Long Reads

Chat about non-baseball topics. No political discussions!
Post Reply
User avatar
thrill
bronoun enthusiast
Posts: 30369
Joined: April 14 06, 10:45 pm
Location: barely online

Long Reads

Post by thrill »

I like a good, long read. If you find a cool article that is worth diving deep into, please share.

This one is about why people go missing in Alaska:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ns/471477/

User avatar
heyzeus
Everday Unicorn
Posts: 41336
Joined: April 21 06, 10:14 am
Location: Austin, TX
Contact:

Re: Long Reads

Post by heyzeus »

I prefer Lou Reeds.

Last week I read this amazing/breathtaking/horrifying article about Ota Benga, an indigenous person from Congo who was more or less kidnapped from his village and brought to the US and displayed in a cage with apes in the Bronx Zoo 100 years ago this week.

Interestingly, he was originally kidnapped in order to be shown at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. This is a part of the fair we never learned about in school. Here's a fun passage:
The fair’s organisers hoped to celebrate American imperialism, and map human progress “from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment, from savagery to civic organisation, from egoism to altruism”. William John McGee – the president of the newly formed American Anthropological Association, who had been hired to head the fair’s ethnology department – issued a call for African “pygmies”, who were believed to represent the lowest rung on the evolutionary scale.
There's also a lot of discussion about how popular this practice was in the 1800s and even early 1900s in the U.S. and Europe. It was presented as educational - teaching people about how aboriginal people were the missing link between the apes and the more advanced European people.

User avatar
Famous Mortimer
Perennial All-Star
Posts: 3636
Joined: November 14 14, 5:23 am
Location: Cherokee

Re: Long Reads

Post by Famous Mortimer »

It's a weird one. Even HG Wells, who identified as a socialist, described them as "inferior races".

Online
User avatar
GeddyWrox
Caught you a delicious bass
Posts: 12945
Joined: April 20 06, 8:43 pm
Location: Please use blue font for the sarcasm impaired.

Re: Long Reads

Post by GeddyWrox »

I just saw that Ota Benga story last week, too. I had never heard about him before. Tragic.

Humans suck.

User avatar
wart57
just can't quit you.
Posts: 25242
Joined: April 18 06, 4:33 pm
Location: Lost

Re: Long Reads

Post by wart57 »

GeddyWrox wrote:I just saw that Ota Benga story last week, too. I had never heard about him before. Tragic.

Humans suck.
I have been saying that for a long time.

User avatar
pioneer98
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 22249
Joined: July 15 08, 8:24 pm
Location: High A Minors

Re: Long Reads

Post by pioneer98 »

This is still one of my all-time favorites. A reporter investigates a missing person in Haiti.

Into The Zombie Underworld

Teaser:
I moved to Haiti in the spring of 2007, when my wife found a job with the United Nations' peacekeeping mission there, established after the fall of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. She was assigned to Jérémie, a small town on Haiti's southwest coast. Jérémie is just 125 miles or so from Port-au-Prince, but only a dirt road links the two cities, and the trip can take 14 or 15 hours, if the road is passable at all: When the summer rains set in or the fall hurricanes blow through, the road is just mud. The weekly boat to Port-au-Prince is slow and dangerous. Otherwise, the only connection to the capital is by propeller plane.

About a month after I arrived in Jérémie, a rumor swept through town that a deadly zombie was on the loose. This zombie, it was said, could kill by touch alone. The story had enough authority that schools closed. The head of the local secret society responsible for the management of the zombie population was asked to investigate. Later that week, Monsieur Roswald Val, having conducted a presumably thorough inquiry, made an announcement on Radio Lambi: There was nothing to fear; all his zombies were accounted for.

Shortly after that incident, I started taking Creole lessons from a motorcycle-taxi driver named Lucner Delzor. Delzor was married with four children, but he kept a mistress on the other side of town. He told me that he had never so much as drunk a glass of water at his mistress's house for fear she might lace his food with love powder. He loved his wife and children far too much to risk that.

One of my first complete sentences in Creole was "Gen vréman vre zonbi an Ayiti?" Or: "Are there really, truly zombies in Haiti?"

User avatar
pioneer98
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 22249
Joined: July 15 08, 8:24 pm
Location: High A Minors

Re: Long Reads

Post by pioneer98 »

Ever think about the cultural impact of zoos? Yeah, like the ones where we cage animals? I have to admit I hadn't thought much about it until I read this.

http://longform.org/stories/wild-things

User avatar
Joe Shlabotnik
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 23104
Joined: October 12 06, 2:21 pm
Location: Baseball Ref Bullpen
Contact:

Re: Long Reads

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

wart57 wrote:
GeddyWrox wrote:I just saw that Ota Benga story last week, too. I had never heard about him before. Tragic.

Humans suck.
I have been saying that for a long time.
Some humans suck. I know a lot of great humans.

User avatar
thrill
bronoun enthusiast
Posts: 30369
Joined: April 14 06, 10:45 pm
Location: barely online

Re: Long Reads

Post by thrill »

This is an incredible, incredible profile on Tiger Woods: http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_ ... cid=espntw

jim
Red Lobster for the seafood lover in you
Posts: 50608
Joined: May 1 06, 2:41 pm

Re: Long Reads

Post by jim »

Speaking of long reads, where did 3's go?

Post Reply