Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?

by: Malcolm Gladwell
Issue: Oct. 20

Everyone's reading Gladwell's new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success." But not everyone has read his piece in the New Yorker about the nature of genius. Fortunately, I have and now you can talk like you have too. Here's the basic idea: Gladwell outlines the various kinds of "genius" by comparing two writers who produced great works, but in very different ways.

Ben Fountain left his law firm to become a writer. He eventually found inspiration in Haiti. He went again and again, supported financially by his attorney wife. He was 48 when his collection of short stories, “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” received critical acclaim.

Jonathan Safran Foer, on the other hand, took his first creative writing class as a freshman at Princeton. Joyce Carol Oates encouraged him to keep writing. The summer after his sophomore year he took a trip to Europe, returned to the states and ten weeks later had produced "Everything is Illuminated."

"Both are works of art," Gladwell says of "Brief Encounters" and "Everything." "It’s just that, as artists, Fountain and Foer could not be less alike. Fountain went to Haiti thirty times. Foer went to Trachimbrod just once."

Foer describes his creative process as "explosive."

“Why does a dam with a crack in it leak so much?” Foer said. “There was just something in me, there was like a pressure.”

But for Fountain, fulfilling his creative potential required an entirely different set of circumstances.

“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain, referring to his wife. “I never felt any pressure from her...Not even covert, not even implied.”

Biden's Brief

by Ryan Lizza
Issue: Oct. 20

Before Biden accepted the VP nomination, he seriously considered whether he might rather serve as secretary of state in an Obama administration. He consulted with some consultants.

"They convinced me that I could have more influence on policy as a Vice-President with Barack,” Biden said.

One has to wonder how Biden must feel now that former rival Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill) has received the secretary of state nomination. Will a Biden VP feel threatened by a Clinton team at the state department?

According to the article you read in the New Yorker, Biden is close with the couple. In fact, Hillary once told him, “I think you and Bill were separated at birth."

Oct. 13: The Political Issue

The editors endorsed Barack Obama. They had the right answer. Take Lipstick on a Pig: A 2008 Campaign Quiz to see if you have the right answers.

I recommend the article about Crawford.
Exile on Main Street: George W. Bush’s weary neighbors.

In the Ring

By Norman Mailer
Issue: Oct 6

The New Yorker got its hands on all these letters Norman Mailer wrote between 1945 and 2005 and printed them. The first letter is to Sweet Baby Beatrice Mailer and addresses the emergence of the atom bomb. Not all the letters are quite so heavy, but the subhead for the article does read, "Grappling with the twentieth century."

Casually referencing this article will serve you well in several upcoming conversations with your relatives about how nobody writes letters anymore. If, however, you have no thanksgiving plans, go ahead and read this compilation. I certainly didn't.

The Stolen Forests

By Raffi Khatchadourian
Issue: Oct 6


Alexander von Bismarck is an environmental activist who has been tracking poached wood through sales in Russia, the manufacturing process in China and seeing where it lands in U.S. products. Much of this wood ends up in mass produced, finished products such as Wal-Mart's oak toilet seats.

As you might expect, there is a tangled web of false companies and back-room deals to smuggle, trade, and cut all this stolen timber, and Bismarck seems to be making good headway in uncovering the links and finding the sources of the wood.

At points, this article turned into a strange, badly written post apocalyptic novel: "There were shavings near the logs. He listened for the sound of chain saws, but the forest was quiet." But on the whole it was really informative and you probably learned a lot about the tree smuggling business. Apparently, it's really hard to catch illegal logging in action, and much easier to see the extra timber and sales that appear to come from nowhere.
“Because when we are trying to catch these guys, I mean, just the visual of an illegal logger in action, actually cutting down a tree—we have really only gotten it once, in Indonesia, and we have used that image a lot.”

One interesting thing I learned was that ramin, an Indonesian tree whose wood is sought after for its strength and workability, is illegal to export. (Of course, it still shows up in products all over). Maybe it's time to start a local ramin farm and make some legit cash.

Pictures of People

By Calvin Tomkins
Issue: Oct 6

In this article, Tomkins discusses the portrait paintings of Elizabeth Peyton (though she calls them "pictures of people" instead).

Peyton often uses her friends or celebrities as subjects, as in her first big NY show which focused on paintings and drawings of Kurt Cobain. Her work is often described as personal, and her paintings exude a sense of familiarity with the subject, even when she does not know them (as is the case with her series on the European monarchy).

Personally, I didn't used to like her, but like Tomkins, and maybe because of him and this article, she is growing on me. Who knows, she might grow on the Presidential-elect's family, too. Her portrait of Michelle and Sasha Obama is the latest addition to her New Museum show and is up now.

The Appalachian Problem

By Peter J. Boyer
Issue: Oct 6

Back when he was considering a run for president, Barack Obama's advisers questioned whether the country was ready to elect a black president. Obama believed it was.
Later, when pundits wondered aloud if Virginians would actually vote for the Democratic candidate, David Mudcat Saunders, also known as the Democrats' "Bubba Coordinator," insisted they would.

"That's what burns me up, when they talk about racism down here in the hills," Saunders said, adding that Virgina was the first state to elect a black governor in 1989.

In the months leading up to the election, however, Saunders worried that Obama's change message wouldn't quite cut it with "hill people."

"They were screwed by the English in Scotland and Ireland way before they came over here and started getting screwed," Saunders said. "They've been screwed since the dawn of time. And you know what? You ain't gonna do anything with them, talkin' about change. You know why. We're all changed out."

The article made you think about how you could make a Primary Colors for the new millenium. You'd give William H. Macy a chance to beef up and play a strawberry blond Jim Webb. And Philip Seymour Hoffman could probably do a mean Mudcat Saunders.

The Last Tour

By William Finnegan
Issue: Sept 29

The suicide rate among veterans is the highest it has been since 1980, the year the government started keeping track. In this article, Finnegan tells the story of Louisianan Travis Twiggs, a combat veteran who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and killed himself just weeks after telling President Bush: "Sir, I’ve served over there many times — and I would serve for you anytime."

Finnegan writes of Twiggs' extreme affection for the commander in chief.

"Rather than simply shake the President’s hand, Twiggs bear-hugged him."

After this meeting with the president, Travis, joined by down-and-out brother Will, visited some relatives and drove to the Grand Canyon. They tried to drive off a cliff, but the car got stuck, they lived, and so backpacked through the desert - "a landscape suited to an apocalyptic frame of mind." Next was the carjacking.

“I’ve made a lot of wanted posters,” Ken Phillips, National Park Service ranger, said. “But this was the first time I had to crop out the President.”

Two days later Travis shot his brother, then himself. P.T.S.D. sufferers are not, at the present time, eligible for a Purple Heart.

Travis' wife Kellee was constantly trying to calm and distract her husband, especially at bedtime when he would act as though he were on duty.

"I’d call his name, get him back to bed, and the only way I could get him to sleep was to put him in a bear hug and rock him," she said.

The Madness of Spies

By John le Carré
Issue: Sept 29

This article starts with the story of le Carré's first mission as a spy in which he follows around an experienced A.I.O. (Air Intelligence Officer) and then drops his hidden gun from his chair which ends the mission early. They drink from a flask in a car instead.

Looking back on the incident, le Carré decides that there probaby was no mission to begin with and that the guy was probably just a lonely former spy who missed the excitement and pretended to be more important than he was.

Next we hear about Arthur, who worked at M.I.5 with le Carré during a time when everyone was suspicious of Russian spies infiltrating their group. Arthur started stealing files and was convinced that he was being persecuted. He started believing that he could himself be a secret communist. "In a world that was almost as paranoid as ours is now, the security-risk assessor had become a security risk to himself."

The story ends with an explanation of why this happens and why people, including spies, want to believe in the secret world. "The trouble is that the reader, like the general public to which he belongs, and in spite of all the evidence telling him that he shouldn’t, wants to believe in his spies: which, come to think of it, is how we went to war in Iraq."

Rich Bitch

By Jeffrey Toobin
Issue: Sept 29

Leona Helmsley was not a very nice lady, but she was unceasingly devoted to her husband and her dog, Trouble.

When she died, she left small (and wildly differing) amounts to her grandchildren, but the lion's share of her wealth was left to Trouble in a $12 million trust.

Accountants determined that at the most, $2 million of the trust would be necessary to pay for security, care, and health of the dog. So what to do with the other $10 million? You can't ask Leona, and you can't ask Trouble.

Originally, Leona had made arrangements in her will to donate money to poor kids, but she took that out when she revised it. Instead, the money is going into her charitable trust which provides money to dog-related organizations.

But $2 million for a dog? Pet rights activists are thrilled with the amount and with the precedent this sets for other pet trust cases. Others, like the jilted grandchildren, are probably much less happy with the arrangements. Or how about Professor Jeff MCMahon, who said “To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people. To bestow that amount of money is contemptuous of the poor, and that may be one reason she did it."

The State of Sarah Palin

by Philip Gourevitch
Issue: Sept 22


The last presidential election was securely grounded in states that regularly play a role in national politics. The candidates, Bush and Kerry, hailed from Texas and Massachusetts, respectively. And the national conventions were held in cities that made sense. Democrats flocked to Boston; Republicans convened minutes from Ground Zero.

This election has been far more inclusive. Iowans were still the first to make their voices heard, but the primaries were make-or-break up until the very end, allowing voters from a wide array of states to appear on the evening news. And John McCain, by picking Alaska's governor as his running mate, propelled American's 50th state into the spotlight.

You got all your information about Alaska from a very interesting piece in the New Yorker. It went into depth about how Alaskans think of subsistence as a "fundamental right," but have also grown accustomed to an influx of federal dollars owing to Sen. Ted Stevens' efforts in Washington.

According to the article, Alaska is sometimes referred to as "America's socialist state" because residents collectively own the state's resources and therefore collect a portion of oil royalties. So why is Palin going around this week calling Barack Obama a socialist?

"It has been Palin's good fortune to govern the state at a time of record oil prices, which means record dividend checks: two thousand dollars for every Alaskan," Gourevitch writes. "And because high oil prices also mean staggering heating bills in such a cold place—and because it's always good politics to give money to voters—Palin got the legislature this year to send an extra twelve hundred dollars to every Alaskan man, woman, and child."

Child? Well, to be fair, some have families to support.

Freeing the Elephants

By Adam Gopnik
Issue: Sept 22

No, not another political article, or one on elephants that can paint, but one on the meaning of the Babar children's stories.

Gopnik holds that they are "a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination." The book is not only about taming the wild elephants and putting them in outfits and making them ride elevators and other civilized situations, it is also about recognizing the absurdism inherent in those situations.

The books also contain the struggle between the desire for order and the desire for chaos. Gopnik writes "We would all love to be free, untrammelled elephants, but we long, too, for a green suit."

Illustration slideshow

Echo in the Dark

By David Remnick
Issue: Sept 22

Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) is a tiny, rare, free Russian radio station broadcasting in Red Square since 1990. Because it is in many ways the only game in town (since Putin's crackdown), most of the native and visiting intelligentsia passes through at some point on their journeys.

At one point, the editor in chief, Aleksei Venediktov, kicked Bill Clinton under the table when he went on too long answering an open-ended question.

Here's Putin's attitude towards the media and a free press : “We have never had freedom of speech in Russia, so I don’t really understand what could be stifled. It seems to me that freedom is the ability to express one’s opinion, but there must exist certain boundaries, as laid out in the law.”

So how free is the station, and how threatened is Venediktov? At one point, Putin said “You have to answer for this, Aleksei Alekseevich!” And previously, Yeltsin said “Echo of Moscow, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” As of yet, no one has taken them off the air. “But no matter what we do,” Venediktov said, “no matter how clever we are, we always have to recognize that we can be gone in a flash.”

Outside Man

By John Colapinto
Issue: Sept 22


Any conversation about Spike Lee's new movie "Miracle at St. Anna" could use a reference or two to this recent New Yorker profile. Lee comes out with a film almost every year, a pace matched only by Woody Allen. Of course Lee, fresh out of NYU film school, was dubbed the "black Woody Allen." With the release of "Do the Right Thing," the public came to view him more as the Malcolm X of American cinema. But Lee complains about his reputation.

"People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage."

Angry, maybe. But not unfriendly. As he walks around Midtown Manhattan, he's recognized constantly. Autograph? Sure. Photo? No problem. M&M's to support my high school football team? You on the straight and narrow? $5.

Passing by the Niketown store, he spots several teens,"Sneakerheads," and asks them "what's about to drop."

Since the late 1980's, Lee has been heavily involved in Nike's marketing campaign. Obama's campaign is a whole other story.

"Look, if they need me, they know where I am," he says. "You know, that shit could be used against them, too...Sometimes you might just be a liability."

The Home Team

By Peter Hessler
Issue: Sept 15

In this final Letter from Beijing about the Olympics, Hessler tells us about the Chinese experience. Many experienced it as volunteers: organizing, cleaning, building, and creating the new city.

City volunteers were unpaid and had great pride, while the rural peasants were paid. Everyone got the schwag though; flags, raincoats, and more.

Many residents supported the games with pride, while others just wanted to play chess in peace and not have to move their game for the bikers to cycle through on their race.

The Long Dig

By Burkhard Bilger
Issue: Sept 15

This article was so friggin cool. Giant machines, dirt, rocks, getting stuck in tunnels... what more do you want?

Apparently, digging two enormous tunnels from Germany to Switzerland through a mountain isn't that easy. But with the right planning and equipment, teams tunneling in from each end might be able to meet each other in the middle only a few feet askew, as happened in an earlier tunneling project.

Martin Herrenknecht builds crazy tunneling machines used all over the world and looks forward to tunneling near you. Watch for him in your backyard.

A Cloud of Smoke

By Jennifer Kahn
Issue: Sept 15

James Zadroga died at age of 34 due to lung problems.
That much is uncontested, but that's about all that is.

See, Zadroga was a firefighter on the scene at Ground Zero, and became the poster boy for 9/11 related health problems. There was even an official act named after him in 2006 that provided benefits to the families of the people who died from 9/11 related illnesses.

But what caused the lung problems and the hundreds of granulomas "knots of scar tissue that build up around inorganic particles, like the pearling around sand grains in an oyster;" 9/11 or possibly drug abuse?

At this point, the people lobbying for benefits for those affected by 9/11 are probably wishing they had a poster boy with a cleaner health history, but whether or not 9/11 was what killed James Zadroga, at least his story helped get families some well-deserved money.

The Lonesome Trail

By Ariel Levy
Issue: Sept 15

Cindy McCain is worried that the role of First Lady might cut into her humanitarian work abroad. She spends several weeks a year traveling with Operation Smile, an organization that provides surgery for children with cleft palates.

Cindy does not care for smiling much herself.

Here Levy writes of Cindy's appearance at a rally, clearly comparing her to a pig, pit bull and/or hockey mom: "Cindy McCain stood by her husband’s side, her eyes rendered invisible by sunglasses, her mouth a lipsticked slash across her face—a straight line, unsmiling."

Still, the woman does know firsthand how a surgery can change your life; she became severely addicted to painkillers after undergoing surgery for a ruptured disk.

John didn't know about the drug abuse. He also had no idea that his wife was taking flying lessons, or bringing home a smiling infant (post-op) from Bangladesh.

"McCain zigzags constantly between the two roles she was brought up with: she is the brave, individualistic Westerner who can ride the range and fly a plane and then the polite, fragile lady of the house with the flawless outfits and the duct-taped mouth," Levy writes. "These are very different roles, but they both require privacy."

The General's Dilemma

By Steve Coll

Issue: Sept 8

I didn't read this article about Petraeus, and neither did Juliet.

But let's pretend we did. Isn't Iraq f*cked up? Don't you feel worse about the U.S. and the way the world is going after reading that article? Us too.

And that's why we didn't read it.

Party Faithful: Can the Democrats get a foothold on the religious vote?

By Peter J. Boyer

Issue: Sept 8

Heeding the words of advisor Karl Rove, Bush went after the Catholic vote. He was a pretty convincing Catholic. (Did you know Jeb's one?) Anyway, Bush's second victory is attributed in part to his success with the Catholics. 

So when John McCain hit the campaign trail, he planned to take a similar approach. Then he received the endorsement of a megachurch pastor, John Hagee, who calls the Catholic Church the antichrist. Oops. Eventually McCain rejected the endorsement. 

Why Me? Alec Baldwin’s disappointment, undimmed by success.

by Ian Parker

Issue: Sept. 8

You will have many opportunities in the coming weeks to talk about Alec Baldwin. Not only did he just win an Emmy for his work in "30 Rock" - which returns on Oct. 30 - he also appears in the new Dane Cook movie "My Best Friend's Girl."

Alec's the type of guy who has a house in the Hamptons, but wishes he had a different house in the Hamptons.

He's really only happy when performing in a play or driving his speedboat.

Toward the end of the article, Parker writes about joining him for a boat ride on Three Mile Harbor. Alec accelerates to 55 miles per hour and shouts, “This is why we do sitcoms in Queens!”

Enchanted

By Ariel Levy

Issue: Sept 1

Marc Jacobs used to be a fat dork who considered himself above all the hoopla of the fashion world. 

Then he got sober, lost a ton of weight, got a hot boytoy who tattooed Marc's logo on his arm, and suddenly started enjoying the life of a celebrity and all of the perks that come with it.

Moral of the story: you can always make nice dresses, but life is more fun when you are attractive.

Sole Sisters

By Patricia Marx
Issue: Sept 1

Shoes are good! And expensive! Here are some good ones!

I always look forward to Marx's On and Off the Avenue articles. Not only do you get to hear about what the people who can afford things you never could are buying, but you also get interesting tidbits about what King Louis XIV wore (6 inch red heels).

Marx has a way of injecting stories and humor into her articles that make them so much more interesting than the fashion blogs I usually read when I want to see some fancy shoes. (My two favorites are Fabsugar and You Look Fab. They're, uhhhh, fab...)

Now who wants to lend me $275 for the Cole Haan OT Air pump?

Stop, Thief!

By John Colapinto
Issue: Sept 1

Shoplifting has graduated from a junior high school past-time to a serious industry with serious consequences and technology and security teams to match.

There are retail-crime rings, individuals who resell on eBay, and operators who work with store personnel to de-tag or set aside merchandise. One guy was caught with a cool "booster bag" lined with tin foil and duct tape to thwart alarms.

The story covers security cameras that can move to track someone through a multi-level store (except for the dressing rooms), Target's efforts to stop theft, and what small retailers do (like putting razor blades behind the counter).

Then we follow a security team who has been tracking "Jeffrey," a department store employee who has been making false returns and giving out huge gift cards to his friends. They catch him and he confesses, but he doesn't give up his coworker, and they fail to get a middle-aged lady who probably stole jeans in a dressing room.

Fun and Games

By Anthony Lane
Issue: Sept 1

Women's fencing, and not Usain Bolt's insane bolt to the finish becomes the focus of this article.

Clear face masks allow viewers to see the fencers' faces better than the old mesh ones, and the effect is increased drama and emotion. Check out these photos from The Big Picture to get a sense.

Interesting fact: Synchronized swimmers use gelatin to keep their hair so controlled.
Another one: When Lane went to Beijing, he ate Snickers bars and McDonalds because he says the organizers didn't build any good restaurants in the Olympic zone.

The September 1st Issue

Ah, so much better. In this issue, you read about shoplifting, shoes, Marc Jacobs, and an immature midget (honestly New Yorker, of all the fiction submissions?).
Aren't you glad it isn't Aug 25th anymore?

The Talk of the Towns were a little lackluster this issue, but I always find it interesting to hear about the specifics of how artists work, so "Lost and Found" by Lauren Collins was cool. Painter Kehinde Wiley says that the people he painted in Nigeria (as opposed to in America) need "blues instead of browns."

Sonic Youth

By John Adams
Issue: Aug 25

Composer John Adams tells us about his struggles starting out and describes the process of coming up with his piece "American Standard" which put him
on the map.
You know what? Go read the New Yorker's abstract. It was a boring article.

And on top of that, there is nothing to listen to of his on the New Yorker site, so here is the Amazon page where you can sample some of his Harmonium album. That's the piece he made after being inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem of the same name and by John Donne's "Negative Love."

And here's "Negative Love" so you can compare.

Drowning: Can the Burmese People Rescue Themselves?

By George Packer
Issue: Aug 25

When George Packer first visited Burma in 1987 on a one-week visa - the maximum amount of time allowed - it was still called Burma. The country's official name became Myanmar in 1989. There were other changes. The junta is now called the State Peace and Development council and it is led by Senior General Than Shwe. You're gonna want to pronounce it "tawn shway."

Burma is in bad shape, but the people you're talking to are probably already aware. There was a recent monk uprising that became violent (September 2007), as well as a devastating cyclone (May 2008). So tell them instead that for the past two decades America has imposed sanctions on Burma. George Packer says he met many people in Rangoon who would rather America take a more active role. In fact, he met one man who delivered a note to the U.S. embassy that read, "bombard Burma."

Packer paints the Burmese as uniquely gentle and intellectually curious - "[t]he tradition of reading groups in Burma goes back to the nineteen-twenties." The article closes with the following visual: Hnin Se, a writer who was at one point imprisoned, is standing in the rain and serving cylcone victims three scoops of rice.

The Only Games in Town

By Anthony Lane

Issue: Aug 25

Watching the Olympics can be interesting. Talking about them, less so. Reading about them after the fact, not so much. That said, there were some cool parts of Lane's article.

News of the canine propaganda committee that seeks to improve the image of Chinese-Dog relations was funny.

So was London's hypothesized reaction to the opening ceremonies: "They had two thousand and eight drummers, all lit up. Yes, two thousand and eight. And what have we got so far? Elton John on a trampoline."

I'd watch that.

A Greenwich of the Mind

By Nick Paumgarten

Issue: Aug 25

There are always rich people, and they always want to live in Greenwich, CT. But they don't really want to pay 28 million dollars to live in a model home by the real estate stars the  "Antares Mansions" boys. 

13.75? Sure. 

But when Greenwich houses don't sell at undervalued bank foreclosure prices and even the rich are selling their homes, what do we do? 

Build towards the water.

The August 25th Issue

Honestly, this issue kind of sucked, so excuse us if our summaries do too. The articles just weren't that compelling, and Juliet told me that she thinks George Packer is phoning it in these days.

We'll bang these out and hopefully have more to say about the next issue.

One thing that was pretty good and interesting was the Talk of the Town by Richard Rayner called Bug Wars. It explained the biological pest control that was used in Beijing to get the trees green by the time of the Olympics. Parasites were bred and dispersed so they could infect and kill the moths that were destroying the trees.

Running to Beijing

By Peter Hessler

Issue: Aug. 11 & 18, 2008

     You read an article in the New Yorker about long-distance runner Ryan Hall. Hall won the Olympic Trials marathon last year and ran last week in Beijing. At 25 years old, Hall is tall, blond, handsome and, according to his coach, looks like a white Kenyan.  

     You were surprised to learn that although the top African marathoners "tend to come from high-altitude parts of the continent... scientific studies have shown that there's no significant difference in the VO2 max rates of elite Kenyan and European runners. Instead, the Africans' advantage seems to come from running efficiency, body mass-index and leg shape." In other words, the effectiveness of high-altitude training is still questionable. 

     When talking about this article, beware that not everyone will think it odd that Hall credits God with turning him onto running. 

     Also, be sure to mention that after American marathoner Frank Shorter won gold at the 1972 Munich games,  another American didn't earn a medal until 2004 and even then it was silver. 

     Needless to say, pretty boy Hall (who is also a Stanford grad) respects that silver medalist's accomplishments, but questions his fashion sense.

     "Meb [Keflezighi] cut his shirt in Athens," Hall tells his entourage one day. "He cut it off at his stomach, because otherwise the sweat will pool there...If I'm running with the midriff it will be the supreme sacrifice...I just hate the look."

Superbugs

By Jerome Groopman

Issue: Aug 11-18

The moral of this story is: don't get sick and don't end up in the hospital.

According to Dr. Christian Giske of Stockholm, we are returning to a "preantibiotic era." The widespread use of antibiotics (for people and in our food products) has caused some strains of bacteria to develop resistance to all of our viable medicines. 

New strains of potent bacteria have been appearing all over, especially in hospitals where cross-contamination is an issue. These bacteria don't show up on a certain type of test and so are called "gram-negative." The article goes through the ways that the bacteria's DNA could become resistant and talks about how widespread antibiotics are (they even appear in people in an isolated cannibalistic tribe in the Solomon Islands).

Basically, we have been using too many of our good, last-line-of-defense antibiotics and doctors (or someone) should have been better at reserving them for really serious situations. There won't be any easy breakthoughs for new kinds of antibiotics, but the answer might come from other biological medicines (like a counter-bacteria). 

For now, though, don't get sick with one of these superbugs because no one can help you yet.

You probably thought scariest part of the article was either that there was an outbreak at the respected NY Tisch hospital. Or that the bacteria can do this cool thing called "quorum sensing" where they wait to release their "virulence genes" (crap that makes you sick) so that they don't trigger your natural defenses until there are enough of them around that it is too late for you.

Read the full article at NewYorker.com

The Strawberry Girls

By Anne Hull

Issue: Aug 11-18

Author Anne Hull goes back to her hometown of Plant City, FL where this year's Strawberry Queen and her court are competing.

The article details the way of life in the small town and portrays it as an unchanged slice of life from the 1950s South. No one really leaves town, the price of strawberries determines a lot about the health of the town, and big hair is the best. The girls are nice, naive, and religious.

Though the town hasn't changed much, the competition has. A new coordinator is trying to class it up and has made entry more difficult, the costumes less tacky, and is eliminating the swimsuit competition (for moral reasons). Also, they now have more racially diverse applicants (sort of).

Your favorite part of the article was when you learned that the Strawberry court had black jeans with strawberry patches on the back pockets, or when the coordinator told the toll booth attendant that she had nice hair.

Slide show from NewYorker.com

Hello, World!

How many times have you been at a party, in a bar, or waiting for your meeting to start when people talk on and on about a New Yorker article you haven't even heard of, let alone read?

How many times have you gotten your New Yorker in the mail, flipped to an article that looked interesting, only to put it down once you realize it is more than 12 pages?

Well, we've done the dirty work of reading all the articles (ok, so we skip the reviews sometimes, no one is perfect) and are here to offer some quick summaries and highlights.

Use them to sound smart or to decide which articles are worth that hour of real reading time.