October 11, 2011: Afternoon
- Largest virus yet discovered isolated from ocean water near Chile.
- Instead of showing Latinos working in restaurants, ads now find them eating there.
- Bankers who claim their institutions are solid are like horror-film actors going for late-night forest strolls.
- Mo Ibrahim's $5 million prize for "achievement in African leadership" finally finds a recipient.
- Stephen Pinker's argument that we are becoming less violent is nonsense.
- Krugman: "Listening to the defenders of the wealthy, you’d think Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky."
- So much unwanted junk—shirts, teddy bears—is dumped on the developing world, there's even a hashtag about it.
- Thomas Curwen profiles student morticians as they prepare to enter an invisible industry.
- Invisibility cloaks—"Optifade," from the makers of Gore-Tex—coming soon for deer hunters.
- Readers' top 100 science-fiction and fantasy titles.
- TMN's Alexander Chee discusses Tarot today at 1:20 PM EST.
- Related: "The Querent."
- Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett on his new novel and being respectable.
- Painters to watch recommended by Anne Ellegood, Senior Curator at LA's Hammer Museum.
- Mel Brooks's The Critic (1963).
- Notes on old cartoons from when prohibition was a laughing matter in the New Yorker.
- Employment in Pennsylvania liquor stores not recommended, unless you're looking for stories to steal.