Zen and the Art of Self-Satisfaction: Noah Berlatsky looks back at Julia Cameron's million-selling, vaguely fascist self-help book The Artist's Way. A review of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life by Tal Ben-Shahar. Life coaches are the root of all evil: A review of Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich (and more and more and more and more). Not so fast: Sending and receiving at breakneck speed can make life queasy; a manifesto for slow communication. Profound people can see the miracle of each moment, good for them — what about us shallow people? A review of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. After Generation X, Generation Zzz: If Douglas Coupland's peers seemed apathetic and self-involved, wait till you read his successors. From Fast Company, here's a millennial's guide to millennial guides. The Millennial Muddle: How stereotyping students became a thriving industry and a bundle of contradictions. A review of The Book of Cool: What is It? Who Decides It? And Why Do We Care So Much? by Marianne Taylor (and more). A review of Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture by Kaya Oakes (and more and more and more). From Wired, a list of the 100 essential skills for geeks. Idol nerd: On the stage, it’s stereotyping that wins. Can you hear my T-shirt now? How one woman is trying to make T-shirts politically active again. Jeff Severns Guntzel on why simple living as a political act is wrong.

From Hoover Digest, George Shultz on the power of the ought: Having a vision for the future and being held accountable for it. Sexual Harassment: An article on the emergence of legal consciousness in Japan and the US. "Big Brother" may be on its last legs but that doesn’t mean reality television is in trouble; the genre is still producing real excellence. A review of The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism by Enda Duffy. Dead Letters: Everyone has terrible handwriting these days. Umberto Eco on the lost art of handwriting: The days when children were taught to write properly are long gone. From VF, who will be the next generation’s Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett? You’re never too young (or old) to work your way onto the New Establishment (and more). Don't expect many more Nobel Prizes for U.S. scientists. "Mad Men" minus the racist, sexist parts: From Oprah to Banana Republic, pop culture is nostalgic for a dark time — screw history, bring on the pencil skirts! More and more and more and more on Facts Are Subversive by Timothy Garton Ash. An interview with Joe Berlinger on "Crude" and the story of the Amazon Chernobyl case. Why is it illegal to blackmail David Letterman? Lizzie Widdicombe investigates. Was Letterman really a predator? Jennifer Senior on the sin of the office flirtation. Can you tell if a man is dangerous just by looking at his face? Compliment someone tonight: Modern people may never be more cruel than when they're out at a bar. Freaky fortnight: Watch as a husband and wife switch places. Why I have no future: Galen Strawson argues that it makes no difference whether he lives or dies.

From Dissent, look at all of those "socialist" mountains: Kevin Mattson on Ken Burns's National Parks and the Right. From Taki's Mag, Steve Sailer on the unbearable whiteness of Ken Burns; and Scott Lockin on Stuff White People Like. Jeffrey Lord on the unbearable whiteness of being Maureen Dowd. From Esquire, white guilt is anything but dead — a look at the culture's suddenly accelerated cycle of insecurity. David Mamet on race, the subject we can’t stop talking about. When seeing ain't believing, somebody's lying: Joe Bageant on America's white underclass. Forget the suburbs: Prosperous white Americans are settling in even more remote — and homogeneous — communities. The United States as Disunited Duchies: Authors of two recent books, Whitopia and The Big Sort, see Americans as disuniting based on politics, race and culture (and more). Angry white men have real grievances: It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens. From Reason, an article on Obama and the socialist canard: The president is no left-wing extremist. Obama’s delusion: That the central lesson about his domestic enemies has not yet been learned by Obama is the mystery of the first eight months of his presidency. Gideon Rachman on why Obama must start punching harder. Grassroots gone dry: Since President Obama took the oath of office, public activism has fizzled out, and the inability of the administration and Congress to pass necessary legislation is going unchallenged.

Net Cemetery: Jeffrey Rosen on Comcast, the biggest threat to free speech since Nixon. The group that holds the internet together: Could other countries create alternatives to the US-controlled domain name system, causing chaos? The coming Internet shutdown: How the government can improve security without resorting to a “kill switch”. Yahoo's salvation: Hackers who love its site as much as (or more than) it does. Can Google stay on top of the Web? As Bing, Facebook, Twitter, and less well-known upstarts nip at its heels, Google has hundreds of wizards racing to come up with smarter answers (and more). Clive Thompson on how the real-time Web is leaving Google behind. A review of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta. Would you pay $25 for Facebook?: While daily newspapers are wrangling with micropayments, Facebook operates from greater strength with its users. What if, one day, Facebook suddenly and irrevocably ceased to exist? Facing off: Is there such a thing as Social Networking Fatigue Syndrome? Sharing, the new imposition: Twitter is less about disseminating information than it is about subjects trying to make themselves feel more real, ontologically speaking, in an increasingly mediated world. Hey, blogger! The consumer protection police would like a word with you. When Anna Holmes started Jezebel it was a small blog with an intimate community; now, the Jezzie-in-chief discusses the benefits and problems of expansion. An interview with Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters.