gallery in Mexico City, who in May jointly issued a call for volunteers…

Harper’s Index

Number of U.S. retail jobs Doritos Locos tacos created in the past year, according to Taco Bell : 15,000 Number of retail jobs created worldwide by Apple in that same period : 400 Portion…

Letters

Having a Cow It’s telling that the photographs accompanying Ted Conover’s report on working in an industrial slaughterhouse [“The Way of All Flesh,” May] show only living animals and the…

Bro Burning

From posts on mensactivism.org and the affiliated website standyourground.com, which maintains a list of “companies to avoid doing business with due to male bashing.” Just a comment on your latest…

Cite Unseen

From forty-nine citations that the Oxford English Dictionary attributes to the book Meanderings of Memory, by an author known only as Nightlark, believed to have been published in 1852. In…

Mincing Words

From emails sent in 2011 and 2012 by employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service concerning news reports that ground beef commonly contains lean finely…

To Coldly Go

From focus-group comments on the redesigned Canadian five-dollar bill, which depicts an astronaut floating beside Canadarm2, a robotic arm invented in Canada and used on the International Space Station. The…

Letters

Live Free or Die Trying Michael Ames suggests that the future of the Republican Party may be the Ron Paul movement [“The Awakening,” Letter from Tampa, April], but the Ron…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change in the past twenty-five years in the Consumer Price Index : +41 In the price of beer : +40 Of books : –1 Number of students currently attending the thirteen Washington, D.C., public schools…

Brush with History

From a June 7, 1923, letter sent to the personal secretary of Leon Trotsky, then Russian minister of defense, by the Nestle Laboratory for Hair Research in New York City,…

Removable Feast

From remarks in the Montana State Legislature concerning a bill allowing drivers to salvage the carcasses of antelope, deer, elk, and moose killed in automobile accidents. In 2011, there were…

Naan to Five

From 2,945 occupations listed in the current edition of India’s National Classification of Occupations. Spinning Master Taxing Master Numismatist Rock Slicer Impression Taker Weather Observer

Letters

All’s Well That Ends Wells In his report on the fracking boom in North Dakota [“Bakken Business,” Letter from Elkhorn Ranch, March], Richard Manning fails to mention the rapid falloff…

Harper’s Index

Chance that a U.S. combat pilot suffers from a mental-health problem : 1 in 17 That a remote drone pilot does : 1 in 12 Estimated percentage change since 2007 in the number of…

The Elements of Guile

From more than 3,000 terms used in emails between employees engaged in corporate wrongdoing, collected from fraud investigations since 2009 and used by the accounting firm Ernst & Young in…

Too Big to Jail

From the transcript of a March 7 Senate Banking Committee hearing on enforcement of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which requires U.S. financial institutions to help the federal government…

Final Jeopardy

From more than 200 questions posed by jurors over two days in March during the trial of Jodi Arias. Arias, who stands accused of the 2008 murder of her former…

Poetic License

From correspondence recently received and sent by members of Washington State’s Personalized License Plate Review Committee. shgnwgn — We feel that this plate could be offensive to good taste and…

This Is Not My Beautiful House

From a February 4 complaint by the U.S. Department of Justice against the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s, charging that S&P fraudulently inflated ratings on residential-mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and collateralized…

Harper’s Index

Percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born : 13 Percentage that was foreign-born in 1913 : 15 Change in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States since 2007 : –900,000 Portion of…

Letters

Workers Undocumented In his report [“This Land Is Not Your Land,” February], Ted Genoways indicts a few citizens and politicians in Nebraska as a stand-in for the discrimination perpetrated by…

Letters

Alarmed and Dangerous I read Eula Biss’s essay about the contemporary fear of vaccines [“Sentimental Medicine,” January] days after the violent deaths of twenty small schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, and…

Harper’s Index

Number of the 400 wealthiest Americans who count as small-business owners under House Republicans’ definition : 237 Percentage of the Bush tax cuts made permanent by the “fiscal cliff” compromise : 82 Portion of…

Harper’s Index

Projected annual revenue Mexican drug cartels stand to lose from pot legalization in Colorado and Washington : $1,400,000,000 Estimated minimum amount the Zeta cartel makes each year from the sale of coal : $22,000,000…

Our Man in Jabberlon

From a September 12, 2012, post by The Mittani, a member of the Goonswarm alliance in the role-playing game Eve Online, on a website that provides news about the fictional…

Martyr Complex

From emails received by Michael D’Antuono in response to his painting The Truth, which depicts President Barack Obama in a crucifixion-like pose and wearing a crown of thorns. D’Antuono originally…

Marxist Economics

From a complaint filed September 7, 2012, by Stephanie Kirschner and Brad J. Kane against the owners and operators of Eden Memorial Park, a cemetery in Mission Hills, California. In…

Letters

Infinity and Beyond Near the end of Alan Lightman’s essay on humanity’s understanding of the infinite [“Our Place in the Universe,” December], he considers what a small fraction of the…

Letters

Electoral College Victoria Collier’s report on the precariousness of this country’s voting system [“How to Rig an Election,” November] voices legitimate concerns but misdirects its anxiety. Many election-integrity advocates have…

Harper’s Index

Number of signatures a petition posted on whitehouse.gov must obtain within thirty days to “require a response” : 25,000 Number a petition calling for Texas to secede from the Union obtained within…

Empire Falls

From Responding to Climate Change in New York State, a November 2011 report prepared for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Rising sea levels and extreme weather…

Greenhouse Rules

From the instruction manual for Catan: Oil Springs, a scenario-expansion kit for the board game The Settlers of Catan. Developed by the Worldwatch Institute and the game’s manufacturers, the scenario…

Fiend Request

From comments on the Facebook page of the Jefferson County, Alabama, sheriff’s office, posted last January in response to a photo of Dustin McCombs, who was wanted on charges of…

Allo! I

Class Struggle

From almost 2,000 comments about student loans sent to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and released on its website last June. Americans currently owe more than $1 trillion in outstanding…

Operation Dessert Storm

From source material quoted by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, an eleventh-century scholar, in his humorous survey of Islamic scholarship concerning uninvited guests. Selections from the Art of Party-Crashing in Medieval Iraq, abridged and translated…

Help!

From comments on the Wikipedia entry for the Beatles. Last fall, Wikipedia conducted a community-wide poll to settle the below dispute, which began in 2004. Users voted for lowercase “the.”…

Collateral Damage

From more than 8,000 letters to executives and directors of banks, posted last fall on the website Occupy the Boardroom and emailed to the addressees. A selection of 150 letters,…

Harper’s Index

Estimated percentage of North American pit-viper litters that are “virgin births” : 5 Percentage of freshmen at four-year colleges who declare “Roman Catholic” as their religious affiliation : 26 Who declare “None” : 25 Percentage of…

Cop au vin

From an April 18, 2011, letter by Didier Mangione, the national secretary of the French union Unité SGP Police, to Hubert Weigel, head of France’s riot police. Weigel banned on-duty…

Letters

In Memoriam Harper’s Magazine is deeply saddened by the recent deaths of two good friends. George McGovern had served on the Harper’s Magazine Foundation board of directors since 1990, Nikolai…

Harper’s Index

Percentage change since 2010 in the per-pound cost of a Thanksgiving turkey : +22 Portion of the total U.S. corn crop that goes to make ethanol : 2/5 Estimated number of chickens killed after…

Ceci n’est pas une poop

From the 2011 testimony of Ira Isaacs, who was found guilty of obscenity in April, on charges relating to four videos he distributed through his company Stolen Car Films. Michael…

Street Meat

From the press release of a performance held in July at Allegra LaViola Gallery, in New York City. Artist Laura Ginn and Allegra LaViola Gallery proudly present Tomorrow We Will…

Letters

Paper Routs In “The Only Game in Town” [Report, September], David Sirota unjustly mentions an old publisher of Philadelphia’s two dailies in his catalogue of newspaper owners who use their…

Going Once

From a catalogue produced by Hutter Auction Galleries for an auction of the estate of Jack Kevorkian, who died in June 2011. The auction was held in New York City…

Bore of the Worlds

From a December 2008 email by the last UFO desk officer of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence, included in files released in July by the British National Archives. The…

Below the Belt

From emails sent in June to Michigan state legislator Lisa Brown after she spoke out against a bill restricting access to abortion. Brown ended her comments by saying, “Mr. Speaker,…

Just Us League

From recent emails sent to Roman Daniels, also known as Red Voltage, a leader of the Black Monday Society, a crime-fighting group that has been patrolling Salt Lake City in…

Eye of the Drone

From statements made in February by the families of victims and survivors of a March 17, 2011, drone attack in the village of Datta Khel in the Pakistani region of…

Baked Alaska

From interviews with Yup’ik hunters and elders in the Alaskan villages of St. Mary’s and Pitka’s Point by researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, conducted as part of a study…

Anders the crusader

Family Ties

From character descriptions for the Afghan television show The Ministry, written by the show’s producers, Kaboora Productions. The show, which aired on Afghanistan’s Tolo TV in August, is shot in…

Letters

Hold Your Peace Nicholson Baker concludes his engaging essay on pacifism by stating that “[w]ar never works,” an argument I cannot consider well-­defended since Baker’s discussion of World War II…

Nathaniel Rich on Cell Phones and Cancer

The chair of a working group from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said yesterday that cell phone use should be considered “possibly carcinogenic.” The W.H.O.…

American Lucifer: The tormenting face of Osama bin Laden

By Bill Wasik, from the December 2001 issue Hatred hopes to perceive hatred in its object, but what satisfaction can we find in this face? Guileless, affable, serene, the face…

Yearly Review

Two thousand seven hundred twenty-two days after U.S. troops crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, U.S. combat operations there officially ended. The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan turned older than the…

Status Update

From a February 2010 Facebook chat between Christopher Winfield and his son Adam, an Army specialist with a Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan. According to Army investigators, two more…

Golden Parachutes and Ladders

Back to School Comics by Kate Beaton

From “Back to School Comics” in the September 2010 Harper’s Magazine.

Cloacadoodledoo

From Food and Drug Administration inspection reports on Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg Farms, filed in August after the Iowa farms voluntarily recalled over 500 million eggs due to…

Harper’s Magazine Presents: “Monsters: A Celebration of Villainy, Exploitation, and Abuse”

A reading featuring Téa Obreht, Christine Schutt, and Wells Tower To coincide with Halloween, Harper’s Magazine presents “Monsters: A Celebration of Villainy, Exploitation, and Abuse,” a reading featuring selections from…

Dear Casey

From hundreds of letters sent to Casey Anthony, a twenty-four-year-old Florida woman arrested in 2008 on charges of murdering her two-year-old daughter, Caylee. Florida’s state attorney’s office, which released the…

Today: Jeff Sharlet on Fresh Air

Jeff Sharlet appears on NPR’s Fresh Air today to discuss his new article in the September Harper’s Magazine, “Straight Man’s Burden: The American roots of Uganda’s anti-gay persecutions.” Subscribers can…

SCAD Illustrates the Harper’s Archives

In the spring of 2010, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Illustration Department graduate students collaborated with Harper’s Magazine art director Stacey D. Clarkson on a project for which…

April 2009: Bryant Urstadt on the Minerals Management Service

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) repeatedly violated environmental requirements when approving oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, ignoring and overruling…

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< p class=”top” markdown=”1″> There is something in the accidental and arbitrary nature of amateur digital footage that seems deeply real. This accounts for its continuing power to shock. There…

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The ticking of the proverbial nuclear clock in Iran has already delivered a blow, not to the physical land of Israel, but to its spirit and moral standing. The threat…

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The United States, it would seem, is suffering its own kind of island gigantism. Bigness is the prejudice of American life, our cultural albatross, the axiom being that when something…

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Fake art movements usually involve one really famous person and then a bunch of hangers-on. Like Josie and the Pussycats. Or Jackson Pollock and a bunch of people who drank…

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Basically, Too Big to Fail is the 24 of financial-crisis books. The world is about to blow up, and everybody is Jack Bauer. Interestingly, the only figure to emerge with…

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We must all work together to thwart PR Nazis; we must stop the identity theft killers; we must stop men from doing women’s hair The d.j. hero of “Play Misty…

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Watching Avatar, I was continually reminded of Zizek’s observation in First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, that the one good thing that capitalism did was destroy Mother Earth. “There’s no…

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The movie’s denouement— the explosive ordnance disposal (E.O.D.) team responds to a massive truck bomb in the Green Zone— is so completely wrong in every respect that it borders on…

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I’m confident we will all land on our feet. And I’m certain that the experience will be an opportunity for us to find strength we didn’t know we had. I’ve…

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To read: Thomas Frank discusses Barry Lynn’s 2006 essay “Breaking the Chain: The antitrust case against Wal-Mart” Why do you think the S.E.C. failed to wake up to Madoff’s $65…

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The most prolific Republican poll spinner was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “The American people,” he advised, “if you average out all of the polls, are opposed to…

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The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth…

Garçon!

From an October 27, 2009, statement by the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, based in Bangkok. In a 2005 book, The Bad Life, French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand wrote…

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Woke up early this morning with John McCain slapping me on the back. I was in fatigues, standing among fellow soldiers for some sort of honor guard ceremony. I leaned…

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Eventually we pile into a luxury bus and head out to the highway, where traffic is stopped so that truly important citizens can follow state and city police escorts through…

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According to the laws of my people a girl child can’t inherit, she has no right to possessions, if there is no male child in the family, sooner or later…

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End Zone isn’t really a book about football or a book about warfare or a book about football as metaphor for warfare. It isn’t even a book about the cliché…

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On Leonard Lopate: Listen to Benjamin Anastas discuss “Mammon from Heaven: The prosperity gospel in recession” (subs) from the March 2010 Harper’s Magazine. The question everyone should be asking, as…

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This sentence contains an apparent non sequitur phrased as if it follows logically from the reworded thesis of the blog post. This sentence is a wildly overgeneralized condemnation of one…

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Though Obama never submitted his own bill—which might have helped but he didn’t want to be seen losing on some of its provisions—he said again and again what he wanted…

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This is a beat without press releases, government audits or easily available facts. The budget is a secret. Congressional oversight committees meet behind closed doors in a windowless room in…

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Some readers have asked, in the context of my recent Congo columns, why I have named rape victims, including the name of a 9-year-old girl. Let me say at the…

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Ashley Ellis’s misdemeanor arrest turned into a death sentence. Her crime: “careless and negligent operation of a motor vehicle.” Less than two days after entering a Vermont prison on a…

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Bernard-Henri Lévy’s new book continues [his] combat against Hegel and Marx as founding fathers of totalitarianism. But with it, [BHL] takes another step– pushing the fight deeper into philosophical history…

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Last night Harper’s Magazine held a reading at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in downtown New York City. Highlights are available on YouTube: Introduction Harper’s editor Chris Beha on what teens…

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Oddly enough, the military leaders to whom Krauthammer, Boot, and Barnes all insist that Obama should defer also eschew the V-word. McChrystal and McChrystal’s boss, Gen. David Petraeus, have repeatedly…

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Bill Martel, an international-security expert at the Fletcher School, at Tufts University, told me that Holder, having been impervious to the shifting public mood, had been sucked into “a political…

Love: A Rebuke, A Valentine’s Day Reading (February 10)

Featuring Colson Whitehead, Heidi Julavits, and Sam Lipsyte. To coincide with St. Valentine’s Day, Harper’s Magazine presents “Love: A Rebuke,” a reading featuring selections from the magazine and new work…

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It’s hard to talk about the dangers of cell-phone radiation without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. This is especially true in the United States, where non-industry-funded studies are rare, where…

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The direct and selfish exploitation of a feudal era has been transformed in the modern age into a juridically constrained and almost disinterested state kleptocracy. Today, a finance minister is…

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But at what? Magee’s landing on the stone floor of that French train station was softened by the skylight he crashed through a moment earlier. Glass hurts, but it gives.…

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An example of how insidious policies can create insidious habits implying insidious ideas is found President Obama’s first speech before Congress. In it he echoed ideas he often advocated in…

Reply

TO: Jack Shafer, Slate.com FROM: Luke Mitchell, Harpers.org DATE: January 29, 2010 SUBJECT: Suicide or Murder at Guantánamo? The shortcomings of a Harper’s Magazine “exposé” Dear Jack, I just read…

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Mark Schapiro on Fresh Air, talking about… fresh air (or more specifically, the carbon-trade economy (see his article in this month’s Harper’s [subs]) It didn’t take long. Cunningham had canceled…

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The genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis, Gourevitch claims, was “the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and of one of the most meticulously administered states…

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Today, prosecutors tried to introduce a document from actress, Mia Farrow, alleging that supermodel Naomi Campbell had informed her that Mr. Taylor had sent his men to give her a…

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Haiti is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all…

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The man has tried, of course; we’ve gotten patches of narrative around all the important issues—the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror (a.k.a. the Undiebomber)—but I’ve yet…

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VIC CHESNUTT: Wow. I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care…

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I visited Durkee in November, hoping to see the new $20 million mercury control system, reportedly in the initial phases of construction. But my request for a tour was denied.…

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Immediately upon leaving our position, we came under heavy enemy fire. Almost at once, Private Ames grew red in the face. Private Elder took Ames’s pack. But the pack was…

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For once, it seems that journalists are bristling on behalf of Haiti, a place usually painted by wariness and fear and resigned pity. Haitians themselves may be getting something like…

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It was Hefner’s great insight that girly pictures divorced from any kind of human individuality could not be anything except dirty. And so his Playmates had names, jobs, personalities, and…

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You also don’t care when they say that you glorify political violence. For me, the 20th century communism is the biggest ethical-political catastrophe in history, greater catastrophe than fascism. But…

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Is there anyone out there who still expects anything from the Angelides Commission? After AIG? After TARP? After Treasury’s gargantuan tax breaks for banks, Geithner’s preposterous asset buying program, the…

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It was at this point that I decided to kill him. After all, would the world really miss this fatuous little suppository, with his preening self-confidence and emetic cuteness? At…

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Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief…

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While Palin enjoys support from some prominent Jewish conservatives, it is not an exaggeration to say that, more so than any other major political figure in recent memory (with the…

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A couple of years ago, Iraqi oil production was declining and it didn’t seem too likely the country would stabilize any time soon to allow that to change. However, the…

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In Narang’s office, the shades are drawn, the better to read a large monitor on one wall. There are no tickers scrolling by, no flashing updates on the value of…

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Judging precisely what kind of book on the Jews Céline produced would not seem to demand great deliberation: the “anti-Semitic stance” he mentioned in his “astonishing” letter to Cillie is…

Boston Brahmin

From a list of 137 optional forms of address included on a survey sent to Harvard University alumni asking them to indicate their “preferred address” for the 2010 Harvard Alumni…

Spare the Rod

From an October 14 ruling of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, in Regina v. D.J.W. The accused, whose identity was concealed to protect his son, was found guilty of…

Tough Luqman

From an October 27 federal criminal complaint against Luqman Ameen Abdullah and ten other alleged members of Ummah, a radical Islamic separatist group based in Detroit. On October 28, after…

Letters

Everything’s Fine Christopher R. Beha’s recent article on Brandeis University [“Voodoo Academics,” Annotation, November 2009] presents a profoundly unfair portrait of the university. Beha accuses Brandeis of “growth for growth’s…

Yearly Review

Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States and ordered the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed within a year. George W. Bush gave…

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I suffer from a motor neuron disorder, in my case a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Lou Gehrig’s disease. Motor neuron disorders are far from rare: Parkinson’s disease, multiple…

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In New York, many natives fretted about a “Jewish crime wave” that was supposedly plaguing the city during these decades. Young Jews in disturbing numbers, it was said, had joined…

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The far-left Velvet Revolution has put a $200,000 bounty on the head of Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohoe… Mr. Donohoe’s alleged crime– his outspoken opposition to government run health…

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Improbably, however, a number of foreigners did continue to make the trip. Some wanted to witness the war firsthand. Others, such as a visitor from suburban St. Louis, just “wanted…

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The lines most cited in Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech were those about evil: “Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.…

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Bernard DeVoto on the Sad State of Paring Knives (as featured in Julie & Julia) From “The Paring Knife at the Crossroads,” by Bernard DeVoto in the April 1939 Harper’s…

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Observers of financial services saw unbelievable prosperity and apparently immense value added. Yet two years later the whole industry was bankrupt. A simple reason underlies this: any industry that pays…

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Thank God for partisan gerrymandering. I owe my many terms as your member of Congress to the fact that our beloved district is rigged. After the 2000 Census, members of…

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Rivka Galchen on Hurricanes From “Disaster Aversion: The quest to control hurricanes” in the October 2009 Harper’s Magazine. Like many a girl with a long-dead father, I refer to myself…

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From “The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear,” by Jonathan Lethem From “The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear,” in the October 2009 Harper’s Magazine. I do not think I shall visit…

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McKenzie Funk with AIG’s Private Firefighting Brigade From “Too Big to Burn: AIG plays God in a man-made firestorm,” in the October 2009 Harper’s Magazine. PRIVATEERS The first light we…

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Richard Rodriguez on the Twilight of the American Newspaper From “Final edition: Twilight of the American newspaper,” in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine. A scholar I know, a woman who…

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Luke Mitchell on Obamacare From “Understanding Obamacare,” in the December 2009 Harper’s Magazine The idea that there is a competitive “private sector” in America is appealing, but generally false. No…

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Andrew J. Bacevich on the War We Can’t Win From “The War We Can’t Win,” in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine History deals rudely with the pretensions of those who…

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I have no doubt you are sexually hip, but just in case you’re not, please know that “teabag” has a particular meaning in certain circles. In order to have a…

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From “Findings” From “Findings,” in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine Among highly sociable stingless Brazilian bees, a quarter of males—who can develop from unfertilized eggs—were found to be the sons…

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Petra Bartosiewicz on the American “Intelligence Factory” From “The Intelligence Factory: How America makes its enemies disappear,” in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine When I first read the U.S. government’s…

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The body never lies. In its collusion with the truth, it avoids eye contact, limits movement of arms and hands. The liar is not likely to touch her chest, but…

Unshrinkable

From responses to a survey by the British Psychological Society in which psychologists were asked if there was “one nagging thing” they didn’t understand about themselves, posted October 5 on…

Midnight Cowpoke

From September 23 proceedings in the case of Robert Melia, a police officer from Moorestown, New Jersey, who was videotaped engaging in sexual acts with calves in Southampton, New Jersey,…

You’re a Mean One, Mr. Klig

From an exchange of letters and emails between Steven Klig, a Long Island attorney, and an FBI agent posing as his ex-girlfriend. In October, Klig began blackmailing the woman, whose…

The Splendid Splintered

From an October 7 press release by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Scottsdale, Arizona, that cryonically preserves members’ heads or bodies “with the intent of restoring…

Spin the Bottle

From minutes of a May 28 meeting of the BPA Joint Trade Association. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a compound commonly used in plastic bottles and the linings of cans. Numerous…

Letters

Some Say in Fire As McKenzie Funk’s report [“Too Big to Burn,” October] reminds us, it was hard not to connect the conflagrations on Wall Street with those in southern…

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I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the…

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This Thanksgiving, more than ever, I am deeply grateful for the large, strong, loving heart of the average American. That heart beats within those who love this country enough to…

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Jewish Metal is something that has always been a part of me. The first album I ever bought was Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry, a schmaltzy collection of hard rock from…

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For a year in the early 80s, [Mavis Gallant] was writer in residence at Toronto University, “a completely useless job. You are with people who have no talent whatever, and…

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I recently reorganised the books in my study, and collected my remnants of feminist theory on a separate shelf; a fragment of another world. There were copies of Feminist Review,…

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As a devoted football fan, you are undoubtedly aware of the phrase “not in my house,” a defiant cri de coeur that is generally shouted by a swaggering defensive end…

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“Maybe this is too personal,” says Charlotte, “but I wasn’t as careful with my virginity, with my heart and my body, when I was a teenager, and maybe that’s where…

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Over the past few years the U.S. military has been engaged in an extensive internal debate about counter-insurgency warfare. This is partly a debate about COIN tactics and techniques —…

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But China– or Mao’s China, which was the only one on view to Westerners in 1974 – was entirely opaque to him, a string of stereotypes, or bricks, as he…

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The inspiration for the name [Blue Dog] comes from several sources. It’s a play on the old phrase “Yellow Dog Democrat”—for those who’d sooner vote for a yellow dog than…

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It’s so terrible, it induces an entirely new emotion: a blend of vertigo, disgust, anger and embarrassment that I like to call “shitasmia.” It not only creates this emotion: it…

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SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can’t be realistically completed? ECO: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why…

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Hacks’s politics were hard to ignore. Bertolt Brecht advised him not to move to East Germany in the early nineteen-fifties…but Hacks moved anyway. And although his plays got him in…

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By the 1970s, a Soviet math establishment had taken shape. A totalitarian system within a totalitarian system, it provided its members not only with work and money but also with…

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I was neither dazzled nor drugged into sex when I was 14 – I was embarrassed into it. I was walking along the street, one Friday morning, on my way…

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“If you build a bridge to nowhere, that might be a bridge that you’re going to use that I’m not going to use,” said Ed Pound, spokesman for the government…

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Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.…

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For all its no-nonsense masculinity, Hawksian cinema has always been very stylized. His array of adventures make their stoical gestures in an enclosed world where such gestures are sufficient unto…

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What is claimed is: 1. A method of producing an advertisement with thematic content from a television program, comprising: incorporating thematic content comprising a plot advancing element of a television…

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One of the boys, Omar, tells how he was beaten, tortured, and interrogated for hours that day, with the soldiers asking about the guerrillas. “They asked for Ramiro, but I…

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Enter, from stage right, Agamemnon, a man in his mid-forties. He walks from stage right towards stage left in a straight line that runs through the doorway. As he passes…

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Weirdly, the less social authority a profession enjoys, the more restrictive the barriers to entry and the more rigid the process of producing new producers tend to become. You can…

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The euphemisms for madness in the American vernacular–“nervous breakdown,” “cracked up,” “lost his marbles”–all connote a process in which the mind breaks away from the commonsense world where the normal…

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When democracy is established after the break-up of a multi-ethnic state a rash of secessionist movements normally follows. The reason is simple. For communities that fear being permanent minorities in…

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If you’re like me, you’ll agree there’s nothing so dispiriting as finding yourself in the lavishly appointed dining room of a luxury resort, flute of Prosecco in hand, about to…

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From Harper’s Magazine, November 1964:Hofstadter on the “Paranoid Style” From “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” by Richard Hofstadter, from the November 1964 Harper’s Magazine. American politics has often been…

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The sheer scale of support to the banking sector is breathtaking. In the UK, in the form of direct or guaranteed loans and equity investment, it is not far short…

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McPherson was born in 1943, in Savannah, Georgia. Later, as he writes in “Going Up To Atlanta,” he worked at odd jobs to help support his mother, brother, and sisters…

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Furthermore, the idea that women have been sliding toward despair is contradicted by the one objective measure of unhappiness the authors offer: suicide rates. Happiness is, of course, a subjective…

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Initially, any new information medium seems to degrade reading because it disturbs the balance between focal and peripheral attention. This was true as early as the invention of writing, which…

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In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton’s Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to…

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La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.” Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.” La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech,…

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What if a guy nobody’s ever heard of, from Hawaii no less, with a Muslim African father and a Muslim Indonesian stepfather and a mom from Kansas named Stanley inexplicably…

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In recent days, both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have suggested that the H1N1 flu vaccine may be unsafe and questioned the Obama administration’s recommendation that Americans get vaccinated, with…

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At first glance, the Study Area presented as a junkyard, but one in which people were living. Tents of various vintage were observed. In addition, the following materials had been…

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Yet now, he says, it is clear the American experiment has been “a failure.” It was all for nothing. Soon the country will be ranked “somewhere between Brazil and Argentina,…