Interesting Things to Read

I’ve recently read some excellent long form magazine articles.

Michael Lewis

The End

Michael Lewis is the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side (all excellent books). Before becoming an author he worked at Salomon Brothers in the 1980’s when they were the first investment bank to go public and one of his immediate co-workers invented the mortgage backed security. It is an excellent examination of just how badly fucked the system was.

Also to the “How did professionals so badly misjudge risk and fuck us all?” category are two excellent episodes of This American Life from earlier this year: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

David Foster Wallace

I’ve also recently read two excellent David Foster Wallace essays. I actually came to both organically as they were linked to from other things I was reading. Still, I feel a bit guilty to only now be reading more Wallace. (I’d only read the Federer piece and Consider the Lobster while he was alive)

Host

About talk radio host John Ziegler (Who recently got involved in some controversy with FiveThirtyEight.com and a generally ridiculous interview about an upcoming “”documentary”:http://howobamagotelected.com/” he is releasing) By the way, the quotes around “documentary” are because he has a clear agenda in making the film, not because of its ideological content. That, in my opinion, renders it editorial or argument, but not a documentary. I would also use quotes if referring to Michael Moore’s “documentaries”

The String Theory

About Michael Joyce, at the time the 89th ranked professional tennis player in the world. However, to say that it is about a tennis player does not even remotely do the piece justice. It is about specialization, sacrifice, grotesqueness, desire, and talent. I think it was even better than the Federer piece which was amazing.