Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Photo: Getty Images Designer Robert W. Blakeley isn’t a household name, but every American has seen his work. No, he wasn’t employed by Coca-Cola or Ford or Disney, but instead worked for the US government. Blakeley’s most famous design? He came up with the yellow and black fallout shelter sign. Sadly, he died last week…
Viola Liuzzo, left, was helping to shuttle black demonstrators between Selma and Montgomery, Ala., when she was shot to death by the Klan on March 26, 1965. (Jack Thornell/AP) It was her face that got me. The woman who gazed from the photo in the Gary Post Tribune in April 1965 was blond and girlishly…
God, it’s been said, makes a lousy playwright. As far as an upcoming film that spotlights the Pentagon Papers is concerned, though, The New York Times is seething not at the Almighty but at the producers. In March it was announced that Steven Spielberg would direct The Post, which offers as its backdrop the dramatic…
Scanning And Sorting How the banking industry, with an assist from tech, turned an incredibly frustrating, manual process—sorting checks—into an excellent example of automation. Today in Tedium: The physical check, for most general purposes, is a sheer relic—basically used mostly for specific big-ticket purchases like rent, it certainly doesn’t have the sex appeal of, say,…
As Confederate statues come down across the American South, there is a question of what to do with them once they’ve fallen. Should these metal and stone colossuses be melted down and broken up? Discarded? Should the wishes of those who, like President Trump, see sentimental and historical value in the statues, be respected? And…
08/17/2017 11:11 am ET Updated 1 day ago Americans have probably had about enough of Confederate monuments this week, but the dual equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson whisked away from its pedestal Wednesday morning in Baltimore is worth examining, especially in light of President Trump’s continued fixation on the issue….
Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter. “Dunkirk,” the taut blockbuster by British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan, is one of the runaway successes of the summer, grossing more than $300 million worldwide…
Detail of proposed grade crossing elimination, Saw Mill River Parkway at Tarrytown Road, 1931. Rendering by Michael Rapuano. Courtesy Thomas J. Campanella. The story: Robert Moses ordered engineers to build the Southern State Parkway’s bridges extra-low, to prevent poor people in buses from using the highway. The truth? It’s a little more complex. This summer,…
No one knows how Weeping Mary, Texas, got its name. Local folklore has it that there was a freedwoman named Mary who lived there and didn’t want to sell her land to a wealthy white man. So, the man in question persuaded a black man to purchase the land for him instead. Mary was tricked into…
The challenges of getting a portable digital television to actually show a working signal stand in strong contrast to the analog days. When it comes to technology, I have a lot of love for edge cases—situations where the march of innovation actually makes things a little bit worse. Which means that I’ve become a pretty…