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Some of the articles of significant length I’ve enjoyed over the last few weeks.

Apropos Appropriation – The culture of sampling and copyright infringement for creative gain is hitting the art world. (NY Times)

Clear Lines – One of the nice side-effects of the big Tintin movie is Americans need to be educated as to what the hell is so important about Herge and his creation. This article is a nice concise attempt. (LA Review of Books)

All The Single Ladies – Massive, and I gather quite controversial, essay on being a single woman in your 40s in American. A lovely roller-coaster of personal memoir, sociological study and historical context. (The Atlantic)

Newspapers, Paywalls and Core Users – Clay Shirky’s overview of the online news market starts like this: “This may be the year where newspapers finally drop the idea of treating all news as a product, and all readers as customers.” To which everyone outside the news business replies “you mean they do that?” (Clay Shirkey)

Navigating Love and Autism – A lovely article about two Aspie college kids trying to build a relationship when emotions don’t make sense. “Parents always ask, ‘Who would like to marry my kid? They’re so weird,’ ” she said. “But, like, another weird person, that’s who.” (NY Times)

Can we reach the stars without breaking the bank? – A detailed look at the different options, practical and theoretical, for interstellar space travel. (BoingBoing)

How to get a nuclear bomb – In short, it’s kinda impossible. But the many different ways in which it’s really really hard to blow up New York makes for a highly entertaining read. (The Atlantic)

The first sexual revolution: lust and liberty in the 18th century – An excerpt from a new book by Faramerz Dabhoiwala. (Guardian)

The Torturers Apprentice – Cullen Murphy compared the Medieval Inquisition and the CIA’s interrogation guidelines and finds the Catholics coming out best. The final section is the most interesting, casting torture chambers as “intensely moral places” where “those who wish to justify torture don’t do so by avoiding moral thinking; rather, they override the obvious immorality of a specific act by the presumptive morality of the larger endeavor.” (The Atlantic)