The sections of the World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Intrepid open to the public are painstakingly restored and lovingly maintained.

But restoration is expensive, and vast portions of the ship remain just as they were when the ship left naval service in 1974.

During a recent tour of the ship, we visited parts of the vessel that have been untouched for nearly 40 years.

For decades, dozens of forgotten Navy and merchant ships have been corroding in Suisun Bay, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. These historic vessels—the Mothball Fleet—served their country in four wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. After a decade of impasse, the ghost fleet is slowly dwindling as the ships are towed out one-by-one for scrapping. About 15 retired ships are already gone; by 2017, the entire fleet will be just a memory.

Conservative bishops and Congressmen are fighting a rear-guard action against one of the most revolutionary changes in human history.

Forget monetary policy. Re-examining the cause of the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work—the author argues that the U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years ago.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz Illustration by Stephen Doyle

If you spend much time online, the words "fanfiction writer" probably don't fill you with gushing respect. For those lucky enough not to know, fanfics are amateur, nonauthorized stories relying on the plot or characters already created in movies, television shows, video games and just about everything else that you can imagine.

In other words, it's pretty much the text-based equivalent of pirating someone else's music, remixing it badly and then shouting your own inferior lyrics over the top. Luckily, it's confined entirely to a small Internet subculture, and we can congratulate ourselves on having nothing to do with it ...

Or maybe not. Fanfiction is actually everywhere, and in some ways you're already a fan.

When Willard Psychiatric Center in New York's Finger Lakes closed in 1995, workers discovered hundreds of suitcases in the attic of an abandoned building. Many of them appeared untouched since their owners packed them decades earlier.

International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War