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Social aspects

The Problem of Influenza

Influenza does not rate with the public as a terrifying disease. One might start a panic any time by shouting “smallpox!” or “yellow fever!” in a crowd, but can you…

Come With Us If You Want to Live

by Sam Frank,

Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley

Poison Apples

by Rebecca Solnit,

Thirty years ago, Apple Computer launched a new product with a messianic commercial in which legions of blank-faced, coverall-clad workers march, as if in a trance, through a strange industrial…

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.

Christmas in Prison

by Kenneth E. Hartman,

Greeting the holidays in an age of mass incarceration

Cage Wars

by Deb Olin Unferth,

A visit to the egg farm

The Seductive Catastrophe

by Frederic Morton,

Why the world went to war in 1914

The Global Game

by Simon Kuper,

By Simon Kuper, a columnist for the Financial Times, from lectures delivered in April at Occidental and Pitzer Colleges. Kuper’s books on soccer include Soccernomics, which he co-wrote with Stefan…

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…

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.

Kiss and Makeup

by Laknath Jayasinghe, Mark Ritson,

From observational notes cited in “Everyday Advertising Context: An Ethnography of Advertising Response in the Family Living Room,” by the Australian researchers Laknath Jayasinghe and Mark Ritson, in the June…