Submitted For Your Perusal

“Sinatra created … the most important model of masculinity for a generation of Americans. He had transformed his persona from that of a skinny, boyish, even androgynous heartthrob with Brylcreemed curls, too-big jackets, sailor suits (!), and floppy bow ties into that of a suave man of authority and sensitivity in crisp, slim-line suits. He appealed not to teenage girls but to their mothers and fathers. The jazz critic Gary Giddins, one of the most astute writers on the singer, summed up the transformed Sinatra: ‘Above all, he was adult. He sang to adults.’” —Benjamin Schwarz, “His Second Act,” The Atlantic

1. “The 10 Best Books of 2007”

2. “Book Review: A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World”

“Why do some countries have an economically helpful culture while others don’t? And, since no society got very far in economic terms before the Industrial Revolution, what caused the culture of the recently successful ones to change? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an intriguing, even startling answer: natural selection.”

3. “All Brains Are the Same Color”

“[T]he evidence heavily favors the view that race differences in I.Q. are environmental in origin, not genetic.”

4. “What Did the Professor Say? Check Your iPod”

“These days, students who miss an important point the first time have a second chance. After class, they can pipe the lecture to their laptops or MP3 players and hear it again while looking at the slides that illustrate the talk.”

5. “Pay What You Want for This Article”

“Radiohead’s pay-what-you-choose gambit didn’t just set off economic debates. It should also establish 2007 as two kinds of tipping point for recorded music.”

6. “Questions for John Podhoretz”

“I look at The New York Review of Books. It’s what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.”

7. “Stereo Sanctuaries”

“Men have always had personal retreats — antiseptic or wood-paneled — filled with concert mementos, career trophies and esoteric collectibles. And women have always been mystified by them.”

Dear Chris,

I have been thinking of you a lot since I sat glued to the TV during the championship game.

I know that there may be nothing I or anyone else can say to ease the pain and discouragement of what happened.

Still, for whatever it’s worth, you, and your team, were terrific. And part of playing for high stakes under great pressure is the constant risk of mental error. I know. I have lost two political races and made countless mistakes over the last twenty years. What matters is the intensity, integrity, and courage you bring to the effort. That is certainly what you have done. You can always regret what occurred but don’t let it get you down or take away the satisfaction of what you have accomplished.

You have a great future. Hang in there.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

(Via TrueHoop)

Martin Scorsese does Hitchcock.

1. “Screen Goddess: Natalie Portman”

2. “For Suns’ Hill, Quality Time, but Precious Little Quiet Time”

“His life, once considered charmed, has taken a lot of elbows to the ribs. After winning the league rookie of the year award in 1995 with Detroit, he had his career derailed by five operations on his left ankle. And his storybook marriage took a grim turn in 2003 when his wife was found to have multiple sclerosis.”

3. “Friending, Ancient or Otherwise”

“The growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Second Life has thrust many of us into a new world where we make ‘friends’ with people we barely know, scrawl messages on each other’s walls and project our identities using totem-like visual symbols.”

4. “Who’s Afraid of Barack Obama?”

“But much like the Clinton campaign itself, the Republicans have fallen into a trap by continuing to cling to the Hillary-is-inevitable trope. They have not allowed themselves to think the unthinkable — that they might need a Plan B to go up against a candidate who is not she. It’s far from clear that they would remotely know how to construct a Plan B to counter Mr. Obama.”

5. “The Classless Utopia of Reality TV”

“‘The Hills’ puts Lauren, an alumna of ‘Laguna Beach,’ inside the real-life West Coast office of Teen Vogue, and draws its humor from the sleek, vacuous congruity of that world. Everybody fits in. Lauren’s tasks consist mostly of attending red-carpet premieres. A recurring joke of the show is how the leaders of Hollywood’s young and pampered set feel oppressed by their careers. Lauren’s former friend Heidi, who works for an event planner, returns home in a white, bare-shouldered top, her blond hair impeccably blown out, and is greeted by her fiancé, Spencer. ‘How was your day, sweetheart?’ he asks somewhat sardonically. ‘Long,’ she replies wearily. ‘Tiring.’”

6. “Robo Love”

“By the middle of this century, he predicts, ‘love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined.’”