1. “The Spy Who Wouldn’t Love Me”
“Taking over another author’s creation four decades after his death is tricky under any circumstances. And Bond is not just any character. He is suave and witty, a master seducer, drinker and gambler who always wins — and has a license to kill. When he first appeared in Casino Royale in 1953, Bond was a one-man tonic for an England reeling from its post-World War II loss of power and influence.”
2. “As Gas Prices Rise, Teenagers’ Cruising Declines”
“Perhaps the summer’s most visible change is occurring in the downtown strips of small towns where, for decades, cruising on Friday and Saturday nights has been a teenage rite of passage. It is a peculiarly American phenomenon — driving around in a big loop, listening to music, waving at one another and wasting gasoline.
“‘We’re not cruising around anymore, with gas costing $4.50 a gallon,’ said Ewelina Smosna, a recent graduate of Taft High School in Chicago, as she hung out the other night at the Streets of Woodfield, an outdoor mall in Schaumburg. ‘We just park the car and walk around.’”
3. “Obama Supporters Take His Name as Their Own”
“Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as ‘D. Hussein O’Maley.’ Alex Enderle made the switch online along with several other Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, and now friends greet him that way in person, too.”
4. “101 Secrets (and 9 Lives) of a Magazine Star”
“‘She has what every marketing person dreams of, which is an ability to take complex concepts and boil them down to a six-word sentence,’ Mr. Dolce says. ‘In an overcommunicated world, that is an excellent editorial skill to have.’”
5.”Windows Could Use a Rush of Fresh Air”
“In April, Michael A. Silver and Neil MacDonald, analysts at Gartner, the research firm, presented a talk titled ‘Windows Is Collapsing.’ Their argument isn’t that Windows will cease to function but that the accumulated complexity, as Microsoft tries to support 20 years of legacies, prevents timely delivery of advances.”
6. “Summer and Smoke, an American Cauldron”
“Time and again, in the years to come, summer would prove the crucible of the constantly forming American identity.”
7. “Free to Follow His Heart Right Back to Star Wars”
“His next film could be anything from a sweeping epic to one of the intimate personal narratives he has often said he would like to make. Instead his next two ventures will be Star Wars projects.”
“Zizek is simply misinformed. It’s leftist propaganda meant to legitimize China’s aggression in Tibet.”
Reclaiming “Hussein” from the right-wingers is clever. I’d also like to see it work for “liberal.” The gays are doing a pretty good job with “queer,” I think.