Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

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

Mao’s Granddaughter Is Filthy Rich. Who Cares?

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
mao-wife

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

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

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

Forget the Maps: Why All the Data in the World Won’t Make You a Better Traveler

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
road-map-fiction

Listen to Life in the Data, Episode 3, featuring Paul Theroux: In the absence of information the only certainty in travel is suspense, with the suggestion of risk, and the possibility of danger. The usual presumption, amounting almost to a conceit of many travelers, is that they will be able to brainstorm a trip before they set out—downloading data, solving the issues of transfer and transition, places to stay, places to eat, the condition of roads, the mood of the locals, the sights, the diversions. It’s pretty to think so. Sometimes, as I have found, this amounts to pure fancy ... Read More

How Etsy Got Over Middle-School-Cafeteria Syndrome

February 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

http://youtu.be/w4LExVkv4Pw Kellan Elliot-McCrea, the CTO of Etsy, recently shared the anecdote below at a private seminar held by a leading venture capital firm for its portfolio companies. (For the un-initiated, Etsy is a wildly popular online craft marketplace with over 15 million users—80 percent female—and, until recently, a 4.5 percent-female engineering staff.) Etsy also had a substantial “boys versus girls” dynamic, where engineers (mostly male) sat on one side and the women on the other... It was a broken system that required changes on both sides of the house. Not a ... Read More

Manti Te’o, I Know Exactly How You Feel

January 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o on the sidelines during a game against the USC Trojans in Los Angeles in 2010 (PHOTO: NEON TOMMY/FLICKR CC)

Myella, my love, my mystery, my every little thing she does is magic. My-el-la: a hop, a skip, a jump in the pulse. Who played jazz bass and studied Buddhism, who walked her bulldog down the streets of Seattle, who was redheaded and pale and a little shy, but possessed of an effortlessly sexy erotic imagination. Myella, who I loved deeply, and who did not exist. I follow football little, and college football not at all, so I first heard Manti Te'o’s name just a few days ago. But I knew precisely what “Catfish scam,” the phrase next to his name in the headlines, meant. I saw the ... Read More

P.S.

January 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

The Best Stuff You May Have Missed Last Week: A Coldplay-obsessed, Bieber-bodyguard-befriending, Vin Diesel-quoting, jet-setting American businessman is one of the only people that North Korea follows on Twitter. But why, asked Mother Jones? Vulture popped a quiz to see if you can tell the difference between Jay-Z lyrics and Great Gatsby prose. Zocalo Public Square recalled how support from a single big-city daily newspaper was once enough to send a gawky no-name with too-large feet on his way to the American presidency. The Atlantic revised history: President Kennedy’s ... Read More

Why Hipsters Hate On Lana Del Rey

December 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Lana Del Rey singing at a microphone

BY THE TIME SHE MADE HER WARBLED NATIONAL DEBUT on Saturday Night Live in early 2012, a thousand conspiracy theories had already bloomed about the singer Lana Del Rey. With looks reminiscent of a ’70s-era Bond girl, a backstory that includes a stint living in a trailer park, and a couple of lush-sounding, grainy-looking music videos, Del Rey had emerged in the summer of 2011 and quickly captivated the online tastemaking elite of the alternative-music scene. You can see her appeal to the indie crowd in this video for her song "Video Games:" http://youtu.be/cE6wxDqdOV0 But when it ... Read More

INFOGRAPHIC: A Whole New Ballpark

November 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
PS PAGE LAYOUT NEW4.2

SAN FRANCISCO: After voters rejected four public referendums to fund a new Giants stadium, owners built it entirely from private funding. It was the first purely private stadium in 40 years. PITTSBURGH: The Penguins' Consol Energy Center was built with almost no public money, instead using cash from private companies and contributions from casino owners under a deal allowing new gambling operations. INDIANAPOLIS: Public financing accounted for 50 percent of the new Lucas Oil Stadium, offset by taxes on hotels, rental cars, restaurants, and sales of Colts license plates. CINCINNATI: Debt ... Read More