"Hard Numbers: The Economy is Worse than You Know" [full article for Harper's subscribers, a different abridged version] discusses how the Consumer Price Index and other US economic statistics have been manipulated over time. Among other things, the article claims, these changes make Social Security checks 70% lower than they would otherwise be.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

"Even the best-endowed regimes need help navigating the shoals of Washington, and it is their great fortune that, for the right price, countless lobbyists are willing to steer even the foulest of ships." Journalist Ken Silverstein poses as a representative of the government of Turkmenistan to see if Washington lobbying firms will take on the job of making a country with a considerably less-than-stellar human rights record more palatable. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials calls Silverstein's work disingenuous; others disagree.
posted on Jun 23, 2007 - View this thread

Politcal cartoons... not quite ready for prime time.
posted on Feb 19, 2007 - View this thread

Harper's connects everything. Connections is an impressively thorough timeline of news stories and strange facts from the past six years organized into entertaining catagories like Human Attributes (my favorite, folly) and Supernatural Beings (featuring both gnomes and gods as subcatagories). And, though similar in concept, it is unrelated to this fondly-remembered Connections.
posted on Oct 23, 2006 - View this thread

American Coup D'Etat. Will the most powerful and well-funded institution on the planet remain under civilian command indefinitely? As the domestic spying saga unfolds and militarism rises, Harper's brought four experts - both academics and brass - to discuss the possibilities.

"To subdue America entirely, the only route remaining would be to seize the machinery of state itself, to steer it toward malign ends—to carry out, that is, a coup d'état."

(See also The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012 [previous])
posted on Aug 26, 2006 - View this thread

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is pumping out a pile of podcasts that have covered the importance of offensive comics to Art Spiegelman, 600 bands over 54 shows, Captain America versus the American government, Amy Sedaris and geekdom, the journey of young immigrants, French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and Harper's publisher John MacArthur discussing Europe and America perspectives since 9/11, the after life, sex with monkeys, what radio producers do, the french word "corps", Bonnie Fuller's "The Joys of Much Too Much: Go For the Big Life — The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes)", Veteran Washington reporter Helen Thomas and some other bits & bobs [Breakdown inside]
posted on Jun 5, 2006 - View this thread

Remember flash mobs? Two and a half years later, the inventor, the mysterious "Bill," reveals himself as.... an editor at Harper's, aka the Metafilter of the print world. He unmasks himself in a mammoth rumination on hipster culture, an attack on flash-mob cooptation, and a paean to Stanley Milgram. Harper's is serializing the essay on its website; the first part is up here.
posted on Feb 22, 2006 - View this thread

Harper's Magazine Yearly Review for 2005 - Yep, it's yet another year-end encapsulation of all that went before. This one's special though. It's Harper's.

Okay I know, just read the damn page!

Seriously, I'm posing this because I like Harper's, and I've always liked the juxtaposition of the big and serious in these summaries, like Hurricane Katrina, with the laughably trivial, like how an increasing number of Americans are now heating their homes... with corn.
posted on Jan 1, 2006 - View this thread

None Dare Call It Fraud: Harpers article on the report Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.
posted on Sep 9, 2005 - View this thread

A new Harper's article by Jeff Sharlet , author of the also-must-read Jesus Plus Nothing. To win a war, you must have an elaborate strategy...
posted on May 27, 2005 - View this thread

Indeed, all over the world, millions of born-again Christians have vanished into the mystical ether--leaving behind their clothing, their eyeglasses, even their dentures--along with every child under the age of twelve. Airplanes are crashing, automobiles are veering driverless and out of control, and fetuses are disappearing from their mothers' wombs, as the born-again and the unborn alike are abruptly "raptured" to heaven. Harper's Magazine reviewer Gene Lyons discusses apocalyptic entertainment.
posted on Mar 11, 2005 - View this thread

Quitting The Paint Factory. Are you feeling overworked? Do you feel like you need more free time? In this essay from the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine, Mark Slouka argues that idleness is both a virtue, a health benefit and a requisite for a fully-formed personality. Keep it in mind the next time you feel guilty for doing "nothing" on your time off.
posted on Dec 10, 2004 - View this thread

"My country, right or wrong. If right, to be kept right, if wrong, to be put right." -- Carl Schurz

Those of us opposed to this war have made our positions known, and when the dust of bombs and combat has settled, we can be mildly cheered in knowing that although we could not stop the march to war, our vigilance has not gone entirely unheeded and has perhaps averted more harm than would otherwise have come. Now that the war is upon us, all of us, especially we who have identified ourselves as anti-war, run the risk of truly failing in our efforts if we cannot harness our energies to make certain that those embroiled in this conflict do not suffer in vain. However unjust the means of this invasion have been, it is now our responsibility to attempt to ensure that the ends uphold the ideals we have been trying to safeguard.

It's time to check our fears about what has been done and look ahead to what must be done.
posted on Mar 23, 2003 - View this thread

Was it really something she said about Judge Sirica? Or was it just that Renata Adler managed to piss everyone at the Times and The New Yorker completely? Nothing like a Gotham cat fight that gets old Watergate types involved. Well, at least this is Adler's side of the story.
posted on Nov 30, 2001 - View this thread

Gaza Diary by Chris Hedges It's generally not the best idea to post links about the Palestine/Israel conflict, as each day's news can be debated ad infitum by various sides. However this Gaza Diary is a stunning personal look into the ravages of war and occupation. Written by the New York Times Mideast Bureau Chief, and published in Harper's in October, it's a meditative reflection on the ways the human spirit can be twisted by conflict, and how a reporter (even a seasoned one) responds to the demons of war. Well worth your time.
posted on Nov 16, 2001 - View this thread

Talking the talk: An interview with John McWhorter Speaking of linguistics and whatnot, I've been thumbing through the new-look East Bay Express. I read this, and I feel like McWhorter's never gotten over some black people wrongly labeling him as an Oreo cookie (never had someone assure him, in response to epithets like those, that there are 35 million ways of being African-American -- and that many of them involve fluency in "totally ass-kicking SWE," to reference David Foster Wallace's essay on Bryan Garner's new usage book in Harper's a couple of months ago).

I appreciate his iconoclasm (hell, like myself, he voted for Nader) and I'm willing to concede points of his basic argument and that I agree with him on some (the whole "niggardly" thing; the Ebonics controversy) points.

But after reading this, I wound up feeling irritated with him -- and especially put off by allowing himself to be misrespresented marketed as a conservative and, despite his vaunted speaking ability and academic credentials, his inability to get his points across in the media.
posted on Jul 6, 2001 - View this thread

Harpers April Index Some interesting stats here, especially on energy-related items.
posted on Apr 21, 2001 - View this thread