2005 Archive (6 found)
England’s Irish Intermediary
December 18, 2005 | Los Angeles Times
IN a 1990 essay on Billy the Kid, the Irish writer and critic Fintan O’Toole observed, “For Britain, the Irish are the Indians to the far west, circling the wagons of imperial civilization. Once in America, of course, the Irish cease to be the Indians and become the cowboys. They are the Indian killers and …
The Dark History of Mind Control
December 11, 2005 | The Barnes & Noble Review
In perhaps the most famous psychological experiment of modern times, Stanley Milgram proved that most of us are no better than Nazis. In 1961 the Yale psychologist divided pairs of paid volunteers into test-takers and shock therapists; each wrong answer from the former earned an electric shock by the latter, who could hear but could …
Finding Good in Bad Kids
September 4, 2005 | San Francisco Chronicle
It turns out that Texas has one of the most progressive youth corrections programs in the country. Texas: executor of more criminals than any other state, detainer of 1 in 10 incarcerated Americans, begetter of George W. Bush. In short, a tough-justice kind of place. But while the Texas model harshly punishes adult criminals, it …
Corporate Cash and Global Greed Frolic on the Sands of the Caymans
July 10, 2005 | San Francisco Chronicle
The sunny Cayman Islands, by the numbers, are quite a place. The Caymans (population 44,270) are the fifth-largest banking center in the world. More than 65,000 companies are registered there. Some 600 of these are banks and trust companies, holding external assets of $800 billion in U.S. currency — twice as much as all the …
Justice of Note
May 22, 2005 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Harry Blackmun was a biographer’s dream come true. Given a diary as a child, he developed a lifelong practice of recording his daily experiences, writing long, dramatic narratives in his youth and later switching to terse one-liners that at once downplayed and yet captured perfectly the monumental events he had witnessed and shaped on the …
Less than Zero
April 1, 2005 | Bookforum
April 17, 1975, was one of the most bizarre and horrifying days in modern history. Single-file lines of expressionless soldiers, armed to the teeth and clad in black, marched into Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and began ordering its inhabitants at gunpoint to evacuate the city. The soldiers, known as Khmers Rouges, summarily execuated …