May 29, 2012: Afternoon
- Desire to outshine the Soviets may have led to collaborations between the CIA and Paris Review.
- Full account of quizzing Americans from Maine to Nevada about the French.
- Tuesday poem: "The End and the Beginning," by Szymborska.
- Everything that Americans should know before embracing Eurovision.
- Related: In case you didn't memorize it at the time: Anthony Lane's 2010 Eurovision masterpiece.
- Pictures of London in puddles.
- Remembering a loss at the National Spelling Bee.
- Top 10 most expensive female artists lean heavily toward abstraction.
- Tattoos were once a pirate-inspired imperialism fad for England's elite.
- It is not just self-evaluation that is difficult. Evaluation of a skill set is, quite simply, very difficult to get right.
- "Hypnic jerks"—sleep shudders that are a sign of mental struggle for control of the motor system.
- Saga of a sex abuse scandal at an Oklahoma Christian school.
- On the enduring political influence and entrenched racism of the Greek system at the University of Alabama.
- Part one in a new TMN micro-column about who's to become America's next Williams/Roddick.
- Rules for the overthinking person's drinking game.
- Popular Mechanics identifies 20 ways to open a beer bottle.
- Showcasing 86 years of airplane interior designs, from spiral staircases to mood lighting.
- On global warming, neither generations nor nations will cooperate—so what is the rational response?
- Elif Batuman reports on Orhan Pamuk's new museum and a brothel of seven identical floors.