MONEYBALL MAP

Kirk Goldsberry began to focus on the locations and movement of objects — specifically, the players and the ball. From that perspective, and with the help of some massive new data sets, he could do more than merely quantify what people thought they knew about the game. He could discover hidden truths about hoops, shining light into dark corners that no one even knew were corners.

WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT

Legendary soccer star and noted asshole Diego Maradona has hit a new low with the leak of a video showing the seemingly drunk Maradona hitting his girlfriend Rocio Oliva. Oliva secretly recorded the attack on her cell phone. Maradona claims he only knocked the phone out of her hands.

TAKE ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF THIS BOOK

Few rock vocalists have been as influential as Janis Joplin. Her soulful, raspy wail moved mountains up until her untimely death at the age of 27 in 1970. In 1967, when she was still with Big Brother and the Holding Company, John Byrne Cook took over as Joplin's road manager and remained a presence in her life until the very end.

SNAIL MAIL FAIL

In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations.

THE GREAT PAPER CAPER

Years of running drugs and boosting cars left Frank Bourassa thinking: There's got to be an easier way to earn a dishonest living. That's when he nerved up the idea to make his fortune. (Literally.) Which is how Frank became the most prolific counterfeiter in American history — a guy with more than $200 million in nearly flawless fake twenties stuffed in a garage. How he got away with it all, well, that's even crazier.

BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ALREADY

Eric Delwart of the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco and colleagues have found two 700-year-old viral sequences in frozen caribou dung in an arctic ice patch. The researchers isolated part of a viral RNA genome and the complete genome of a DNA virus. They infected living plants with the DNA virus.

GEE, MAYBE WE SHOULD PAY ONE?

On a recent afternoon, Hampus Elofsson ended his 40-hour workweek at a Burger King and prepared for a movie and beer with friends. He had paid his rent and all his bills, stashed away some savings, yet still had money for nights out. That is because he earns the equivalent of $20 an hour.

A REAL CORKER OF A TALE

The corkscrew, like so many other inventions, was borne out of necessity. For as long as we have sold wine in glass bottles sealed with cork stoppers, consumers have struggled to easily remove those corks. As soon as the earliest glass bottles arrived in late seventeenth-century England, inventors began dreaming up instruments to ease the removal of corks.

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

The Ford era is finally over. After a long and rocky reign as the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford was officially displaced last night when former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory won the city's mayoral election.

AND GLOBAL DOESN'T MEAN NYC

If you listened hard over the weekend to the chatter around the political theater of detaining a nurse returning from the Ebola zone in a tent with no heat or running water, you might have heard a larger concern expressed. It was this: What happens if this kind of punitive detention — which went far beyond what medical authorities recommend — deters aid workers from going to West Africa to help?

'FUND ME, I'M A CRIMINAL'

It's hard to cast a better clusterfuck — or a worse caricature of Silicon Valley hustle—than what happened to tech investor Jason Calacanis. "Someone hacked my voicemail and changed my outgoing message to get me to invest," he wrote on Instagram yesterday, along with a recording of the new message.

GLADIATOR GATORADE

Modern-day athletes often nurse their muscles with supplement shakes orchocolate milk after a workout. Similarly, gladiators, the sports stars of the Roman empire, may have guzzled a drink made from the ashes of charred plants – a rich source of calcium, which is essential for building bones.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO

Caves are intrinsically mysterious, beautiful places, which of course makes them great places to explore. But they tend to be dark, deep and occasionally dangerous, which means they need various safety features and amenities to be visitor-friendly. The results are sometimes garish, occasionally comical, and often spectacular in their own way.

PLEASE, PLEASE KILL THE METRO CARD

Consumers are just starting to use Apple Pay to make purchases at cash registers and online stores. But Apple representatives have also talked to potential partners about using the technology behind Apple Pay for other sorts of transactions, including building security access and accepting tickets at public transit turnstiles.

ADVANCING WARFARE

This year's "Call of Duty" moves 50 years into the future and gives players a robotic exoskeleton suit so they can run faster, jump higher, tear doors off cars and do things players have never done in the series before. It's a risk five years in the making and the biggest step "Call of Duty" has taken in years. And it started with two friends who couldn't stop making fun of each other.