IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. Teenage kicks with the one per cent
Nancy Jo Sales spends time with Peter and Harry Brant, the super-rich teenage toasts of New York society (Vanity Fair).
Then there was the disappointment of not getting to attend the Met Ball (there had been “complications” with the invitations, Peter said), at which they had planned to arrive in a gold-plated Rolls-Royce accompanied by a baby panther wearing a diamond necklace. “I had arranged for the baby panther and everything,” Peter complained.
2. Hacking our own bodies
Ben Popper goes inside the world of ‘basement body hackers’, having home-surgery implants to open themselves to the world of technology (The Verge).
Tim dangled the needle from a string of suture next to Sarver’s finger, closer and closer, until suddenly, it jumped through the air and stuck to his flesh, attracted by the magnetic pull of the mineral implant. “I’m a cyborg!” Sarver cried, getting up to join his friends in the waiting room outside.
3. Steve Jobs: Inspiration or cautionary tale?
Ben Austen weighs the Apple founder’s legacy (Wired).
To some, Jobs’ life has revealed the importance of sticking firmly to one’s vision and goals, no matter the psychic toll on employees or business associates. To others, Jobs serves as a cautionary tale, a man who changed the world but at the price of alienating almost everyone around him.
4. Sex in the retirement home
Alex Morris on the measures a retirement home put in place to deal with the effects – both good and bad – of Viagra on its residents (NYMag).
Al and Sally have scooted their chairs close together, and their hands are like moths, constantly flittering over the armrests and toward each other. “He is a handsome man for 89. Look at that hair.” Sally runs her fingers through it. “And the mustache? You don’t like the mustache?” asks Al.
5. How advertisers convinced us we smelled
Sarah Everts on the strange birth of the deodorant industry (Smithsonian).
You’re a pretty girl, Mary, and you’re smart about most things but you’re just a bit stupid about yourself. You love a good time—but you seldom have one. Evening after evening you sit at home alone.
6. End of the line
Charles Fleming on the phenomenon of deaths on the railways, and what they do to the living (LA Magazine).
Iseli sustained severe trauma to the head and upper body. Rescuers had to crawl under the train to reach him. “Hang in there, buddy. Stay with us,” paramedics were saying as they applied pressure to the injuries on his head and face. Iseli’s only thought was, “I can’t even do this right.”
… AND A CLASSIC READ FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In December 1996, Randy Wayne White went to compete in the National Toboggan Championships without any experience tobogganing. He wrote for Outside magazine about the experience.
“Eat lots and lots of food,” Popelars told us. “None of that healthy crap, either. What we want is fat, all we can get. The more weight we can put on those sleds, the faster we’ll go. Last year, there was a team called the Big Kahoonas that won this thing, and the rumor is that they trained on nothing but kielbasas and cheese dip.”
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