Weekly from the web

Video: Anderson Cooper’s gayest moments.

Video: The new Harry Potter trailer, released yesterday.

The first airplane fatality.

Old-school alcohol advertising: “You know good bourbon, Dick.”

[Courtesy: Gawker, Moviefone, N.Y. Times]

Journalist Christopher Hitchens finds out first hand if waterboarding is torture.

How Facebook killed the college yearbook.

A brief history of the flag lapel pin from Robert Redford to Richard Nixon to Barack Obama.

Video: Unlike this, what may legitimately be the world’s biggest drawing.

[Courtesy: Vanity Fair, The Economist, Time, Engadget, Trend Hunter]

The danger of auto-replace: Tyson Gay becomes Tyson Homosexual.

Martian soil hospitable to plant life, asparagus in particular.

Ivy League education “a glorified form of vocational training.“

Water in photographs: touching, heart-wrenching, awe-inspiring.

12 op-ed contributors on why Hillary didn’t get the nomination.

“Shut the hell up”: a look back on Keith Olbermann’s career, and wondering if he might be changing news as we know it.

The perils of early adoption (in this case, regarding the iPhone).

A concert hall service remembering the late Tim Russert, with video.

[Courtesy N.Y. Times, The New Yorker, Subtraction.com, Washington Post]

New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick on the late Tim Russert.

Obama’s conservative supporters.

The fate of reading following the Kindle.

How Google has scrambled our brains.

[Courtesy The New Yorker, The New Republic, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic]

Video: A delightfully deadpan retelling of the Democratic race, from eight contestants to one.

Video: Sarah Jessica Parker in conversation with Bill Carter of the New York Times.

Video: A dirty little ditty to help you remember all that pesky math stuff. Warning: to fully appreciate, some actual math knowledge is helpful.

Video: One man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.

[Courtesy Slate V, N.Y. Times, YouTube, The New Yorker]

World’s biggest drawing is actually world’s biggest con.

Video: 200 impressions, back-to-back. Some of the best come toward the end, so don’t touch that dial!

Story of Otto Rahn, the real-life Indiana Jones.

Author Ian McEwan on the growing threat posed by believers in the apocalypse.

[Courtesy Engadget, YouTube, Telegraph, The Guardian]

46 years—How long the borough of Centralia has been burning. Story: located in an old coal mine underneath the borough, the former landfill was set ablaze every year by the local fire department. In 1962, however, nobody thought to put the fire out.

4,000—Number made orphans in one day from China’s killer quake.

Over 120,000—Estimated deaths due to Myanmar cyclone.

Video: The likelihood of being hit by a life-ending asteroid: greater than you might think.

[Courtesy Wikipedia, C.N.N., M.S.N.B.C., The Atlantic]

Author of Fight Club releases newest novel, Snuff. Plot: aging porn star attempts to do the dirty ’til death.

Having hung with severed heads for her book Stiff, Mary Roach takes on sex and psychology in Bonk. Noticing a trend with these titles?

All author David Shields wants is not-so-dear old dad to kick the bucket.

The intersection of Stiff and “slices of feet.”

[All courtesy L.A. Times]