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Paradox Of The Perfect Girl
by Courtney E. Martin, AlterNet
While overachieving girls are knocking on the front doors of America's best colleges, admission officers are letting their slacker brothers slip in the back door.

Blighted
by Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker
Americans' fitful appetite for British pop.

Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Children's Diets
by Harriet Brown, New York Times
These food wars go beyond good senses and good science. THey're misguided and red herrings, based more in conjecture and politics than on solid research-based solutions.

Save These Books!
by New York Times
What's your favorite out-of-print cookbooks? We asked chefs, restaurant owners, writers, scholars, publishers and just plain foodies. Here's what they said.

Full House
by Neil Swidey, Boston Globe
Three is the new two. And in some towns — especially affluent ones — four or more is the new three. Educated moms who once managed budgets and schedules at work are now doing the same in their homes teeming with kids.

Why Cigs? Why Not Beef?
by Christine Sismondo, Toronto Star
The difference in our approach to dangerous products speaks to a greater cultural divide between us and nos amis across the Atlantic.

Playing For Fun And Profit
by Paula Bock, Seattle Times
Developed eight years ago by two Microsoft stars who quit to become entrepreneurs, Cranium blends elements of Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit with word puzzles, sculpting, humming and charades.

The Magic Bus
by Deborah Churchman, Washington Post
What began as a three-hour trip to Charlottesville was transformed by the Explainer, the Soother, the Yuppie and the Omigods into an odyssey worthy of Homer.

Great Pyramid As Cuckoo Clock? It Might Not Be Crazy
by Michael Slackman, New York Times
They have been called mystical, awe-inspiring, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But it is safe to say that in the 45 centuries the great pyramids of Giza have cast their formidable shadow over the desert, they have never before been described as a cuckoo clock. But that is what Jean-Pierre Houdin said as he lifted his tall lanky body up the steps into the pyramid of Cheops.

A Seattle School Where Extra Kindness Is Part Of The Curriculum
by Jessica Kowal, New York Times
Hutch School, not far from downtown Seattle, is perhaps the best school that parents hope a child never attends. There is one criterion for admission: someone in a student's family is receiving a bone-marrow transplant for a life-threatening type of leukemia, lymphoma or other blood-related disease.

Dirty Old Women
by Ariel Levy, New York
Teenage boys havve always lusted after attractive teachers, but what happens when the teachers lust after the boys?

Chain Reaction: Do Bookstores Have A Future?
by Paul Collins, Village Voice
The battle is as much about culture as it is about cash.

The Death Of Fun
by Amanda Witherell, San Francisco Bay Guardian
With booze bans, noise crackdowns, excessive permit fees, and suburban-style sensibilities, San Francisco officials are threatening to kill the party spirit.

Keep 'America' In Michigan Schools
by Michael Warren, Detroit News
Censoring the word "America" from our own schools is something Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden would never have thought possible. Michigan has done it without a whimper.

Life In The Fast-Food Lane
by Frank Bruni, New York Times
A few weks ago I embarked on a gluttonous odyssey, with a changing cast of co-conspirators, across this fast-food nation, from New York to California, sea to greasy sea. The goal was to size up and single out the best fast food from familiar national chains, relatively unfamiliar regional chains and tiny local chains I had never encountered.

Repeat After Me: Aaarrgghh!
by Frank Bruni, New York Times
I ate almost all of my 42 fast-food meals in the car, and I got almost all of that food by using the restaurants' drive-through windows. Which means that I spoke my orders into those invisible microphones in the middle of big, glowing, illustrated menus. Or, rather, shouted my order. Or, in truth, screeched at the top of my lungs.

A Writer Is Born
by Garrison Keillor, Salon
For a Midwestern 11-year-old, a drive to New York si the trip of all trips. Even better: Going home and telling about it.

Lost In Translation
by Stewart Lee, The Guardian
The Brits often assume that Germans have no sense of humour. In truth, it's a language problem. The peculiarities of German stentence construction simply rule out the lazy set-ups that British comics rely on.

My Son, The Stranger
by Anne Lamott, Salon
The sweet boy I raised is gone, replaced by a sullen, scornful teenager. It may be a phase, but it's breaking my heart.

When It Comes To Suffering For Your Art, Don't Duck
by Jeremy Pollack, Los Angeles Times
Documentary filmmakers have it tough.

Fat, 40 And Fired
by Nigel Marsh, The Guardian
"So I get twice the husband, half the income and at the end of the year we'll both have to work in Woolworths?" "Bascially." "If we do this, will you be less of an arsehole?"

The New Disaster Movie
by J. Hoberman, Village Voice
How the events of September 11 renewed Hollywood's appetite for destruction.

Goodbye Already: The Art Of The Television Finale
by Alessandra Stanley, New York Times
All shows come to an end, but not every end is worth a showing.

Not Easy Being Green
by Matthew DeBord, Los Angeles Times
Once upon a time, the eco-friendly practice of reusing wine bottles was common place. So why has it fallen by the wayside?

Roadfoodies
by Sarah Karnasiewicz, Salon
Jane and Michael Stern talk about 30 years of scouring America for the best chili dogs and fried clams — and the food they had to throw overboard.

How Sprawl Got A Bad Name
by Robert Bruegmann, The American Enterprise
Worries about sprawl have become so vivid not because conditions are really as bad as the critics suggest, but precisely because conditions are so good.

The World's Game
by National Geographic Magazine
This month 32 nations will compete for the World Cup of soccer, the "beautiful game" that unites and divides countries around the globe.

What Are Independent Bookstores Really Good For?
by Tyler Cowen, Slate
If you don't like the superstores, it is easy enough to expand your viewing horizons through other means.

Searching For A Sense Of Meaning In Gifts
by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post
Recognizing that recipients are often unhappy with gifts, givers are increasingly enclosing receipts with gifts to allow for exchanges. All this is causing economists, psychologists and philosophers to scratch their heads.

What Happened To The Fotune Michael Jackson Made?
by Timotny L. O'Brien, New York Times
The arc of Mr. Jackson's career, and his management of his business and financial affairs, tracks some of the timeworn truisms about the realities of the entertainment industry and those who inhabit its upper tiers: a child star unwittingly beholden to others who control his bank account; a more mature adult who is savvy about packaging and marketing himself but who grows increasingly undisciplined about his spending; and, finally, a reclusive caricature locked inside a financial and emotional fantasyland of his own making.

Mother Of All Surrogates
by Daphne Merkin, New York Times
She is leaving us, as sure as day turns to night, and nothing on earth will keep her here, not all the money — or love, for that matter — in the world.

Politicians, Economists, Teachers... Why Are They So Desperate To Make Us Happy?
by Frank Furedi, Telegraph
Freud may have been a little cynical when he suggested that his objective was to "convert neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness." But he understood that true happiness was an ideal that we pursue but rarely achieve.

Flat-Pack Accounting
by The Economist
Forget about the Gates Foundation. The world's biggest charity owns IKEA — and is devoted to interior design.

Mark Twain's Hawaii
by Lawrence Downes, New York Times
Twain spent four months in the islands in 1866, when he was 31 and workingg on becoming famous. His 25 letters from the Sandwich Islands, writtenon assignment for The Sacramento Union, are still fresh and rudely funny after almost a century and a half — a foretaste of genius and the best travel writing about Hawaii I have ever read.

Don't Write The Obituary Yet: 5 Reasons Why magazines Are Here To Stay
by Nicole Oncina, New York Review Of Magazines
Magazines are here to stay, and here are five reasons why.

Meal Once Removed
by Anne Marson, Washington City Paper
How Washington's restaurants deal with carryout.

Far-Flung Kitchens Send News
by Regina Schrambling, Los Angeles Times
Stand facing the average newsstand lately and it's hard not to think American food magazines are speeding downhill in a Rachael Ray sled, with Paula Deen pushing.

A Nation Of Buffetts: At Least There's One Business Where The United States Is Still Better Than China.
by Daniel Gross, Slate
The United States continue to enjoy its status as the world's hedge-fund manager, allocating capital on behalf of hard-working laborers around the globe.

The Land Time Forgot
by Tom Scocca, New York Observer
If the newsweeklies seem musty and pointless, it's because they've retreated from their jobs.

How To Sell Books By Really Trying
by Henry Alford, New York Times
Bookselling, it's said in the publishing industry, is a matter of "hand selling."

Tokyo Bars With Standing Room Only
by James Brooke, New York Times
In Tokyo, where cafe floor space is at a premium, some bars are abolishing tables and chairs altogether and stacking customers vertically along a bar.

More Scandals, Please, We're British
by Sarah Lyall, New York Times
With three political scandals to choose from — one involving criminal justice, one involving health care spending, and the third involving raunchy illicit sex in the upper echelons of government — which would most Britons rather read about?

A Study In Size
by Ryan Blitstein, SF Weekly
Three years ago, San Franciso launched an experiment with a new ind of school. It worked. So why isn't the district pursuing it?

Honey, I Shrunk The District
by Mike DeBonis and Arthur Delaney, Washington City Paper
Shiny condos and a flashy marketing campaign haven't solved the District's epic population problem.

Building Brands: How Architects Market Themselves
by Witold Rybzynski, Slate
What makes an architect into a brand? Part of the recognition of a brand depends on what people who study such things call its "personality."

Why Students Are Turning To Philosophy
by Claire Smith, Independent
Why — at a time when job prospects are so important — teenagers are turning to Plato, Kant and Hume.

The Mushroom Huntes: It's A Long Route From Forest Floor To Chez Panisse Tabletop
by Leonie Sherman, San Francisco Chronicle
On a bustling Saturday afternoon at Chez Panisse, a platoon of pastry artists, interns and prep cooks move around one another with precisiion and grace. But these five words momentarily freeze the action; everyone in the kitchen knows that the brothers consistently deliver the plumpest, tastiest porcinis on the West Coast. Today they're four hours late.

Writers, Quit Whining
by Garrison Keillor, Salon
Spare us the self-involved moaning over the agonies of your art. Writing is no harder than anything else, and the complainers should can it.

The Way We Eat: Olde School
by Christine Muhlke, New York Times
The thoroughly modern chef Heston Blumenthal gets a Tudor tutorial.