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Daily Bafflements
December 17, 2014
• Happy Hannukah, everyone. For your pleasure: “Texas Gov. Rick Perry may not be dancing with rabbis this Hanukkah season, but the Lone Star State’s outgoing chief is still looking to find common ground with the Chosen,” reports CNN. “Perry released a ...

Agreeing to Disagree on Torture
December 16, 2014
Reflecting on his brutal interrogation by the Gestapo, the Austrian essayist Jean Améry described torture as a psychic annihilation, an experience that obliterated the social world. In his book At the Mind’s Limits, he argued that humans took for granted an assumption that ...

Daily Bafflements
December 16, 2014
• Our fair city is in the running to host the Olympics in 2024, and not everyone is excited about it. “The average pricetag for hosting a Summer Olympics is $15 billion,” according to the No Boston Olympics group. “That’s more than what the Commonwealth of ...

Working Woes at the Strand, Illustrated
December 15, 2014
As Borders, B. Dalton, and many other big chain bookstores get kicked out the door by Amazon, a few privately-owned outposts still provide a respite for book-lovers who like to both browse in brick-and-mortar shops and support local businesses. Some of the best-known independent ...

Daily Bafflements
December 15, 2014
• A new study has found that increased working hours are to blame for Americans’ chronic, collective sleep deprivation. • The UK’s Labour party is pushing for a new law to limit unpaid internships to a month, after which employers would be required to pay ...

Experiments in Extreme Luxury
December 12, 2014
In their unending quest to keep the attention of their wealthiest and most fickle customers, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, and other airlines have been beefing up their luxury travel options lately—from offering multi-room apartments in first-class sections, to allowing passengers ...

Daily Bafflements
December 12, 2014
• “There were some who took to Twitter to express their disappointment in the absence of a much-anticipated new gown on the final evening of the [royal] couple’s tour” is an actual sentence that appeared in the actual New York Times yesterday. • If you missed it, ...

Getting Crumbs in Portland’s Food Revolution
December 11, 2014
In the 1970s, Portland, Maine was a typical New England seaport, with a typical working waterfront slum that that smelled like fish. Trendy tourists weren’t coming ashore from cruise ships, and while there were restaurants—mostly Italian—none were that special. Things ...

Daily Bafflements
December 11, 2014
• Good morning! Did Congress just quietly open the door for wealthy donors to give ten times more to political campaigns than they were previously allowed? • Speaking of donors, ProPublica explains the weird legal loopholes involved in “donor-advised” ...

On Shooting the Messenger
December 10, 2014
The concept of “shooting the messenger” predates actual shooting by millennia. It is said that the ancient Greeks so dreaded the receipt of bad news that those charged with its delivery along the proto-postal routes that birthed the modern marathon were at mortal risk upon ...

Daily Bafflements
December 10, 2014
• Today in Billionaires: Newt Gingrich has read the New York Times report about a plan by top GOP donors to all decide on a 2016 candidate early in order to avoid a costly billionaire v. billionaire brawl, and no sir, he does not like it. “If I were Mitt Romney, Chris ...