From Publishers Weekly, where have all the flowers gone? Gardeners aren't only eating their veggies, they're planting them, too. The real secret of the intelligence community is that these people aren’t Machiavellian geniuses; they’re bumbling shitheads, just like most government functionaries — or, for that matter, most people. From IEET, an article on Stefano Vaj and the complicated politics of Italian transhumanism (and a response). An interview with Peter Thiel: Utopian pessimist calls on radical tech to save economy. Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead: Why business professors, ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and (of all things) management theorists are suddenly taking the Grateful Dead very seriously. Tom Engelhardt on Fear Inc.: Hold onto your underwear — this is not a national emergency. From Vanity Fair, the most audacious burglary gang in recent Hollywood history — accused of stealing more than $3 million in clothing and jewelry from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and other stars — appears to be a bunch of club-hopping Valley kids, motivated by vanity and celebrity-worship; and long wary of the very idea of audiobooks, Christopher Hitchens has been seduced by the artistry of Martin Jarvis, who reads a canon that includes The Wind in the Willows, A Tale of Two Cities, and (acid test here) the novels of P. G. Wodehouse. From TNR, a review of Is Diss A System?: The Milt Gross Comic Reader (and from Bookforum, Karin L. Kross reviews Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean). From TNR, Abbas Milani on how Iran found its Nelson Mandela in Mir Hossein Mousavi. A look at how a $100 DIY shelter could help homeless Haitians.
