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. The life of Jean McConville
Susan McKay looks at the life of Jean McConville, the mother of 10 who was dragged from her home by an IRA gang and murdered in 1972.
(London Review of Books, approx 22 minutes reading time, 4584 words)
By the age of 32, Jean had carried 14 children to term; four of them had died in infancy and one was brain-damaged. ‘I don’t know how my mother coped,’ Helen says. ‘It was blood, sweat and tears. Little red books to get food on tick at the shop till pay day. My father’s suit used to be taken out of the house on a Monday and we’d be told it was going to the cleaners but now we know it was going to the pawn shop.’
Hunter Oatman-Stanford meets a veteran toy designer who gives an interesting insight into the gender divide when it comes to toys.
(Collector’s Weekly, approx 26 minutes reading time, 5317 words)
After decades of experience, Eskander sees gendered toys as an issue that implicates toy companies, media franchises, advertisers, parents, and sometimes even the kids themselves. “If they want to play with toy soldiers and wear a pink tutu, more power to them,” Eskander says. “I just think kids should feel free to play with whatever toys they want to and not feel that society is frowning at them.”
[image alt="Phineas_Gage_Cased_Daguerreotype_WilgusPhoto2008-12-19_Unretouched_Color" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2014/05/phineas_gage_cased_daguerreotype_wilgusphoto2008-12-19_unretouched_color-432x500.jpg" width="432" height="500" title="" class="alignnone" /end]
3. The truth about Phineas Gage
Sam Kean looks at a story that you’ve probably heard of before: Phineas Gage’s impaling with a metal rod (through his skull, no less), and his subsequent personality change. Turns out the tale might not be as clear-cut as we think…
(Slate, approx 29 minutes reading time, 5938 words)
The iron entered Gage’s head point-first, striking below the left cheekbone. It destroyed an upper molar, passed behind his left eye, and tore into the underbelly of his brain’s left frontal lobe. It then plowed through the top of his skull, exiting near the midline, just behind where his hairline started. After parabola-ing upward—one report claimed it whistled as it flew—the rod landed 25 yards away and stuck upright in the dirt, mumblety-peg-style
Bruce Gibney asks: What happened to the future? He looks at venture capitalism, ‘real’ technology, space, and flying machines.
(Founders Fund, approx 23 minutes reading time, 4708 words)
We believe that the shift away from backing transformational technologies and toward more cynical, incrementalist investments broke venture capital. Excusing venture’s nightmare decade as a product of adverse economic conditions ignores the industry’s long history of strong, acyclical returns for its first forty years, as well as the consistently strong performance of the top 20 per cent of the industry. What venture backed changed and that is why returns changed as well.
Steven Levy chats to Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook, virtual reality, developer tools, and how much information we share on social media.
(Wired, approx 14 minutes reading time, 2953 words)
When we were a smaller company, Facebook login was widely adopted, and the growth rate for it has been quite quick. But in order to get to the next level and become more ubiquitous, it needs to be trusted even more. We’re a bigger company now and people have more questions. We need to give people more control over their information so that everyone feels comfortable using these products.
Grantland staff members examine the fantastic Blue Album by Weezer, which turns 20 this year. Music nerds will love this track-by-track breakdown of the record.
(Grantland, approx 17 minutes reading time, 3580 words)
Everything that’s good about Weezer is in those three minutes and 24 seconds. Hell, everything that’s good about that band is in the first few power chords — the jangling, easy-to-whistle melody, the “in my room” lyrics saturated in longing and tripped up in obscurity, and the cotton candy metal-head guitars that come bursting out of Rivers Cuomo’s chest and into your heart.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
The movie Bernie took its inspiration from this strange-but-true murder tale: An older woman disappears. But why is no one that bothered when her partner, an assistant funeral home director, admits to killing her?
(Texas Monthly, approx 28 minutes reading time, 5749 words)
The bulldog-faced Danny Buck took a bite of slaw and sipped his iced tea. “Now y’all know that Bernie confessed, don’t you?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “He came right out and told a Texas Ranger that he shot Mrs. Nugent four times in the back and then stuffed her in her own deep freeze in her kitchen.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say