2.10.2008 New York Times Digest

1. “U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad”

“In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.”

2. “The Bible as Graphic Novel, With a Samurai Stranger Called Christ”

“‘It is the end of the Word as we know it, and the end of a certain cultural idea of the Scriptures as a book, as the Book,’ Timothy Beal, professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, said of the reworking of the Bible in new forms, including manga. ‘It opens up new ways of understanding Scripture and ends up breaking the idols a bit.’”

3. “The Beautiful Duckling Gets the Presidents and the Poets”

“Nevertheless, Ms. Bruni, who married President Nicolas Sarkozy last weekend, drew her inspiration from Parker — as well as Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, Christina Rossetti, Walter de la Mare and Yeats — in an album that topped the pop charts last year in France and will be released next week in the United States. The album, ‘No Promises,’ features Ms. Bruni’s smoky French-accented voice half-singing and half-talking the English words of the poets to the accompaniment of her own music.”

4. “You Are What You Spend”

“Income statistics, however, don’t tell the whole story of Americans’ living standards. Looking at a far more direct measure of American families’ economic status — household consumption — indicates that the gap between rich and poor is far less than most assume, and that the abstract, income-based way in which we measure the so-called poverty rate no longer applies to our society.”

5. “Lawsuit May Force Ex-U.S.C. Star to Talk”

“This month … Bush may be forced to break his silence. A lawyer for his chief accuser, Lloyd Lake, said he issued a subpoena to compel Bush to give a deposition Feb. 25 in a lawsuit filed in San Diego last October. Lake contends that the Bush family accepted cash, a car, rent-free housing and other goods from him, and he is seeking repayment.”

6. “Will Disney Keep Us Amused?”

“Disney is embarking on a $1.1 billion, five-year effort to get California Adventure on track. The blueprints call for ripping out ho-hum rides and adding elaborate new ones, rebuilding the park’s entrance — a hodgepodge of turnstiles, a miniature Golden Gate Bridge and pastel tile murals — to shift the focus to Disney iconography.”

7. “Pushing Paper Out the Door”

“‘Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,’ says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. ‘Paper has been dealt a complete deathblow. When was the last time you saw a telephone book?’”

8. “Tell the T.S.A. (and Don’t Hold Back)”

”’… too many of your T.S.A. workers are just power-hungry morons.’”

9. “Gulp! Burger King Is on the Rebound”

“‘They hit a core demographic group — 18-to-24 males — and give them what they want,’ said Bob Goldin, an executive vice president of Technomic, a food industry research and consulting firm.”

10. “Hemingway, Your Letter Has Arrived”

“The unpublished seven-page letter was discovered by Mr. Bank while trolling through the Theater Guild archive, in the Beinecke Library at Yale.”

11. “A Strange Career Takes an Odd Turn”

“What’s weird, he said, was not the nomination itself but that it was his second, and that he had released only two albums in his career, 22 years apart. The first, ‘I Have a Pony,’ lost to a Whoopi Goldberg album in 1986. His current one, taken from a 2006 cable special and released by Comedy Central Records, is 42 minutes of what his fans have come to expect: thoughtfully askew one-liners, served up without affect — Henny Youngman meets Samuel Beckett — plus a few equally askew songs and a story or two. It is titled, with Wrightian understatement, ‘I Still Have a Pony.’”

12. “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You”

“But the problem with suburbs, many environmentalists say, is not an issue of light bulbs. In the end, the very things that make suburban life attractive — the lush lawns, spacious houses and three-car garages — also disproportionally contribute to global warming. Suburban life, these environmentalists argue, is simply not sustainable.”