Required Reading for November

• Rest in Peace A.I. From 2006, a pretty moving NY Times piece on the Kelly Slater-Andy Irons rivalry. Although Kelly and Andy eventually put their differences behind them, becoming friends in recent years, the article does a great job of describing just how intense their rivalry was from 2002-2007. They were the Magic vs. Bird of surfing, if Magic and Bird hated each other. The surf world has lost one of the all time greats. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20slater-irons.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
• Excellent Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal. "California: The Lindsay Lohan of States". http://tinyurl.com/2cf4xtn
• From Fortune, a profile of Corporate America's Number One 'gun for hire,' lawyer David Boies. I had no idea who Boies was before reading the article, but he's the guy who represented Al Gore v. G.W. Bush in 2000, defended Napster in 2001 and took on Microsoft in 1997. A really good read. http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/19/news/companies/david_boies_profile_full.fortune/index.htm
• Given the general political slant of its reporting, I'm not one to lavish praise on the CBC. However, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, I couldn't be more proud of the CBC's investigation into the (Hezbollah) assassination of Lebanon's (democratically elected and Western-leaning) Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. This is some seriously impressive hard hitting investigative journalism that at once outs Hezbollah as the state sponsored hit squad it is (with the backing of Iran) while also outing the utter uselessness of the United Nations. I'd say that deserves some high praise http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=26441906