One of the best pieces of writing we’ve read in a long time is also exceptionally relevant to Egypt this weekend. Mark Warren’s “How the NYPD secures Times Square on New Year’s Eve” for Popular Science is feature writing at its best. You can hear the Brooklyn accents and the rhythm of cop-speak run up against the slur of under-dressed, inebriated revelers as Warren asks “How does the world's largest police department balance the security of the spontaneous masses with the freedoms that make us who we are? The counterterrorism cops of the NYPD take us deep inside their extraordinary operation.” In the wake of this week’s Palm Sunday bombings, this story should be on the reading list of anyone who thinks about the pointy end of the security equation.

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