The Newest Hartshorne, model 2005. 

Stepping past the entertainers in downtown Northampton, MA on Friday night. 

Joshua Clover writes in opposition to Thomas Friedman’s thesis that the world is flat in the Village Voice. “If Friedman’s no global economist, one might expect him to check in with one who works his beat: Fernand Braudel, say, or Giovanni Arrighi, highly regarded “world systems” scholars who study interlocking […]

Peter R made the case against handwashing on errtravel.com. “Let’s assume you wash up before leaving your hotel room. Consider the germs, dirt, cleaning product residues, and other contaminants you probably picked up on your way out of the hotel, getting into and out of the taxi, paying the driver […]

Most are familiar with Hurricane Andrew, which slammed into the Florida coast in 1992. Andrew is the costliest hurricane on record. CBS News reported on this in Sept 2004. “John Gurney of the National Weather Service says, “Hurricane Andrew dwarfs all other storms we’ve had: $26 billion in damage by […]

Amanda Hesser, the NY Times magazine’s food editor, wrote about a trip to Vietnam in Sunday’s paper. “Hoi An, which means “peaceful life union,” is a sleepy place easily traversed on foot. Down an alley off of Phan Boi Chau, we saw a man who stood in the center of […]

Augusten Burroughs is a brilliant writer who lives nearby in Northampton, MA. He wrote a column in this month’s Details magazine about various kinds of f**cks. “Turns out, the day the divorce had become final, Amanda and her now ex-husband had spent the afternoon in bed, in what was now […]

Good news came out of Brazil from the AP yesterday. “The destruction of the Amazon rain forest has slowed dramatically this year, the government said, but environmentalists said it was too soon to celebrate and urged caution with the statistics. Preliminary data indicate that 3,551 square miles of rain forest […]