Monday Medley

What we read while never watching replays again…

• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two same-sex marriage cases. You may have noticed the effects on Facebook and Twitter. It’s worth revisiting how opinion has evolved on the issue (though Justice Scalia not so much).

• In honor of Opening Day, a fantasy draft of fantasy baseball players.

• Speaking of baseball, FanGraphs and Baseball Reference have finally put an end to this divisive WAR. Meanwhile, what do baseball stadiums do to housing costs?

• An oral history of one of March Madness’ defining moments.

• Buzz Bissinger is a shopaholic. Yes, that Buzz Bissinger. He’s in rehab.

• Is spring break an economic boon?

• The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy is facing a court challenge. Don’t worry, though, they’ve got plenty more programs aimed at harassing disfavored ethnic groups!

• On the appalling consequences of three strikes laws in America’s vast prison system. Of course the courts do go easy on some people….

• If you’re not following @Cmdr_Hadfield on Twitter, you’re missing some amazing shots from the International Space Station.

• Jay Caspian Kang on another school shooting.

• David Berman’s yearbook page. 

• Is Garfield even supposed to be funny? And memorable lines from a comic strip that was.

• In search of people who actually hate Jennifer Lawrence, Vice called hate groups.

Monday Medley

What we read while asking and telling like crazy…

• The best of longform journalism in 2010. Do we need any more links this week? Oh fine, whatever.

• How cool is this? The New York Times asked several industry experts in 1931 what the world would look like in 2011; their answers are by turns enlightening and hilarious.

• It was a week of Joe Posnanski writing about pitchers, with his thoughts on Cliff Lee signing with Philadelphia, on Zack Greinke’s trade demands, and on the late Bob Feller.

• In other sports journalism news, here’s an oldie from Sports Illustrated in which Gary Smith breaks down the trials of Rickie Parker. Buzz Bissinger is cool with Cam Newton. And the Fayetteville Observer‘s Dan Wiederer unleashed a fantastic and in-depth look at Mike Krzyzewski, including a dig at K’s fascination with criticizing our old student newspaper stomping grounds. Joe Drews was right!

• 60 Minutes had a fascinating feature on superior autobiographical memory, a rare characteristic where individuals remember ordinary details from every day of their lives. Dr. James McGaugh, the neurobiologist behind the study of these individuals, has an interesting academic background.

• Mark Zuckerberg is Time‘s Person of the Year, for reasons that apparently have to do with more than the fact that he had a movie made about him this year. He seems honored. And hey, that new profile allows for some artistic creativity!

• In other award news, this man’s mantle as Christmas’ chief hatemonger has been passed on to our very own John S.

• Tyler Cowen explains the truth about income inequality. Cowen also linked to this, um, intriguing dating website profile of Julian Assange. And, making Josh ecstatic, Cowen gives an “informal audit” of the past ten issues of the New York Times Magazine’s Year in Ideas in this year’s issue.

• In the wake of Season Five of Dexter, Esquire explains how the character is the new face of American justice… or something like that.

• When Parents Text is this week’s FML.

Monday Medley

What we read on our 48-hour sabbatical from MSNBC…

• The long wait for Conan O’Brien’s new show ends tonight, with the premiere of Conan on TBS. Jay Leno will probably not be a guest. Speaking of Leno and late-night TV, October saw The Daily Show beat its network rivals in the ratings, while Leno fell behind Letterman. I wonder if Dick Ebersol will call Leno an “astounding failure” now.

• Zach Galifianakis, in his early years, was sort of skinny. Also, a fascinating look at Woody Allen’s early years, including his stint on Candid Camera. Erik Voss at SplitSider, meanwhile, wonders if there’s ever a justification for a comedian to steal material.

• Tim wasn’t the only one spending some time on The Simpsons‘ Treehouse of Horror. In the spirit of Tim’s top nine, IO9 had its top 10 and 11 Points did its top 11.

• Speaking of Jews, one of the “numerous future” New York Times Articles comes to life.

• So, there was an election. Post-Citizens United Narrative Failure # 1: Democrats outspent Republicans on TV ads in House Races (and possibly in everything as well). Perhaps the most redeeming aspect of election coverage is Nate Silver’s incorporation into the mainstream media. He shows how unreliable and systematically biased (towards Republicans) Rasmussen Polls were during the campaigns. Oh, and Buzz Bissinger was clearly responding to John’s argument with this tweet.

• Speaking of fraud, comedian Bruce Baum has some pretty compelling evidence that Bruce Marder and Jerry Seinfeld are unjustly failing to attribute to him co-authorship of the hilarious Letters to a Nut series.

• Joe Posnanski had an even better week than usual, with posts on the weakest World Series winners of all-time, the currently active “certain” Hall of Famers, and the late Sparky Anderson.

• Why nobody can compete with the evil behemoth that is Ticketmaster.

• Zadie Smith offers a thoughtful new entry in the rapidly growing genre of “Distinguished Person Over 30 Complaining About Social Media’s Impact On Culture And Society.”

• The CFL–you’ve got to love it.

Monday Medley

What we read while Martin Luther King, Jr. was rolling over in his grave….

• Glenn Beck hosted his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend, which drew some outrage. Two people not offended, though, were Albert Pujols and Tony La Russa, whose attendance at the event angered NPI-friend Will Leitch. (And don’t even get started with Buzz Bissinger.)

• Speaking of quasi-racist, Obama-haters, one of them got a tongue-lashing from Michael Ian Black.

• The prototypical New York Times article.

• We here at NPI have already participated in the hype surrounding Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom. Well, if you also can’t wait until tomorrow to read the new book, then you can check out versions of the first two chapters over at The New Yorker. You can also listen to Franzen discuss his passion for songbirds.

• Are Katy Perry, Ke$ha, and Miley Cryus all singing the same song? Yes.

• Whiskey may very well be the NPI liquor of choice, so we’re glad to see it in Japan.

• Tim isn’t the only one to bash the Little League World Series. Friend of NPI Ben Cohen also took it to task.

Monday Medley

What we read while boldly enriching our uranium…

• The highlight magazine story of the week is a no-brainer, with J.R. Moehringer’s GQ glimpse into LeBron James in and around The Decision earned headlines across media platforms. Here’s Moehringer answering questions about his story, here’s GQ compiling some reactions, and here’s Buzz Bissinger angrying up the blood at the magazine (justifiably so, it seems). We, of course, psychoanalyzed LeBron’s Decision weeks ago, when Tim defended it before it happened, John S defended it after it happened, and Tim took issue with one thing LeBron said. (The GQ issue, on the whole, is very good by the way.)

• GQ wasn’t the only magazine bringing its A-game this week. We also enjoyed Sports Illustrated‘s look at the transformation of the running back position from Tim Layden and Joe Posnanski’s profile of all-around good guy, Tony Richardson.

• Speaking of Joe Posnanski, he wondered who is the more valuable Yankee: Jeter or Rivera? NPI has made arguments on behalf of both.

• Color pictures where you wouldn’t expect them: Russia in the early 20th century and Ancient Greek Statues.

• Speaking of the early 20th century, Tyler Cowen directs us to the person who predicted the iPhone then.

• Farhad Manjoo at Slate took some heat for investigating how black people use Twitter, something Choire Sicha at The Awl brought to our attention months ago.

• Speaking of, another one of those “Man, I’m trying real hard to stay off Twitter in order to remain literate” stories, this time from NBA blogger Ryan Corazza. (We don’t mean to be sarcastic; we like these stories.)

• The New Yorker features a great excerpt from Sean Wilentz’s upcoming book about Bob Dylan, as well as an interview with Wilentz himself. Meanwhile, John S resumed his look at Dylan’s career this weekend.

Monday Medley

What we read while not writing anything….

• The New York Times Magazine’s profile on David Mitchell is one of our favorite features on one of one of us’s favorite authors. Our favorite part from Wyatt Mason’s look at Mitchell: “When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, ‘your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there’s this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing.’”

• Speaking of books, The Millions has a whole new page devoted to its exhaustive catalog of reviews. And Pierre gets a shout-out on the back pages of the NYT‘s Book Review.

• Monday Medley regular Jason Segel talks to GQ about How I Met Your Mother, muppets, and various other things.

• Last week we linked to Philadelphia Magazine‘s profile of Buzz Bissinger, which asked why the former Pulitzer Prize winner was so angry. This week, we link to Bissinger’s own indirect response from The New Republic, in which he explains why he loves Twitter: “I am an angry man, which is one of the reasons I have resumed therapy and take four different pharmaceuticals. I wake up angry, stay angry during the day except to my dog and children, and go to bed angry at night. Most of my anger amounted to a running dialogue of abuse and self-abuse while working alone at home. But with Twitter, I now had an outlet.”

• Michael Cera as the “ultimate Canadian superhero.”

• Michael Wilbon gives commencement address, quotes Mike Tyson.

• Arizona passed a controversial immigration law a few months ago, which can only mean one thing: Protest songs! One from Chuck D and one from Conor Oberst.

• Elena Kagan’s email inbox from her time serving the Clinton administration has been made accessible in user-friendly Gmail-like fashion. You can learn things like Kagan’s lack of vacation plans. Transparency is cool and all, but this may be a little excessive.

• Artificial Intelligence is also cool and all, and this latest advancement is by no means excessive.

Monday Medley

What we read while our goals were mysteriously disallowed…

• BP’s first smart move in the wake of its massive oil spill may have been lessening Tony Hayward’s role in the spill response. He had become one walking gaffe since the disaster–he probably doesn’t have a role in Damon Lidelof’s (fake) movie about the spill.

• As if we needed another reason to hate the World Cup, it is apparently distracting Billy Beane, who has become such a soccer fan that he almost missed Dallas Braden’s perfect game last month. Joe Posnanski is called it “the day Moneyball died,” which John S predicted last summer. That’s not the only way the World Cup is invading Major League Baseball, as seen at Sun Life Stadium on Saturday. Of course, we’d probably watch more of the matches if they looked like this live.

• Philadelphia Magazine (hey, we embarked beyond NYC!) tries to answer the question that has been bugging a lot of people who saw this or read this (what is a douche juice anyway?): Why is Buzz Bissinger so mad all the time? (We do find his absolute trashing of LeBron, with whom he just wrote a book, pretty fascinating. And in the interest of equal time, Deadspin‘s series with Tim Donaghy analyzing the officiating of the NBA Finals was compelling, as well.)

• Our pals at Dead Homer Society are busy reviewing the ninth season of The Simpsons, which is when, in their words, “the show started becoming more Zombie than Simpsons.” Here’s their take on “The Cartridge Family”–an episode every Simpsons fan we know has recently watched for its brilliant opening send-up of soccer. “Oh, I’ll kill myself if Portugal doesn’t win…”.

• Our favorite retrospectives on two fallen sports figures: Posnanski on John Wooden and Sam Mellinger’s premature eulogy for Manute Bol. That both work(ed) at the Kansas City Star may or may not be coincidental.

• We at NPI aren’t fans of this “fail” meme (we like grammar, remember?), but here are the 50 biggest hip-hop “fails” of all-time.

• Michael Ian Black defends selling out on Twitter. Amanda Rykoff attacks #ff (Follow Friday for the uninitiated).

• Psh…we’re pretty sure we can lose Monopoly in fewer than 21 seconds.