Reading Lounge

1. The math behind the perfect free throw

"We found that about 3 hertz of backspin is the best amount; more than that does not help. It takes about 1 second for a ball to reach the basket, so 3 hertz equates to three revolutions in the air, from the instant the ball leaves the player’s hands to when it reaches the basket."

2. National Geographic Goes Gramscian: No More Brown-Skinned Boobs For You, Racists!

3. Oscar Wilde: “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

"When they were told that, for every job completed or marked illegible, 5 percent of their wages would be donated to Unicef’s educational programs, the instances of cheating rose by 25 percent, compared to where no charitable donation was offered."

4. Can Fascism Happen Here? I do think Goebbels would be amused.

5. What’s it like to be a working mother in China? We asked a Chinese mom

6. Katherine Johnson became a NASA mathematician who calculated, among many other computations, the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space.