Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

About Marc Herman

Marc Herman is a writer in Barcelona. He is the author of The Shores of Tripoli.

A Survivor of the Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History Tells Her Tale

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
tri-state-tornado

The ghoulish, ongoing tornado storm in the midwest comes a few days before the anniversary of the Joplin, Missouri, tornado disaster, which leveled 25 percent of the city and killed nearly 200 people on May 22, 2011. However, memories can prove short—even for events like Joplin and this week's half-mile-side twisters. In 1925, the worst tornado disaster in history hit the upper Midwest. The Tri-State Tornado still holds records for spending the longest time on the ground, where it left a swath 219 miles long. It killed nearly 700 people. "You know, I can’t remember that it lightninged ... Read More

More like this: Science
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What Can’t It Do? European Austerity Policies Now Giving the World Anti-Matter, Clones

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Most people associate brain drain with developing nations. The idea being: a country that can't support its most talented minds will lose them to places that can. Most don't come back. That's now happening in southern Europe. Two cases just this week showed how the need to save five figures in salaries now could cost cash-strapped nations nine or 10 figures in valuable research down the line. Earlier this week we heard the ridiculous story of 30-year-old Diego Martinez Santos, a modest genius from Galicia, Spain, who has been doing research in Holland. Santos had just been voted "the most ... Read More

More like this: Education, Politics
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Who Was Benoit Gysemburgh?

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
gysem

When he died earlier this month at the sadly premature age of 59 (cancer), the French photojournalist had spent most of his life as a senior photographer with the famous magazine Paris Match. There, he created some of the last century's most iconic images—if you happen to be French. This close-up of an Israeli soldier fighting in the 1982 Lebanon war was among his most recognized. He covered the Rwandan genocide in a way that made it possible to look directly at such an event, and understand it slightly better, which is no easy thing to do. He is credited with tracking down and getting a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Mao’s Granddaughter Is Filthy Rich. Who Cares?

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Last week, Kong Dongmei, wife of an auction house boss and insurance magnate in China, appeared with her husband on a widely-followed list of the 500 richest people in China. Kong is the granddaughter of Mao Zedong, who you have to figure wasn't big on insurance company fortunes. Or private fortunes at all. Cue shouts of hypocrisy. Kong is worth five billion yuan or about $815 million. So she's not George Soros-type loaded. But China is not a wealthy country, taken on a per-citizen basis. World Bank statistics from 2011 say China's gross national income per capita is less than $5,000, and ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Study: If You’re a Narcissist, It’s Not Your Generation’s Fault. You’re Just a Narcissist.

May 10, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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It's not shocking that a magazine called Time would be interested in the march of human generations. But the weekly's much-discussed cover story on the late-'80s to mid-'90s "millennials," Generation Me Me Me glossed past (as do the inevitable retorts) the possibility that the year of one's birth just isn't very important. A broad study three years ago, based on perhaps the largest available data sets measuring American youth, was skeptical that "generational" cohesion—of the sort we obsess over—exists at all. In 2010 psychologists Kali H. Trzesniewski of the University of Western ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Does It Matter That the CIA Script-Doctored ‘Zero Dark Thirty’?

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Much ado today about Gawker's Freedom of Information Act-driven look at how the Zero Dark Thirty script got written. The Gawker item argues, persuasively, that the CIA script-doctored the movie. We're interested in this because, back in January, former CIA targeting officer (and recent David Letterman sparring partner) Nada Bakos gave Pacific Standard readers her assessment of whether the movie, and its version of post-9/11 intelligence work, differed from the reality. It did, an awful lot, she said. A first-person article like Nada's, and a Hollywood movie have different goals, of course. ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Should We Retire the Word ‘Sweatshop’?

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
sweatshop-bangladesh

The casualty count topped 600 in Bangladesh this morning, more than a week after a textile manufacturing complex collapsed outside Dhaka. After an initial spate of weirdly detached debate, some concrete thinking on the challenges of preventing such tragedies has started to bubble. Take this morning's Baltimore Sun: Last year, a fire in one Bangladeshi factory that killed 112 people prompted the Walt Disney Co., the world's largest licenser of branded merchandise manufactured abroad, to pull out of the country entirely in order to avoid negative publicity associated with its inhumane labor ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, Politics
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A Note on the Brush Fires in Camarillo

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
california-fire

I grew up not far from the part of Southern California that's burning out of control right now. Camarillo is about 20 miles away from my mom's place. Environmentally it's the same place, and with a good wind a fire like the current one will jump 20 miles faster than you can get from your living room to your car. A chaparral fire is something to see, if you haven't. I saw a fire catch a cow once. Sure, a cow's not such a fast creature. But they have self preservation instincts like anyone would. Cows used to graze on a sloping hill covered in live oaks above a vacant bit of meadow we called ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Here Is Pussy Riot Member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s Parole Hearing Speech. She Was Denied.

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Four days ago, a court in the impossibly-named Russian region of Mordovia—recently famous for wooing French actor/tax fugitive Gerard Depardieu—refused parole for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, better-known as one of three members of Russian punk protest outfit Pussy Riot. Tolokonnikova received a two-year sentence for her participation in a protest in Moscow's main Orthodox church last year. (We spoke at the time to a Russia expert, who gave us some context around the Pussy Riot phenomenon. Read the interview here.) Apparently Tolokonnikova had drafted a statement before the court, but was ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, Politics
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Congress Deliberated Something Yesterday?

April 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(IMAGE: AURIN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Public opinion of the U.S. Congress is so low (Gallup had it at 15 percent approval last week) anything but pure party politics can feel unexpected from the institution. Yesterday's Senate hearings on the use of unmanned "drone" aircraft for targeted assassinations were an astonishing example. Most attention on the hearing has focused on the unlikely testimony of Farea Al Muslimi, the 22-year-old son of a hardscrabble farmer and an illiterate mother. Al Muslimi's town in rural Yemen was hit by a U.S. drone strike less than a week ago. (He's written a version the experience in an article for ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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