• Manifest Destiny
  I was a fair ways through this article about the Poincaré Conjecture when I realized that I had read this article before! The part that tipped me off was reading about how a Chinese mathematician was greedy and wanted to grab the spotlight for “solving” the Poincaré Conjecture. Seems like a very Chinese thing to do.
• The Making of Whitney Houston’s Debut Album
  An article from 1986 that’s poorly written, but adequate in conveying how Whitney was discovered in 1982 and what went into her highly successful debut. Even back then, there was a team manufacturing her success.
• The Montauk Grifter
  A story about an individual who pretended they were in the food ownership and publishing industry. Always interested in reading about how con men pulled off their scams.

  On their next scheduled date, she proposed a test: Why don’t you go shopping and cook me dinner? Dan bought porterhouse steaks, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms. Leong paid for the groceries. They went back to his apartment. “It was like a frat boy cooking dinner,” she said. The former Rainbow Room chef and two-time James Beard nominee served her an oven-baked porterhouse steaks that he hadn’t bothered to sear and raw Brussels sprouts, thrown haphazardly on a plate. “He didn’t have any professional cooking gear, and his pantry was all canned food,” she says.

• The Collector
  This story is about another coon man, but his cons are strictly to collect US presidents’ memorabilia!
• The Arab world’s first ladies
  Discusses the duality between the controlled image of modern and pro-women first ladies and the actions of their husbands, especially during the Arab Spring.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: crime, instapaper, math, music