Not Friday, cuz I've been busy, link-oh-rama

It’s been my reading experience that the best-written, most interesting stories don’t appear in what I consider the noisy, cackling newspapers (Washington Post, NY Times) and on-line sites (Salon, Huffington, Breitbart) where their reporters sideline as talking heads on network television. Actually, it’s more like they are talking heads who sideline as writers.

I find the quality stuff in places like The Atlantic, The Economist, Deadspin, even Popular Mechanics and others. Regionally I like Stu Whitney and John Hult at the Argus Leader and David Rooks in the RC Journal. But, frankly, you won’t find a more enjoyable newspaper to read than the Custer County Chronicle.

Here’s a sampling of some quality, thought-provoking writing I’ve seen lately:

** Interesting piece: I Was Racially Profiled in My Own Driveway

** Learn something: How Nigeria’s economy grew by 89% overnight
 
** 8 Lessons in Manhood From the Vikings

** A court fight that should bring a tear to your eye: Feud over sweet Vidalia onions

As a grower with roughly 3,000 acres invested in Vidalia onions, Delbert Bland insists his three decades in the business make him — and not the agriculture commissioner or other farmers — the best judge of when his onions are ready to come out of the ground.

 ** Yasiel Puig Isn't Perfect, But He's Everything Great About Baseball

It's possible that Puig could learn not to swing at obviously terrible pitches or overthrow the cutoff man; he could certainly learn to show up at the ballpark on time. It's also possible, though, that if Puig learned to play as conservatively as some kid who'd come up on a travel team in Virginia and then been drafted right into one of the better-run minor league systems, and learned to moderate his life and get to bed at a proper time and so on, it would beat the spirit out of him along with the heedlessness, and he'd be not just a different player, but a lesser one.

** Crazy-interesting story on the long-lost KISS guitarist:

Prior to the blowout, Cusano kept to himself and — aside from the occasional pear-tree dispute — lived in relative seclusion. One neighbor, speaking only under conditions of anonymity, said that "I thought originally it was just two women [living at Vincent's home] because of the way he dressed. It was very incognito." When the resident found out his neighbor was not, in fact, a woman but a solitude-seeking rock god, he remembered thinking, "I was like, 'Really?!'"

** Not to say everything Salon writes is useless: My boobs, my burden

** Glowing Reindeer Antlers Deter Car Wrecks