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Shoot The Beasties
by Sylvie Simmons, The Guardian
The Beastie Boys gave 50 strangers a camera — and ended up with a whole new type of concert movie.

Secret Fiction
by Karen Zuercher, SF Weekly
So you finally wrote the book. Now what?

:-) !!! )-: !!!!!! (-: What's All This? Admission Angst
by Susan Saulny, New York Times
College and graduate school applicants awaiting the good, or bad, news from admission offices — some already in hand, some coming any day now — have discovered the addictive joys of chronicling their experiences in excruciating and often embarrassing detail online in blogs and on forums.

Getting Fresh With Mozart
by Gavin Borchert, Seattle Weekly
He wrote about 650 pieces; why do we always hear the same old six?

Hail Caesar
by Candy Sagon, Washington Post
America cannot get enough of the Caesar salad.

Four Hot Meals, And Hold The Dazzle, Please
by Alex Witchel, New York Times
At any restaurant, who comes first, the chef or the customer? Is it unreasonable, at least sometimes, to want to eat dinner instead of worshipping at the altar of the resident genius?

Celebrity Death Watch
by Kurt Andersen, New York Magazine
Could the country's insane fame fixation maybe, finally — fingers crossed — be coming to an end? One hopeful sign: Paris Hilton.

After A Shelluva Life, Had He Seen Enough?
by John M. Whalen, Washington Post
Addwaita the tortoise may have lived longer than the whole history of the United States.

A Love Affair, Dumplings On The Side
by Patricia Volk, New York Times
It's a yin-yang kind of thing.

The True Price Of Disposable Chopsticks
by Clifford Coonan, Independent
China's appetite for disposable chopsticks eats up 25 million trees each year. With forests fast disappearing, now the pressure is on for people to adopt less wasteful eating habits.

Presto! A School For Magic Creates Hope Out Of Thin Air
by Michael Wines, New York Times
With a little sleight of hand, race and class divisions in South Africa can vanish, at least for a moment.

The Finnish Line
by Bill Thomas, Washington Post
Sub-zero temperatures. Sunlight for just five hours a day. Centuries of Russian aggression. The people of Finland have a word for their renowned fortitude and resilience. Could an outsider get in on their secret?

Maximum Cities
by Rana Dasgupta, New Statesman
London, Paris and New York are dying — the 21st century belongs to the fertile chaos of the third-world metropolis.

Adopted In China, Seeking Identity In America
by Lynette Clemetson, New York Times
Molly and Qiu Meng represent the leading edge of this coming-of-age population, adopted just after the laws changed and long before such placements became popular, even fashionable.

Getting Off The Bus After 76 Years Of Work
by Nancy Wride, Los Angeles Times
After working for 76 years at public transit agencies, bus maintenance attenant Arthur Winston celebrated his first day of retirement and his 100th birthday Wednesday at a party in the cavernous Los Angeles MTA garage named after him.

Supreme Indifference
by Jonathan Raban, The Stranger
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says America may be sliding toward a dictatorship. Why don't American newspapers consider that news?

Text Messaging
by Huan Hsu, Washington City Paper
With a photocopier and a pencil, Molly Springfield draws meaning from the printed page.

Like Movies? Join The Club
by Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times
While industry experts ponder the myriad reasons behind dwindling box-office attendance, organizers of film clubs — cliques in which film lovers can bond over movies in a mre controlled environment than the neighborhood multiplex — say their associations are growing in popularity.

After Katrina, Cookbooks Top The Best-Seller List
by Julia Cass, Washington Post
When the city's bookstores began opening after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters receded, the first volumes residents bought to replace their waterlogged,moldy collections were often beloved cookbooks.

Literary Novels Going Straight To Paperback
by Edward Wyatt, New York Times
A growing number of publishing companies are adopting a different business model, offering books by lesser-known authors only as "paperback originals," forgoing the higher profits afforded by publishing a book in hardcover for a chnace at attracting more buyers and a more sustained shelf life.

If Newspaper Markets Are So Different, Why Do Most Papers Look So Much Alike?
by Alan Jacobson, BrassTacks Design
USAToday succeeded because it offered real innovation — it's truly an original. The real McPapers are the ones copying each other.

In The Workplace, Every Bleeping Word Can Show Your Rank
by Jared Sandberg, Wall Street Journal
Profanity is a barometer of corporate culture because cussing up a blue streak may be taboo to some companies and expected in others.

Where The Roads End
by T.A> Barron, Los Angeles Times
I feel strangely hopeful for our forests because there is, in most of us, a yearning to follow a 10-year-old into terrain where there are no roads at all. There is also a yearning to know, even if we cannot go there ourselves, that such untrammeled places still exist. And above all, there is a yearning to cherish forever the roadless realms of our hearts.

Airline Workers Are Left At gate, Mourning A Perk
by Jeff Bailey, New York Times
Through deep pay cuts, shrunken pensions and longer hours, airline employees who survived the endless rounds of layoffs knew they could still count on one thing: free flights. But that perk, a touch of jet-setting glamour is an increasingly dreary line of work, is now much harder to use because so many flights are full.

Freud In Our Midst
by Jerry Adler, Newsweek
On his 150th birthday, the architect of therapeutic culture is an inescapable force. Why Freud — modern history's most debunked doctor — captivates us even now.

Fear Factor
by Nicholas Lemann, New Yorker
Cable is not a medium for providing information, and it is not going to become one anytime soon. Cable is the world that Bill O'Reilly made. National politics will change long before that does.

Where Showing Skin Doesn't Sell, A New Style Is A Hit
by Marc Lacey, New York Times
All these young women dream of is a sporty hijab, one that covers them but doesn't cramp their style.

Taco Bell Nation
by Dagoberto Gilb, Los Angeles Times
Look around any of these fast-food franchises, and you'll see the mosaic of people we've become Maybe a little too portly. And way too ignorant of what a real chalupa is.

Wanted: A Few Good Sperm
by Jennifer Egan, New York Times
Tired of waiting for the right guy to come along, more and more women are just looking for the right sperm. But for a woman trying to have a child alone, choosing a donor is only the beginning.

A Nation Of Non-Readers
by The Economist
A strange and costly disregard for books.

Girl Uninterrupted
by Toby Litt, The Guardian
Dspite my harsh critique of Winona's tongue, I really am on her side. I'd love her to find a way out the impasse of youth culture. I'd love to see her convincingly tackle some roles where she just has to be a normal, unkooky, confident woman. And I'd love to see her knuckles going white round the knees of an Oscar. But does she want to grow up? I don't know.

Where The Buses Run On Time
by Austan Goolsbee, Slate
The lure of incentive pay.

Was It Good For You, Too?
by Tony Long, Wired News
Because, in the end, it's the warmth of human contact that makes the sex so pleasurable. In the end, it's about using all your senses.

Mao's Lost Children
by Sun Shuyun, The Guardian
In 1934, hundreds of thousands of communists were driven from southern China by nationalists fighting against a socialist state. Only a fifth of them survived the 8,000-mile 'Long March.'

William Safire And Art That's Good For You
by Philip Kennicott, Washington Post
It used to be fairly easy to draw the political battle lines over art in Amercia.

Rewriting Handwriting
by Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News
At a time when the computer is king and toddlers type, some educators believe it's even more imperative to teach a speedy handwriting tecnique that others can read. Enter italic, a zippy hybrid of print and cursive that Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay consider a simple,elegant solution to the massive modern handwriting malaise.

Getting Nowhere
by Richard Seven, Seattle Times
Diehard singles, we commute, clog, stall, rage and refuse to change.

A Wrongful Birth?
by Elizabeth Weil, New York Times
The technology of prenatal care has been shifting rapidly, and our ethical responses to the information provided has been shifting as well.

Roe For Men?
by Rebecca Traister, Salon
The National Center for Men filed suit to establish reproductive rights for men. Is a father's right to choose an idea worth debating, or just a distraction?

American Culture Has Always Warmed To What's Cool
by Alan G. Artner, Chicago Tribune
Thinking about contemporary American culture brings me back to grammar school.

Can This Man Save The Movies? (Again?)
by Richard Corliss, Time
In the digital era, is film dead? As audience gravitate to DVDs, Hollywood wonders if the movie theater can survive. The rebels are surging. Can the Empire strike back?

Harvard's Crowded Course To Happiness
by Carey Goldberg, Boston Globe
The most popular course at Harvard this semester teaches happiness.

Stop The Presses
by Eli Sanders, The Stranger
One of Seattle's two daily newspapers is going to die — probably the 'P-I.' And that' snot a bad thing in the internet age.

Bum Wrap
by Jarrett Murphy, Village Voice
On the night of the city's homeless census, street people count.

Absolution In Your Cup
by Kerry Howley, Reason
The real meaning of Fair Trade coffee.

The Best Picture Misses The Big Picture
by Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times
Thank you, "Crash." Thank you, Academy.

Yes, Sushi's On The Meal Plan
by Candy Sagon, Washington Post
The last decade has brought huge changes to many campus dining halls, as collegesramp up the quality and variety of food to atract an increasingly sophisticated — and picky — generation of students.

My Flight From Fantasy
by Rebecca Front, The Guardian
There's no getting round it: travel really does broaden the mind, but it also knackers the planet.

Open Adoption, Broken Heart
by Dawn Friedman, Salon
I knew it would be hard for my daughter's birth mother to give her up. I just didn't exepct to feel so guilty for taking her.

Why Good Punctuation Makes For Bad Writing
by Dominic Dromgoole, The Guardian
Good punctuation is mourned as a lost art. But the best writing is full of mistakes — and that's why it's exciting.

Publish Or Panic
by Diane Cole, U.S. News
The credibility of books is in a million little pieces. The web is stealing readers. But publishers are fighting back.

The Raw Facts
by Greg Atkinson, Seattle Times
Allow me to spear the notion that it's good to eat only what is uncooked.

Bedtime Stories
by Louise France, The Guardian
Erotic fiction has been languishing on the top shelf for years, but a new generation of women writers is moving it from the fringes to thel iterary mainstream.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It
by Jan Freeman, Boston Globe
There will never be an Oscar for Most Correct English, but that doesn't keep us from grumbling about movie titles that seem to be vying for the Least Correct prize.

Diplomatic Baggage
by Nick Woodsworth, Financial Times
The past is another country, they say, and it is hard to find your way back. What they don't tell you is that if you carry a diplomatic passport you can pretty well forget ever crossing that particular frontier again.

Oscar Nominees You Didn't See
by Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
In watching a film before the hype, critics get a very differnet picture.

Casting About
by John Barry, Baltimore City Paper
More than 100 hopefuls. Three weekends of auditions. Just a handful of parts.

The Joke Is On Katrina
by P.J. Huffsutter, Los Angeles Times
Many in New Orleans lost everything but their sense of humor. Have you heard the one about the evacuee who was out on a date?

'Social Order' Takes The Life Out Of Night Life
by Jennifer Gampell, New York Times
Increasingly, going out on the town in Bangkok has become more of a hassle than checking in for an international flight.

Breaking The Rules
by Bill Daley, Chicago Tribune
Red wine can go swimmingly with fish.

The Vocabulary Of e-English Doesn't Bust Grammar Mold
by Nathan Bierma, Chicago Tribune
Computer-speak is not just a dialet or vocabulary — it has grammatical principles all its own.

A One-Hour Commute To Another World
by Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
It takes barely an hour to drive from downtown Seoul to the other side of the demilitarized zone, but the culture shock is such that you might as well be commuting to the moon.