Headlines from December 3, 2012

Humanitarian adventure journalist David Oliver Relin, co-author of Three Cups of Tea, dies at 49. #obit
Paul Ford on how the contemporary Authentocracy is ruling your happiness. #books
On unfinished novels: “The fatal flaw in all them was my abysmal plot-developing skills.”
Two years ago, an LA man abandoned his loft—but never foreclosed—and an alleged real estate agent leased it to a new tenant.
He believed blacks lacked basic human emotions. Thomas Jefferson, jerk.
High overhead and plummeting wholesale milk prices are killing small dairy farms.
Grains are the last piece of the locavore puzzle. Related: “The Death of Farmbrain.” #tmn
How the impossible-to-film battle episode of Game of Thrones happened. #tv
Bad kids jokes, collected. via
Where “booger” might have killed in 1998, 2004 demands nothing less than an “underpants.” #tmn
What you would actually see would be a plain command line. Skyfall‘s tech fails. #movies
Britain and France to protest Israel’s decision to approve new homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Q&A with Guy Delisle on his fantastic travel comic Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City.
Homeless man, famous for receiving boots from New York cop, is shoeless again for fear of being mugged.
“Concierge medicine” offers unlimited visits for $50 a month, plus cut-rate drugs and quick responses on email and Twitter.
Very first picture snapped of DNA.
Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang blows up a tree outside the Smithsonian in the spirit of diplomacy and Christmas.
Japan’s ninja grandmasters elect to choose no heirs, saying the way of the ninja is useless next to guns, modern drugs, and the internet.
The pleasure of Twitter is the here and now; the agony of Facebook is the ever-present past. #opinions
She loves her father. But she’s the wrong sex. Ken Auletta on Elisabeth Murdoch. #longreads
Fifteen great articles to celebrate the greatness of Richard Pryor.
Fancy white people’s dinner parties being killed off by social media, apparently.
Evidence remains overwhelmingly in favor of drinking coffee, lots of it.
All landings from a four-hour window at San Diego Airport on Nov. 23, 2012. #video
Portraits of “impact sites,” where Earth has been struck by meteorite fragments. #tmn
For Lincoln, Kushner relied on historical dictionaries, but also let fly his own lyricism.
Everywhere blank white movies wait to be seen. Monday poem: “The Present” by Jim Harrison.
From 2008: “British publishing industry is now [worth] £2.8 billion—a little more than fish or cheese and a little less than bread.”
Study of the chemicals that give durian fruit its potent smell and taste—like kissing a dead grandmother.