7 Stories to read this weekend

After a long break, I am back with some great stories that are worth reading this long weekend (at least in the U.S.). I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I did.

• Madame Sex: Vanity Fair finds sits down with the elusive French madame to the Shahs and Super(business)men. It is a fun read, especially considering that it is from 1987.
• DataBall: The world of moneyball is coming to the game of hoops. Now that is going to be fun.
• The standoff in Kiev: I didn’t know much about the standoff except for the headlines. The New Yorker put it all in context. It was worth the price.
• The invisible world of software backdoors and bounty hunters: The Nation reports on this growing trend and while we have seen these stories, never have we thought about the business and its implications.
• Why Mexican drug cartels are not about just drugs: The long implications of an underground distribution network as efficient as that of Amazon. Foreign Policy magazine explains.
• Endless Love: How couples stay in love to the end? What’s their secret? I want to know, and so do you.
• How an impressionable media industry fell in love with fraud: Fortune magazine takes advertising and CPMs and impressions to task.