Missing a New Yorker piece...

But otherwise, I got in the full count of articles for the week. (Actually had a lot more in The Economist, because I have real-life physical copies of it now, but it's been a busy weekend so I only had time to write blurbs for the first three that I read.) My weekly update post will be made sometime tomorrow, due to the same busy weekend. I actually got a lot done! (And yet, so very little...)


"Time Square vs. The High Line" contrasts and compares the new pedestrian-plazafication of Times Square with the opening of the High Line, a park created on a stretch of abandoned elevated rail tracks. Interesting to think about the new standards of "public spaces" in American society - one in the midst of one of America's most famous consumer hotspots, and the other offering prime views into other people's houses; be sure to note the part about the cabaret someone set up on their fire escape nearby.

"Happy Feet" is a cute little fluff piece about Zappos.com. When I clicked it, the leader made me think it was going to be so much more - an in-depth analysis of the American sense of entitlement to shoe collections of Imelda Marcosesque proportions. Instead, the article reveals the interesting corporate philosophy that enabled Zappos to grow so popular so quickly - and, like YouTube to Google, so powerful a competitor that they simply had to be purchased. Still worth the read, though.

"Unnatural selection" is yet another of those first-anniversary-of-the-market-crashing pieces that every media outlet in the world is doing this week. Obviously, though, since this one is by The Economist, it's one of the ones you should definitely take a look at if you're into this sort of thing. Notable sections include: why allowing Lehman to fail was a (kind of) good decision; how to get the message out to banks that the government won't be so generous next time in bailing them out; and why "bonuses are the symptom not the disease." If for no other reason, you should click on this article just to see the awesome carousel graphic which was also the cover of this week's issue.

Breaking news: Moon is coldest known place in the solar system. Sorry, Pluto. Tough toenails.

"Why are we the naked ape?" is a short history of the various theories that have been proposed since Darwin's time to explain why humans are significantly less hairy than the other primates. The theories are all very interesting, and the way in which scientists are currently making headway on this question may unpleasantly surprise you.

So now the robots can ask us for help about how best to map our world conquer all the humans. Hooray!

"Re-rigging Hamid Karzai" describes the... awkward state of Afghani democratic practices. This sentence sums it up best: "The tragedy is that he would probably have won a clean vote: he is still the closest thing Afghanistan has to a national leader."

And finally, "Will Russia and China pitch in?" is, on the surface, about why America and Western Europe need Russia and China's firm support on the UN Security Council to keep Iran's nuclear warhead program from advancing any further, it's also about the deeper issue of that for the last few (or five) decades, Americans have believed they can dictate the world's foreign policy and, now, when we need assistance in preventing a nation we've made loathe our government from attaining weapons to hurt us, the allies we need are nations we've alienated in the past. We never learn to just stop messing with things. Eloquent, I know, but it's 12:30 in the morning and I'm about to head to bed.