Required Reading for May 2011

• Christopher Hitchens letter to American Atheists (presented at the 2011 American Atheist Conference): http://richarddawkins.net/articles/618232-message-to-american-atheists



• From Foreign Policy, "How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis".. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis?page=0,1



• An op-ed from the Daily Beast regarding Pakistan's blatant support for Islamic terrorism (and the US continuing to pretend it doesn't): http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-02/osama-bin-ladens-pakistan-haven/



• The SportsGuy's latest piece for ESPN. In it, Bill Simmons assigns quotes from The Wire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire) to this year's NBA post-season. To be honest, it's sort of a bizarre column.. if you're a fan of The Wire, you'll love it. If you've never seen The Wire, you'll ask, "what the fuck?" http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/part1/110503&sportCat=nba



• I read today that the team behind "The Hurt Locker" is planning to make a movie about the Bin Laden hit/assassination. Based on the blow-by-blow account from Today's Toronto Star, I will definitely be seeing this movie. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/984367--obama-watched-anxiously-as-raid-on-bin-laden-s-hideout-unfolded?bn=1



• From the National Post's Lorne Gunter: "The Real Surge Was Harper's". Among the best/most accurate analyses I've read about the election results. http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/real+surge+Harper/4722168/story.html



• I always enjoy reading ESPN's "Outside the Lines" columns. The most recent OTL looks at Rio de Janeiro's violent favelas (slums), many of which are located just minutes from the sites of the upcoming 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110510/Rio



• It looks like the SportsGuy is actually writing sports columns again. His latest is a retrospective on the career of Phil Jackson. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/110513&sportCat=nba



• From Vanity Fair: "in an exclusive book excerpt, former Team Six member (the unit that killed Osama bin Laden) Howard E. Wasdin describes his progress through SEAL training and its notorious Hell Week, an unthinkably brutal training gauntlet designed to separate the born warriors from the merely mortal." http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/navy-seal-team-six-excerpt-201105?currentPage=all



• Via Zero Hedge, an analyst from Deutsche Bank argues the human population will stop replacing itself by the early 2020s. http://www.zerohedge.com/article/human-race-doomed-deutsche-bank-one-most-important-future-turning-points-history