Submitted For Your Perusal

1. “Never Mind What’s in Them, Bags Are the Fashion”

“Once a flimsy afterthought in American retailing — used to lug a purchase home from the store, then tossed into the trash — the lowly, free store bag is undergoing a luxurious makeover.”

2. “Reinventing a Life Beyond Football”

“Having slipped quietly from football, Arrington now has the unfinished business of the rest of his life. ‘I want to do so well in other things that it’s like a trivia question,’ Arrington said. “Did you know LaVar Arrington played football?” That’s the kind of road I’m on.’”

3. “Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft”

“The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.”

4. “Remember the Milkman? In Some Places, He’s Back”

“Home milk delivery from local dairies and creameries was a mainstay for many families in the 1950s and ’60s. But as it became easier and cheaper to buy milk at the grocery store, and as processes were developed to extend milk’s shelf life, the milkman began to fade into the past.”

5. “Hannah Montana Tickets on Sale! Oops, They’re Gone”

“Some ticket brokers are so certain of their ability to get hold of desirable tickets that they confidently advertise tickets on these exchanges even before tickets go on sale to the public. How do they do it? An intriguing explanation is that brokers use specialized software to make multiple online purchases of tickets, circumventing the four-ticket-per-customer limit that the rest of us must abide by.”

6. “Gone Wild and Gone All Wrong”

“Mr. Francis, who sees himself as a Larry Flynt figure, argues this is all payback for defying the power structure in Bay County with his First Amendment lawsuit. Mr. Sullivan, the former mayor, denied this, but said Mr. Francis’s ‘cavalier attitude’ and ‘obvious disdain’ for authority have not helped him. ‘If he’s looking for his worst enemy, he’ll find it in the mirror,’ he said.”

7. “In Seattle, a Fugue for Orchestra and Rancor”

“At least 15 current or former members of the Seattle Symphony have signed sworn declarations on behalf of that member, Peter Kaman, many of them creating an image of Mr. Schwarz as a vindictive, harsh taskmaster who has undermined morale. Even given the strong feelings players in many orchestras have historically had about their conductors, the degree of public criticism is stunning.”

8. “That Fresh Feeling”

“Even now, Ashenburg reports, 40 percent of Frenchmen and 25 percent of Frenchwomen do not change their underwear daily.”

9. “The Godless Delusion”

“A word repeated in Taylor’s book is ‘disenchantment,’ derived from Max Weber, who saw Enlightenment reason turning into modern rationalization as intelligence is used not to get to the bottom of things but to organize life from the top down, through structures of hierarchy, specialization, regulation and control. Taylor agrees that this ‘disenchantment of the world’ leaves us with a universe that is dull, routine, flat, driven by rules rather than thoughts, a process that culminates in bureaucracy run by ‘specialists without spirit, hedonists without heart’ — what Weber called the ‘iron cage’ of modern life.

“The Weberian outlook is bleak, and Taylor puts it aside to find a far more hopeful vision in the sociology of Emile Durkheim. In contrast to Weber, Durkheim saw the forms of society as containing not impersonal functions but deeply implanted sacred practices, and he saw religion rooted in the roles and rules of modern social systems resisting the chill of alienation. Whatever intellectuals may think, people value religion as providing a framework of meaning, a realm of unifying symbols and a sense of belonging.”