Monday Medley

What we read while adding “infallibility” to our résumés…

• A fascinating story about the soldier who shot Osama bin Laden.

• Yesterday was Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday, and Wright Thompson turned in a great profile on his life after basketball. Sports Illustrated published an oral history of his most famous dunk, but really it was a moment to reflect on Space Jam. Craig Ehlo on what it was like to guard Jordan.

• The Pope announced his retirement. How will he be remembered? And how does that crazy conclave work?

• Elizabeth Warren wondered why there have been no prosecutions of Wall Street banks. Matt Taibbi says that some banks are now simply too big to prosecute. Instead, they are still getting bailouts. And in other news of a corrupt banking industry, credit reports are apparently full of errors.

• Something is ruining steak.

• Grantland looked at Dan Harmon’s life after Community.

• On Ken Pomeroy. And Pomeroy on why you shouldn’t be so quick to foul up three late in the game.

• Some analyses of the legal and ethical defenses of the American drone program. Is it worse than torture?

• A tragic story on the death of a Nazi (it’s not what you think).

• The coolest winner of the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament.

• Could New York City cut its carbon footprint by 90%?

• An analysis of Darth Vader’s terrible plan in the Battle of Hoth.

• How to win Monopoly in four moves.

Monday Medley

What we read while blindly supporting Americans we’ve never heard of…

• Would James Eagan Holmes have been stopped if he were Muslim? Some in Colorado think so. Speaking of which, the story of how the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance program was exposed.

• Colson Whitehead’s advice on how to write.

• What are the real lessons from the life and career of Steve Jobs?

• It’s articles like this — on beach volleyball — that make us want to read The Guardian for diction alone.

• Aziz Ansari talks to Pitchfork about the maturation of his comedy.

• Obamacare may exacerbate the shortage of doctors over the next decade.

• What ever happened to leisure?

• This Week in Oral History: The ’96 Olympics bombing.

• Rahm Emanuel goes after free speech in Chicago.

• One of the Too Big To Fail pioneers suggests breaking up banks. Meanwhile, the government continues to try to protect the banking industry. And speaking of Wall Street: the worst of the 1%.

• Ugly covers for great books.

• Apparently your porn habits vary by season.

Monday Medley

What we read while getting snubbed for the All-Star Game….

• At the risk of blasphemy, this Wells Tower profile of male porn star James Deen might be even better than David Foster Wallace’s dispatch from the AVN Awards.

• The New York Times looks at last weekend’s Del Close Marathon.

• Bill Murray is awesome. But we all knew that.

• Another Wall Street scandal, this one over LIBOR (whatever that means). Who might have suffered from this one? And is there any way to fix the culture of Wall Street? Meanwhile, the return of debtors’ prisons.

• Speaking of which, does money make people less moral?

• Rolling Stone profiled Rachel Maddow.

• A writer reacts to an inaccurate negative review of his book.

• The story of Anonymous.

• A review of America on its birthday.

• What’s James Murphy up to these days?

• We don’t want this to come off as fanfaronade, but you’re probably going to be gorgonized by this list.

• It turns out milk really was a bad choice…

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 you were thankful for your favorite blog…

• R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen.

• And R.I.P. diplomatic cables?

• If you were patted down by TSA agents this weekend, take comfort in this: They don’t like it any more than you do.

• John Paul Stevens on the death penalty. And he still looks great in a bowtie.

• After releasing his new album to critical and commercial success, Kanye West performed all of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at Bowery Ballroom last week. He ended the show with a beautiful, dark, twisted rant.

• You knew someone was going to do it–that someone was gonna go all, “Hey, doesn’t the decade really end in 2010?” and put out another encompassing review of the Aughts, 2010 inclusive. That someone turned out to be Time, which is attempting to launch an annual “Timeframes Issue” with its glance back at the last 11 years. Of special note (IOHO, of course and taking into account that some stories are not online) is James Poniewozik’s shortie on news tickers.

• Slate‘s Tom Scocca, while on a cruise vacation over Thanksgiving, was inspired to post a 1998 interview he did with David Foster Wallace in several parts. The focus is primarily on Wallace’s non-fiction work, specifically his cruise essay, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

• Looking for a way to procrastinate? Here are the funniest “Watch Instantly” options on Netflix.

• How To Use Extremely Negative Reviews of Your Customer Service to Your Advantage: A Primer.

• Say what you will about Obama’s policies, but the man is cool.

• Does Wall Street produce anything of social value?

• Boy, we’re glad we weren’t alive for the most boring day of the 20th Century.

• What exactly do sportswriters mean when they refer to “relevance”?

• Tim’s excitement for the return of Pretty Little Liars in January was officially ratcheted up with the release of this trailer.

How to Solve Traffic*

*This isn’t entirely genuine; it’s more of a “How to Slightly Improve Traffic.”

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Perhaps no fictional character has lost more credibility in the past calendar year than Gordon Gekko, played so well by Michael Douglas in Wall Street. But I’m not here to talk about the exposure of greed in fiscal terms; rather, I’m here to detail greed’s insidious impact on something another Douglas film is named after: Traffic.

Traffic may be the most singularly hated affliction in civilization. Contemplate it. Unlike murder, no one commits traffic. Unlike AIDS, no one knowingly gives someone traffic. Unlike war, no one starts traffic on faulty reasoning or to build community.

It is entirely possible—if not probable—that there has not been a single individual throughout human history who has been “pro-traffic.” And yet we’re all guilty of perpetuating traffic. For traffic is not the inevitable, unsolvable, irremediable collateral of living in an automobile age. Sure, there are causes of traffic that are beyond our control: construction, accidents, overpopulation. But once that traffic starts, and maybe a lane is closed or a bridge is coming up and the road’s width is narrowing, traffic is made much worse by the foundational sin of humanity: greed.