Monday Medley

What we read while hiding from North Korea…

• Roger Ebert, the most famous movie critic in the country, died last week at the age of 70. His health troubles over the last few years had been well-documented, but his legacy and impact as a critic will persist for generations. Ebert, of course, was known for his enthusiasm for movies, but he was great to read when he hated a movie as well. He will be missed…

• Shane Carruth, the writer/director/star of Primer, has a new movie coming out.

• A guide to the Infinite Jest references in last week’s episode of Parks & Recreation.

• Matt Taibbi on the future of Too Big To Fail banks. Speaking of banks, what’s the future for Bitcoin?

• Apple’s latest endeavor: a new $5 billion office.

• Wondering what Hitler’s former food taster is up to these days? Then boy do we have a link for you…

Monday Medley

What we read that wasn’t about Michelle Obama’s hair…

• Did Nate Silver get something wrong?

• A veteran of the war in Afghanistan reflects on what he did.

• In defense of the post office.

• In the same week that PBS aired a great special on the lack of major prosecutions in the finance industry, President Obama nominated a new head of the SEC who illustrates the revolving door between regulators and the regulated.

• Some growing evidence of President Obama’s war on whistleblowers, as John Kiriakou was sentenced to more than two years in prison and a former government expert now works at the Apple store.

• Obama’s second inauguration was a significant moment for gay rights, but will his words translate into action?

• On the origin of Siri.

• Vanity Fair profiles the refreshingly candid Jennifer Lawrence.   And Roger Ebert discusses the year’s best documentaries.

• Fruitvale was the big winner at Sundance.

• Still more about the life of Aaron Swartz, his recent funeral, and the prosecutorial persecution that likely contributed to his death.

• Michael Weinreb on Donald Westlake, whose novels serve as the source for the new movie, Parker.

• Child labor and bonded workers help make your Apple products.

• Will the military ever stop growing?

• Slavoj Zizek on Zero Dark Thirty.

• A typical college syllabus.

Monday Medley

What we read while taking multiple small steps…

• The summer of gun violence continued at the Empire State Building this week, though this time it was the police who did a lot of the damage.

• In other sad news, this week also saw the deaths of Neil Armstrong and Tony Scott. Ben Zimmer at Language Log addresses the alleged flub of Armstrong’s first words on the moon. Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen excerpts a bunch of fascinating articles on Armstrong.

• Ron Paul will not be speaking at the Republican National Convention this week because he doesn’t fully endorse Mitt Romney, but he held his own rally last night in Tampa. What is the future of the libertarian wave he helped start? Rand Paul, meanwhile, will be speaking about defense spending tomorrow.

• Michael K. Williams, who played Omar Little on The Wire, opens up about his past.

• 53 jokes from Arrested Development you may have missed.

• Will Leitch on Lance Armstrong.

• Roger Ebert discusses Gene Siskel’s disdain for “Lip Flap,” which sounds pretty much like small talk.

• What can the Pussy Riot sentence teach Americans?

Monday Medley

What we read while President Obama’s position on gay marriage was intelligently designed…

• Twitter tried to stand up for a user’s privacy, but was blocked by the courts. Speaking of Internet policing, a look at Anonymous, the online hacker collective.

• The Intelligence Squared debate on banning college football is worth watching, if only for the spectacle of Buzz Bissinger.

• In case you weren’t paying attention: On the heels of North Carolina’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and rights for gay couples, President Obama announced his personal support for gay marriage (just as John S predicted he would do three months ago). This is one of Obama’s better flip-flops. Posner and Becker opine on gay marriage.

• The NYPD released troubling numbers on its “Stop and Frisk” policy.

• Roger Ebert likes women.

• A DFW link to more DFW links!

• How did Wall Street kill Dodd-Frank?

• NBC surprisingly renewed all of its low-rated but well-regarded comedies. One of them, Parks and Recreation, aired its season finale last week. Showrunner Michael Schur broke down the season with Alan Sepinwall. Presumably, noted sabermetrician Schur would love this spinoff.

• Brewers’ closer John Axford sums up all postgame interviews in a note.

• Mad Men paid a small fortune for the rights to air a Beatles song last week, as I’m sure John Lennon would have wanted…

Monday Medley

What we read while reading great cosmic significance into a Broncos game…

• It seems a little early to be at college basketball’s midway point (we’ve only had two Double Bonus podcasts, after all), but Seth Davis has written his midseason recap, and the rest of Sports Illustrated‘s staff are making predictions. As Duke fans, of course, we got a kick out of North Carolina’s drubbing at Florida State, which literally chased the Tar Heels off the floor and reminded us of this memorable game.

• From the darker side of the NCAA, the latest story of injustice for a student-athlete.

• Do The Black Keys represent a war on indie rock?

• At The Awl, Maria Bustillos has a problem with that study claiming better teachers equals higher income.

• Giancarlo Esposito, aka Gus Fring, took to Reddit to answer fans’ questions about Breaking Bad and other highlights of his career. In other AMC news, Mad Men got an official premiere date for the new season.

• Josh and Tim have spent all week debating which Met took the Wilpons to task.

• The New York Times was slightly embarrassed when its Public Editor, Arthur Bisbane, wondered if maybe newspaper should try reporting the truth, you know? As opposed to just printing whatever people say… He explained himself later on.

• Some Amazon movie reviews.

• Hey, what kid hasn’t gone through a urinating-on-corpses phase? Sebastian Junger blames…us.

• Some old year-end stuff that Tim was too lazy to link to in the past: humor-writing, sitcoms that haven’t been effusively praised, and broadcasting moments.

• Roger Ebert with some thoughts on the Oscars.

Monday Medley

What we read while remembering old acquaintances, to be contrarian…

• The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow, and Ron Paul’s recent surge (though it now looks as if he may lose to Rick Santorum) has forced many liberals to confront his ideology. Of course, many bring up his racist newsletters, though this ignores Paul’s progressivism on an issue like the War on Drugs, where race is one of the most salient issues. Glenn Greenwald points out that Paul is the only candidate who occupies truly liberal foreign policy ground.

• Of course, this is easier now that Obama has essentially taken over the foreign policy positions of the Bush Administration. On New Year’s Eve he went one step further, signing the National Defense Authorization Act, which the ACLU rightfully condemned.

• Joe Nocera is the latest reporter to put out a plan for paying college athletes, which once again angered Seth Davis.

• The 10 worst economic ideas of 2011. Also, what is the real unemployment rate?

• Roger Ebert on death.

• The second season of Portlandia debuts on January 6th. Margaret Talbot writes about Carrie Brownstein for The New Yorker, and Vulture interviews Brownstein and Fred Armisen.

• Salvador Dali once hosted quite the surreal dinner party.

Monday Medley

What we read while wondering what it’d be like if we’d never been born…

• Yesterday was the best day of the year (according to Tim), in part because of the music and the television specials associated with the holiday.

• In honor of Christmas, a classic David Sedaris essay about how they celebrate the holiday overseas.

• Hopefully you took time out of your Christmas celebration to think about those who are truly less fortunate: The 1%.

• Speaking of rich people, Louis C.K.’s new special has passed the $1 million mark, and he’s decided to give some of the proceeds to charity.

• A ranking of the 100 best Twitter accounts of 2011.

• In other news of year end lists, Hulu named Community the best comedy of 2011. YOU HEAR THAT, NBC?!

• Jonah Keri explains how the Yankees learned the value of not spending money.

• Roger Ebert lists and explains his top feature movies and top documentaries of 2011.

• Funny or Die’s Billy on the Street debuted on Fuse this week, and NYT wrote about it.

Monday Medley

What we read while assigning baseball allegiances to past assassins…

• It’s been an interesting stretch for magazine features, starting with Luke Dittrich’s Esquire piece — the title is too long to quote here — on the Joplin tornado. Also at Esquire, Tom Junod tackles Jon Stewart (in kind of the same way he tackled Roger Ailes, i.e. obliquely and not quite as effectively as you might like). Over at GQ, Michael Paterniti goes all second-person in a tale of survival surrounding the Japanese earthquake — which the Nieman Storyboard thought was worthy of some dissection.

• Excerpts from Roger Ebert’s upcoming memoir. One alludes to the feature Chris Jones penned on Ebert some months back. Jones was pretty happy with that one, if he may say so himself.

• Our weekly David Foster Wallace bullet: DFW (very politely) threatens an editor via fax. Also, just what is Jonathan Franzen trying to accuse DFW of here? Speaking of Franzen, here’s a reason to get very excited for a new season of television programming.

• In other TV news, Hulu picked its five favorite magazine articles about television, including this great oral history of The Dana Carvey Show.

• One thing Grantland does that we do like is the director’s cut series on old magazine profiles. Gay Talese’s on Joe DiMaggio is one of the best you’ll ever read.

• If we were to begin a series of old, esoteric interviews, this one from the Paris Review of Jorge Luis Borges would be a good starting point. Learn, among other things, what Borges’ favorite fabricated English word is. Unfortunately, while discussing the origin of character names, he does not bring up our resident sports revolutionary.

• Forget baseball; Stephen Marche on what hockey means to Canada.

• PTI, which Tim celebrated two years ago, reached its tenth anniversary.

• The ten most tweeted moments ever offer an interesting (and possibly depressing) look at what humans are engaged by.

Monday Medley

What we read while contemplating the art of winning an unfair game…

• Moneyball, the movie, was released on Friday. Joe Posnanski and Roger Ebert opine. Meanwhile, Keith Law gives a not-so-positive review, and here’s some background on his relationship with Michael Lewis. The New York Times Magazine has a feature on Billy Beane. A Bay Area writer goes over the creative liberties taken by the movie.

• In non-Moneyball baseball news, this story looks back at the strange decline of Chuck Knoblauch.

• Taylor Branch’s article in The Atlantic on college athletics has been all the rage, spurring many to consider this a tipping point in the debate over whether college athletes should be paid. Frank Deford called it the most important article ever on the subject. Others weren’t as quick to heap the praise, including John Gasaway at Basketball Prospectus and Seth Davis at SI. Branch himself responded to Davis on his blog.

• The Columbia Journalism Review takes ESPN to task for its coverage of conference realignment.

• Hey, remember R.E.M.? If you don’t, read this 1987 story on the band.

• Louis C.K. talks with The A.V. Club about the second season of Louie.

• Penn Jillette discusses atheism, libertarianism, and his new book about atheism and libertarianism with Reason TV.

• An homage to Phil Hartman on what would have been his 63rd birthday. It reminds us of our own last year.

• A look inside an Amazon.com warehouse. Meanwhile, Bill Gates loves Amazon.

• The best tweet ever?

Monday Medley

What we read while returning from our covert mission overseas…

• John Miller’s profile of Osama bin Laden for Esquire from 1999. And his New York Times obituary…

• We’re putting this together late on Sunday night, so we can’t see all the front pages across America. But it’s a fair bet the Newseum’s site collecting front pages will be an interesting place to look Monday morning. As a sidenote, the Newseum is awesome.

• The NFL players scored a pretty big victory last week when a federal judge lifted the lockout, even if the lockout returned almost immediately. Joe Posnanski even questioned if Roger Goodell was doing a good job as commissioner after Goodell published this absurd doomsday scenario. Meanwhile, the NBA is paying attention as it careens towards its own lockout.

• Some good sports news, though, will be the launch of Grantland.com in June.

• The NFL Draft happened, and Tim feels the same way he did about it last year. Jeff Pearlman wonders if the broadcast’s standout moment was worth the manipulation.

• Kristen Wiig was profiled in NYT Magazine to Josh’s delight.

• And the Atlantic talks with John Paul Stevens,who is going to publish a new book on the Chief Justices. Stevens, you may remember, was NPI’s Retiree of the Year.

• Was it really so long ago that Josh and Tim debated handwriting? Consider Katie Zezima’s piece in the NY Times the next rebuttal, followed by the aptly named Brian Palmer at Slate.

• A timely essay on tornadoes.

• A retrospective on Wet Hot American Summer by Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, and David Wain.

• We’re no longer fans of The Office, but we liked this piece in which Vulture wonders if the valedictory send-off for Michael Scott is a case of the writers confusing the character for the actor. James Poniewozik at Time takes a different angle. And here’s a useful site for a show we definitely enjoy, Parks and Recreation.

• A 1970 New York Magazine feature on the Best Pizza of New York doesn’t even look like it’s from 1970.

• Congratulations to Roger Ebert, who FINALLY won a New Yorker Caption Contest after 280 failed attempts.

• This is an interesting piece on President Obama’s foreign policy… but it doesn’t mention his birth certificate, so who cares? At least the birther fiasco has made Donald Trump look stupid…