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As a beer writer, I often find myself preaching the word about craft beer to people who don’t want to hear it. There are a lot of Bud Light fans and people who’d rather sip a zinfandel, even in the craft beer capital of the world, Portland, Ore., where...
If you're a runner, you might have noticed this surprising headline from the April 5 edition of the Guardian: "Brisk walk healthier than running—scientists." Or maybe you saw this one, which ran in Health magazine the very same day: "Want to lose weigh...
For many years a huge Manila garbage dump known as Smokey Mountain was a favorite media symbol of Third World poverty. Several thousand men, women, and children lived on that dump--enduring the stench, the flies, and the toxic waste in order to make a ...
Every weekend, Longform shares a collection of great stories from its archive with Slate. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longform’s app to read the latest picks, ...
In a surprise appearance at Google’s I/O conference today, CEO Larry Page took the stage to philosophize and take questions about the company’s products, their role in the world, and how Google can solve world hunger. Along the way, he blew off some st...
Also in Slate, Matthew Yglesias ranks every Star Trek movie, television series, villain, and crew member. In the second episode of the seventh season of the fourth Star Trek television series, Icheb, an alien teenage civilian who’s been living aboard a...
This personality quiz, recently unearthed at the National Archives at Fort Worth, was meant for future secretaries taking a course with the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training. Published in 1959, the quiz was most certainly dire...
Citizen Kane’s Xanadu fell into disrepair before it was ever finished. Hogwarts is now a tourist trap in Florida. Even Eloise’s quarters at the Plaza Hotel have recently been relocated to Brooklyn. Of all the fictionalized places to live, there are few...
As a kid, I wanted desperately to be good at sports. This was not because I enjoyed playing them. I did not. It was because I’d learned that physical education classes were key to my social survival. I knew my failure to make a basketball hit the backb...
Halley’s Comet (technically, Comet 1P/Halley) orbits the Sun once every 75 years or so. Its orbit is highly elliptical, taking it out as far as Neptune and as close to the Sun as Venus. When it nears the Sun it warms up. The ice making up its solid par...