Submitted For Your Perusal

1. “Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike”

“This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated.”

2. “The Free Market: A False Idol After All?

“For more than a quarter-century, the dominant idea guiding economic policy in the United States and much of the globe has been that the market is unfailingly wise. So wise that the proper role for government is to steer clear and not mess with the gusher of wealth that will flow, trickling down to the every level of society, if only the market is left to do its magic…. But lately, a striking unease with market forces has entered the conversation.”

3. “36 Hours in Sarasota, Fla.”

“The Ringlings left behind more than just a circus. They amassed a large art collection, including a series of gargantuan paintings by Rubens that are displayed at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (5401 Bay Shore Road, 941-359-5700; www.ringling.org), on the 66-acre bayside estate where they wintered.”

4. “Hey, It’s Still Me in Here”

“Pity poor Ashley Tisdale. Riding high from her success as the scheming Sharpay in High School Musical 2, she seems to have come down with a minor case of Jennifer Grey syndrome. After having surgery to fix what she said was a deviated septum on Nov. 30, she emerged two weeks later with what looked to many casual observers like a brand-new nose. Celebrity magazines and blogs piled on, questioning her for tinkering with the trait that many people say made her special. Five-year-old fans said they no longer recognize her. She looks ‘plain,’ ‘average,’ even ‘Stepford,’ according to some of the online comments.”

5. “The Shrinking Market Is Changing the Face of Hip-Hop”

“If you’re looking for a two-word motto for hip-hop in 2007, you could do worse than that: ‘Keep grinding.’ This was the year when the gleaming hip-hop machine — the one that minted a long string of big-name stars, from Snoop Dogg to OutKast — finally broke down, leaving rappers no alternative but to work harder, and for fewer rewards.”

6. “Review of Peter Gay’s Modernism: The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond”

“One day, Gustave Flaubert was out walking with his sister. Ferociously antibourgeois, Flaubert lived alone, unconsoled and unencumbered by marriage or family. His novels mocked and maligned the French middle class, ironizing it into oblivion. He was a great frequenter of brothels and had fornicated his way through Paris and Cairo. And yet here he was out for a stroll, suddenly stopping in his tracks before a small house surrounded by a white picket fence.
Skip to next paragraph

“In the yard, a solid middle-class father played with his typical middle-class children while wife and mother looked lovingly on. The enemy! Yet instead of holding his nose, Flaubert gestured toward the house and exclaimed, without irony: ‘Ils sont dans le vrai!’ (‘They are in the truth!’).”

7. “Review of Jeanine Basinger’s The Star Machine”

“They had faces then, along with glamour and impeccable grooming. The studios taught their stars how to walk, how to talk, how to dance, sing, fence and ride a horse without sliding off the saddle. They plucked their eyebrows, trimmed their waistlines, shaved their hairlines, kept their secrets and tried to protect this human capital at all costs.”

8. “The Hard Sell”

“What’s surprising is the degree to which we’ve all become sophisticates, engaging in our own Packard-like critiques of consumer culture without changing our habits. We know we buy irrationally; we just don’t care. We imagine that the ‘manipulators’ at J. Walter Thompson or BBDO play only on the fears and hopes of desperate consumers who aren’t as “conscious” as we are (in which case it’s hard not to admire the ingenuity of the advertisers), while we ourselves are smart enough to decide when to give in.”